Theologians from Russia

"The uniting of Orthodoxy with state absolutism came about on the soil of a non-belief in the Divineness of the earth, in the earthly future of mankind; Orthodoxy gave away the earth into the hands of the state because of its own non-belief in man and mankind, because of its nihilistic attitude towards the world. Orthodoxy does not believe in the religious ordering of human life upon the earth, and it compensates for its own hopeless pessimism by a call for the forceful ordering of it by state authority."

"The new religious consciousness rises up against the nihilistic attitude towards the world and mankind. If a religious rebirth be possible, only then on this soil will there be the revealing of the religious meaning of secular culture and earthly liberation, the revealing of the truth about mankind. For the new religious consciousness the declaration of the will of God is together with this a declaration of the rights of man, a revealing of the Divine within mankind. We believe in the objective, the cosmic might of the truth of God, in the possibility according to God to guide the earthly destiny of mankind. This will be the victory of the true theocracy, whether over a false democratism, — the apotheosis of the quantitative collectivity of human wills, or so also over the false theocraticism, — all that apotheosis of the human will within Caesaropapism or Papocaesarism. Christ cannot have human vicarage in the person of the tsar or high-priest. He — is Himself the Tsar and High-Priest, and He will reign in the world. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.”"

"Ethics occupies a central place in philosophy because it is concerned with sin, with the origin of good and evil and with moral valuations. And since these problems have a universal significance, the sphere of ethics is wider than is generally supposed. It deals with meaning and value and its province is the world in which the distinction between good and evil is drawn, evaluations are made and meaning is sought."

"It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it."

"There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism. … The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil, that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy."

"The Christian world doesn't know Orthodoxy too well. It only knows the external and for the most part, the negative features of the Orthodox Church and not the inner spiritual treasure. Orthodoxy was locked inside itself, it did not have the spirit of proselytism and did not reveal itself to the world. For the longest time, Orthodoxy did not have such world-wide significance as did Catholicism and Protestantism. It remained apart form passionate religious battles for hundreds of years, for centuries it lived under the protection of large empires (Byzantium and Russia), and preserved its eternal truth from the destructive processes of world history. It is characteristic of Orthodoxy's religious nature that it was not sufficiently actualized nor exposed externally, it was not militant, and precisely because of this the heavenly truth of Christian revelation was not distorted so much. Orthodoxy is that form of Christianity which suffered the least distortion in its substance as a result of human history. The Orthodox Church had its moments of historical sin, for the most part in connection with its external dependence on the State, but the Church's teaching, her inner spiritual path was not subject to distortion. The Orthodox Church is primarily the Church of tradition, in contrast to the Catholic Church, which is the Church of authority, and to the Protestant Churches which are essentially churches of individual faith. The Orthodox Church was never subject to a single externally authoritarian organization and it unshakenly was held together by the strength of internal tradition and not by any external authority. Out of all forms of Christianity it is the Orthodox Church which remained more closely tied to early Christianity."

"The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the Confessor, were supporters of Apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrection. And this is characteristic of (contemporary) Russian religious thought. Orthodox thought has never been suppressed by the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot the idea of Divine love. Chiefly — it did not define man from the point of view of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification of man and cosmos."

"It must be recognized that man in his limited and relative earthly life is capable of bringing about the beautiful and the valuable only when he believes in another life, unlimited, absolute, eternal. That is a law of his being. A contact with this mortal life exclusive of any other ends in the wearing-away of effective energy and a self-satisfaction that makes one useless and superficial. Only the spiritual man, striking his roots deep in infinite and eternal life, can be a true creator. But Humanism denied the spiritual man, handed over the eternal to the temporal, and took its stand by the natural man within the limited confines of the earth."

"The whole economic system of Capitalism is an offshoot of a devouring and overwhelming lust, of a kind that can hold sway only in a society that has deliberately renounced the Christian asceticism and turned away from Heaven to give itself over exclusively to earthly gratifications. ... It is the result of a secularization of economic life, and by it the hierarchical subordination of the material to the spiritual is inverted. The autonomy of economics has ended in their dominating the whole life of human societies: the worship of Mammon has become the determining force of the age. And the worst of it is that this undisguised “mammonism” is regarded as a very good thing, an attainment to the knowledge of truth and a release from illusions. Economic materialism formulates this to perfection when it brands the whole spiritual life of man as a deception and a dream."

"In order to be able to go on living it is possible that the bankrupt peoples will have to enter on a new path of self-denial, by curbing their covetousness and putting a check on the indefinite expansion of their wants, and by having smaller families."

