“Pay attention how you live! You know who you are: the Divine greatness of God in the world. You know your rank. Live according to it. Oh man, my brother! Do never forget that you are a little god in becoming. In the creation of your soul, you wear the living icon of God. Pay attention how you live, pay attention what you do with the Image of God from your inner self. Pay attention, oh man. Oh man! Oh man! For our life has, its, beginning on Earth but it takes us before the enlightening Face of God, for it is there where to give a response to what we have done with the Image of God in this life”.
“When a man is not with God, he is a plaything of the devil. And the devil plays with him: one moment he fills his Soul with impure thoughts, another moment he kindles his tongue with cursing, another moment he leads him into slandering, into thievery, into debauchery, and into every other evil deed And it continues this way until a man remembers God, takes refuge in the temple of God, and falls down before God. Then he is entirely in Heaven and neither the human evils of the world, nor demons can touch him.”
“The Soul is restored to health by silence. It is therefore necessary to train oneself to silence – and this is a labor that brings sweetness to the heart. It is through silence that a man reaches peace from unwanted thoughts.”
“Why is there so much evil in the world today? Because people have thrown away their most reliable weapon, the all-victorious weapon with which every evil, every sin, and every demon are assuredly vanquished on all battlefields. And this weapon is Prayer and fasting.”
“Man is placed on the road between Paradise and hell, between God and satan. Every thought and reflection of man, and every feeling of his, brings the Soul one step closer to Paradise or one step closer to hell.”
“You are a Christian, your calling is to achieve Eternal Life, to fight day and night for Eternal Life; and for the sake of it, you must bear every torment, every hardship, every struggle with joy”
“Never forget that to believe in the Resurrection of the Lord Christ means to carry out a continuous fight with sins, with evil, with death.”
“Give up everything for Christ; do not give up Christ for anything.”
“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.”
“From the first virtue, faith, to the last, which is love for all, there extends one unbroken path: Asceticism. On this long path a man forms, transforms, and transfigures himself through the Grace of his Ascetic endeavors. In this way he heals his being from the sicknesses of sin and ignorance, restoring the integrity of his person, unifying and making whole his spirit.”
“A man is ninety-nine percent from the sky and only one percent of the Earth. Therefore, we must climb up to the sky every minute, crawl to the sky, run to the sky, fly to the sky.”
“[Christ] brought down all the Divine perfections from Heaven to Earth. And He did not just bring them down, but also taught them to us and gave us Grace-filled power to have them transform our lives, our thoughts, our feelings, our deeds. Hence, our calling is to incarnate them in ourselves and in the world around us.”
“To become immortal in Him by the power of the Holy Spirit, to become God, to become the God-man – this is the purpose, the true purpose of the whole human race. It is also the joy, the only joy in this world of boundless sorrow and toxic bitterness.”
“Conquering sin in himself through Christ, man overcomes death. If you have lived the day without vanquishing a single sin of yours, know that you have become deadened. Vanquish one, two, or three of your sins, and behold: you have become younger than the youth which does not age, young in immortality and eternity. Never forget that to believe in the Resurrection of the Lord Christ means to carry out a continuous fight with sins, with evil, with death.”
“If a man fights with sins and passions, this demonstrates that he indeed believes in the Risen Lord; if he fights with them, he fights for Life Eternal. If he does not fight, his faith is in vain. If a man’s faith is not a fight for immortality and Eternity, then tell me, what is it? If faith in Christ does not bring us to resurrection and Life Eternal, then of what use is it to us? If Christ is not Risen, that means that neither sin nor death has been vanquished. Then why believe in Christ? For the one who, by faith in the Risen Lord, fights with each of his sins, there will be gradually affirmed in him that Christ: is indeed Risen; has indeed vanquished the sting of sin; has indeed vanquished death, on all the fronts of combat.”
“The Soul is made drunk by the passions but can recover its health if it will use the virtues as the path to sobriety. The virtues, however, are woven through with sorrow and afflictions. Saint Isaac says that every virtue is a cross, and even that sorrows and afflictions are the source of the virtues. He therefore expressly advocates a love of oppression and sorrow, so that by them a man may be freed from the things of this world and have a mind that is detached from the world’s confusion. For man must first free himself from the material world in order to be born of God. Such is the economy of Grace; such, too, is the economy of knowledge.”
“Christianity is a vocation – a battle with death until the last breath, a battle until a final victory has been reached. Every sin is a retreat, every passion means running away, and every vice is a defeat.”