“Paradise is within the heart of the righteous, and wherever they are, they bring it with them.”
Saint Ephrem the Syrian
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“There is no one richer than the man who always bears Christ and His Grace in his heart.”
Saint John of Kronstadt
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“When someone opens your heart, I’d like him to find nothing there but Christ.”
Saint Amphilochios of Patmos
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“There is no one richer than the man who always bears Christ and His Grace in his heart.”
Saint John of Kronstadt
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“He who carries God in his heart, bears Heaven with him wherever he goes.”
Saint Ignatius of Antioch
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“To be Orthodox means to have the God-man Christ constantly in your Soul, to live in Him, think in Him, feel in Him, act in Him. In other words, to be Orthodox means to be a Christ-bearer and a Spirit-bearer.”
Saint Justin Popovich
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“Acquiring the Spirit of God is the true aim of our Christian life, while Prayer, fasting, almsgiving and other good works done for Christ’s sake are merely means for acquiring the Spirit of God.”
Saint Seraphim of Sarov
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“Life of the Soul is union with God, as life of the body is union with the Soul.”
Saint Gregory Palamas
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“When Christ enters our Soul, everything within us will be altered.”
Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia
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“The Soul of a Christian must be purer than the rays of the sun.”
Saint John Chrysostom
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“A Christian is – the vessel of God, the temple of God, the house of God. O, how worthy of honour is the true Christian, how zealously he ought to shun every sin, and how greatly Christians ought to respect one another!”
Saint John of Kronstadt
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“Children, I beseech you to correct your hearts and thoughts, so that you may be pleasing to God. Consider that although we may reckon ourselves to be righteous and frequently succeed in deceiving men, we can conceal nothing from God. Let us therefore strive to preserve the Holiness of our Souls and to guard the purity of our bodies with all fervour. Ye are the Temple of God, says the Divine Apostle Paul; if any man defile the Temple of God, him shall God destroy.”
Saint Nicholas of Myra
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“Christ rests where there is nobility and filotimo.”
Saint Paisios the Athonite
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“If then you have become the Throne of God, and the Heavenly Charioteer has seated himself within you, and your Soul is entirely transformed into a Spiritual eye, and is made into light; if you too are nourished with the Heavenly food of that Spirit and have drunk of the Living Water, and have put on the secret garment of light – if your inward being has experienced all these things and is established in rich unshakable faith, then you are living the Eternal Life, and your Soul even in this present time – rests with Christ.”
Saint Makarios the Great of Egypt
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“Lord, grant me the Grace to always have You in me, and not a minute to be without You.”
Saint John of Kronstadt
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“The Grace of the Holy Spirit which is given Mystically to every Christian when he is Baptized acts and is manifested in proportion to our obedience to the Commandments of the Lord. That is, if a Christian obeys the Commandments of the Lord more, Grace acts with him more, while if he obeys them less, Grace acts within him less. Just as a spark, when covered in the ashes of fire becomes increasingly manifest as one removes the ashes, and the more fire wood you put the more the fire burns, so the Grace that has been given to every Christian through Holy Baptism is hidden in the heart and covered up by the passions and sins, and the more a man acts in accordance with the Commandments of Christ, the more he is cleansed of the passions and the more the fire of Divine Grace lights in his heart, illumines and deifies him.”
Saint Nikodemos of Mount Athos
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“A pure heart is perhaps one which has no natural propulsion towards anything in any manner whatsoever. When in its extreme simplicity such a heart has become like a writing-tablet beautifully smoothed and polished, God comes to dwell in it and writes there His own laws.”
Saint Maximus the Confessor
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“I will declare to you plainly, the highest and most perfect matter one hopes to attain is to draw near to God, and abide as one with Him.”
Saint Theophan the Recluse
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“What is the human mind without Christ? It’s a suffering, tortured lamentation. What is the human Soul without Christ? It’s a talking scarecrow. What is our conscience, our free will? Hopeless blindness. What is the body without Christ? A disgusting, loathsome worm. What is our will? A helpless criminal. In general, what are we without Christ? A terrible, external spectacle.”
Saint Justin Popovich of Serbia
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“He who has the Kingdom of God within himself will imperceptibly pass it on to others. The atmosphere of Heaven will radiate from us even when we keep silence or talk about ordinary things.”
Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
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“Your Soul must hold fast to Him, you must follow after Him in your thoughts, you must tread His ways by Faith, not in outward show.”
Saint Ambrose Bishop of Milan
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“The mind of Christ which the Saints receive according to the saying, “We have the mind of Christ”, comes along not by any loss of our mental power, nor as a supplementary mind to ours, nor as essentially and personally passing over into our mind, but rather as illuminating the power of our mind with its own quality and bringing the same energy to it. For to have the mind of Christ is, in my opinion, to think in His way and of Him in all situations.”
Saint Maximus the Confessor