"Morally, it is wrong to suppose the source of evil is outside oneself, that one is a vessel of holiness running over with virtue. Such a disposition is the best soil for a hateful and cruel fanaticism. It is as wrong to impute every wickedness to Jews, Freemasons, "intellectuals," as it is to blame all crimes on the bourgeoisie, the nobility, and the powers that were. No; the root of evil is in me as well, and I must take my share of the responsibility and the blame. That was true before the revolution and it is true still."

"Nobody is bound to have an optimistic outlook on the future: that is not a precept of the Christian religion. ... It is a matter of immense importance that illusions should be dispelled and man come face to face with positive realities."

"We used to pay too little attention to utopias, or even disregard them altogether, saying with regret they were impossible of realisation. Now indeed they seem to be able to be brought about far more easily than we supposed, and we are actually faced by an agonising problem of quite another kind: how can we prevent their final realisation? ... Utopias are more realisable than those 'realist politics' that are only the carefully calculated policies of office-holders, and towards utopias we are moving. But it is possible that a new age is already beginning, in which cultured and intelligent people will dream of ways to avoid ideal states and to get back to a society that is less 'perfect' and more free."

"It appears that liberty is bound up with imperfection, with a right to imperfection. Socialism leads to the same type of authoritarian state as Theocracy. ... One must choose: either Socialism or liberty of spirit, the liberty of man's conscience. ... Socialism uses a "sacred" authority and establishes a "sacred" society in which there is no place for the "lay," for the free, for choice, for the unrestrained activity of human forces."

"God is denied either because the world is so bad or because the world is so good. Original: Бога отрицают или потому, что мир так плох, или потому, что мир так хорош. [https://www.vehi.net/berdyaev/samopoznanie/002.html ]"

"Spirit is never an object; nor a spiritual reality an objective one. In the so-called objective world there's no such nature, thing, or objective reality as spirit. Hence it is easy to deny the reality of spirit. God is spirit because he is not object, because he is subject."

"Spirit, like flame, like freedom, like creativeness, is opposed to any social stagnation or any lifeless tradition. In terms of Kantian philosophy — terms which I consider erroneous and confusing — spirit appears as a thing in itself and objectification as a phenomenon. Another and truer definition would be, spirit is freedom and objectification is nature (not in the romantic sense). Objectification has two aspects: on the one hand it denotes the fallen, divided and servile world, in which the existential subjects, the personalities, are materialized. On the other it comprehends the agency of the personal subject, of spirit tending to reinforce ties and communications in this fallen world. Hence objectification is related to the problem of culture, and in this consists the whole complexity of the problem. In objectification there are no primal realities, but only symbols. The objective spirit is merely a symbolism of spirit. Spirit is realistic while cultural and social life are symbolical. In the object there is never any reality, but only the symbol of reality. The subject alone always has reality. Therefore in objectification and in its product, the objective spirit, there can be no sacred reality, but only its symbolism. In the objective history of the world nothing transpires but a conventional symbolism; the idea of sacredness is peculiar to the existential world, to existential subjects. The real depths of spirit are apprehensible only existentially in the personal experience of destiny, in its suffering, nostalgia, love, creation, freedom and death."

"I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it."

"Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself."

"What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world."

"I see myself immersed in the depths of human existence and standing in the face of the ineffable mystery of the world and of all that is. And in that situation, I am made poignantly and burningly aware that the world cannot be self-sufficient, that there is hidden in some still greater depth a mysterious, transcendent meaning. This meaning is called God. Men have not been able to find a loftier name, although they have abused it to the extent of making it almost unutterable. God can be denied only on the surface; but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence."

"There is no objective reality. But there is only an illusion of consciousness, there is only an objectivication of reality, which was created by the spirit. The origin of life is creativity, freedom; and the personality, subject, and spirit are the representatives of that origin, but not the nature, not the object."

"This was once revealed to me in a dream."

"Fate and freedom alike play a part in history; and there are times, as in wars and revolutions, when fate is the stronger of the two. Freedom — the freedom of man and of nations — could never have been the origin of two world wars. These latter were brought about by fate, which exercises its power owing to the weakness and decline of freedom and of the creative spirit of man. Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate."

"A real reconciliation of East and West is impossible and inconceivable on the basis of a materialistic Communism, or of a materialistic Capitalism, or indeed of a materialistic Socialism. The third way will neither be "anti-Communist" nor "anti-Capitalist". It will recognize the truth in liberal democracy, and it will equally recognize the truth in Communism. A critique of Communism and Marxism does not entail an enmity towards Soviet Russia, just as a critique of liberal democracy is not entail enmity towards the west. … But the final and most important justification of a "third way" is that there must be a place from which we may boldly testify to, and proclaim, truth, love and justice. No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth."

"We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality. If war should come, it will do so on account of our delusions, for which our hag-ridden conscience attempts to find moral excuses. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from flying asunder."

"Religion for [Berdyaev] is a social phenomenon and is adapted to the needs of the masses; as such, it is embodied in visible institutions and in authoritative formulas. The mystic, on the other hand, is aristocratic in temperament and never quite at home where the masses are catered for. He cannot remain in the world of form and convention and second-hand truths which is all about us and with which official religion has to come to terms; he aspires to a contact with spiritual reality as it is, a return to the ultimate sources of his being."

"Berdyaev attempts to development of Christian symbols that is parallel to Jung's in order to give a place to human freedom and creativity in this sphere of Christian spirituality. Much of the creative self-expression, which ought to have been given a spiritual-religious meaning, had to emigrate out of the domain of ecclesiastic Christianity into the secular sphere, even though it had its origin within it. Both of these elements which Jung and Berdyaev address, that of soul and that of human freedom and creative self-expression, could not be fully accommodated within traditional Christianity and as a consequence found a home in the "pagan" rebellion since the Renaissance and its progressive push towards secularization. The spirituality that had initially been shaped by ecclesiastic Christianity has burst its container and has in turn given shape to the underlying meaning-structures of modern secular society. Jung and Berdyaev share an awareness of these underlying historical dynamics. We have learned and are still learning very bitter lessons about the link between claims of absolute truth and violence. For good reasons contemporary thinkers are more or less unanimous in their suspicion towards all "meta-narratives" which end up justifying the violation of individual freedoms. Any return to a serious consideration of spirituality will have to remain mindful of this persistent danger. Jung's psychology offers an abundant wealth of insights about the need for remaining consistently mindful of the ways in which the shadow operates most forcefully where the light shines most strongly. But a convincing argument could be made for claiming that at present we are paying the price for the repression of religion and spirituality that occurred as a reaction to their destructive sides. In the absence of a spiritual culture the return of repressed spirituality takes destructive forms. Spirituality, by being repressed, does not disappear but mutates into more atavistic forms. This shadow side of spirituality should not make us shy away from it but on the contrary motivate us to find a way to give it a new place in our contemporary culture, a way which does not jettison the liberating games of secular modernity."

"It is difficult to fit the work of Nikolai Berdyaev into any neat category. The label that was used most frequently to characterize him was that of an "existential Christian philosopher" but … his voice is equally relevant to psychology and psychoanalysis and it also constitutes a uniquely original commentary on the very nature of the person in our postmodern world especially in relation to spirituality."

"The life of Berdyaev spans the momentous events of the first half of the twentieth century in Europe. He was no ivory tower philosopher but was intimately affected by these events throughout his life and drew his inspirations from them regarding the nature of the human condition. His writings bear the imprint of the catastrophic situations within which he was destined to live."

"Surprisingly, Berdyaev was able to write, lecture and publish for five years after the October Revolution of 1917. He was once detained and interviewed by the fearsome head of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky. Although he was released, the Bolsheviks gradually realized that Berdyaev was unassimilable to their cause and gave him a choice, along with a group of other intellectuals, of exile or execution. Reluctantly, Berdyaev chose exile to Berlin. He was never again to return to Russia."

"Berdyaev has been categorized as a Christian existentialist and a mystical philosopher. He never avoided the label of "mystic" since he felt it was the mystics of the world who came closest to understanding the role of spirit. Many of the philosophers he quoted were mystics — Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius and especially Jacob Boehme. The influence of Dostoevsky was central to his thought. Nevertheless, Berdyaev is not a naively irrational thinker; he brings an enormous fund of philosophical knowledge combined with the profundity of his own thought to support his view of existence. There are no dogmas in his writings to offend one's intellectual conscience."

"He was arrested twice; he was taken in 1922 for a midnight interrogation with Dzerjinsky; Kamenev was also there. … But Berdyaev did not humiliate himself, he did not beg, he firmly professed the moral and religious principles by virtue of which he did not adhere to the party in power; and not only did they judge that there was no point in putting him on trial, but he was freed. Now there is a man who had a "point of view"!"

"How difficult is to please you people. I celebrate too long and he too short!"

"Sanctity is not just a virtue. It is an attainment of such spiritual height, that the abundance of God’s grace which fills the saint overflows on all who associate with him. Great is the saint’s state of bliss in which they dwell contemplating the Glory of God. Being filled with love for God and man, they are responsive to man’s needs, interceding before God and helping those who turn to them."

"Many were aware that it was not necessary to ask Vladika to visit someone. The Lord Himself inspired him where and to whom to go."

"We would go to Vladika to get his blessing before exams. One time I went and he said, “Why are you asking for my blessing, you didn’t study, go away.” How he knew that is a mystery to me, but I knew that I would do miserably, and I did."

"His incredible, self imposed, ascetic restriction on sleeping in bed was known to many. For 44 years of his monastic life, he slept for 4 or 5 hours per night sitting in his chair."

"If he was in his room and you wanted to see him, you didn’t just knock and wait for him to respond. What you did was knock and say “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us”, and when he responded with an “Amen”, you walked in."

"As an Altar Attendant... observing, especially during Eucharist, the intensity and power of his praying was spell binding. It seemed to me that he was not standing on the floor, but elevated. I mentioned this to others, and they agreed. St John was not a big man physically, but when he blessed the bread and wine, at that moment, making the Sign of the Cross over the Challis and Discus (plate) as required, he would thump the Altar Table, as he made the Sign. He could not have reached so far without being elevated. Recalling it now, I still get chills."

"A moleben was sung, after which Vladika, standing before a lectern, was delivering a sermon. I was standing next to my mother, and we both saw a light surrounding Vladika down to the lectern — a radiance around him a foot wide. This lasted a rather long time. When the sermon was over, I, struck by such an unusual phenomenon, told what we had seen to our friend, who replied to us: `Yes, many faithful saw it.'"

"We Altar Attendants really liked going to other churches when they had their church’s holiday... Typically, the hosts never thought of sitting us. When Vladika was urged to take his place, he would ask the person in charge of the banquet ‘Where are my Altar Attendants sitting?’ Typically they would be slightly embarrassed and say something ‘Oh, we’ll find them a place in the kitchen’ or more often than not, just say ‘We don’t have a place for them’. At that time, Vladika would say that he is not sitting down until his Altar Attendants are seated. Then a slight panic would ensue, as people scrambled for an extra table and some chairs. We loved that scene, and very much appreciated Vladika’s loyalty and concern."

"You demand proofs, you say that now there are neither miracles nor saints. Why should I give you theoretical proofs, when today there walks in the streets of Paris a Saint — Saint Jean Nus Pieds (Saint John the Barefoot)."

"Sometimes during our conversation it seemed to me that he dozed. But when I stopped, he would immediately say: “Continue, I hear you.”"

"After services he would smile and joke with the boys who served with him, playfully knocking the refractory on the head with his staff. Occasionally the Cathedral clergy would be disconcerted to see Vladika, in the middle of a service (though never in the altar), bend over to play with a small child! And on feast days when blessing with holy water was called for, he would sprinkle the faithful, not on the top of the head as is usual, but right in the face (which once led a small girl to exclaim, "he squirts you"), with a noticeable glint in his eye and total unconcern at the discomfiture of some of the more dignified."

"The biggest surprise, however, came during the procession around the church with the blessing of the water. When he would sprinkle the holy water, he would aim mostly at his altar boys, dousing them. The boys felt themselves to be the center of attention, and were elated to be thus sanctified by their beloved archpastor."

"While being unconcerned with matters of jurisdictions, Archbishop John was ruthless and intolerant towards Clergy who were lax and indifferent in matters of spiritual integrity. For this he was hated to such an extent that there was even an attempt to poison him during Pascha, and he barely survived. This intolerance towards Archbishop John stemmed mostly from envy and jealousy."

"The chapter of St. Tikhon's Orphanage has never been written. The amazing way in which Blessed John gathered and fed the children requires an able writer to capture it for posterity. The children would be underfed, abused and frightened, until Archbishop John would come and very often take them personally into his orphanage and school. Each child and there were over three thousand who went through the orphanage had a traumatic story."

"The persecution of Blessed John Maximovitch the Wonderworker did not end with his death. It is true that some trouble-makers repented and publicly wept, kissing the coffin when everyone was parting with the Saint. But his enviers continued to resent him, as they do even up till today, when it is politically convenient to pronounce him a saint. After his death some leaders in his Synod, having seen that he had ended triumphantly, decided to put a stop to the publishing of his miracles and memoirs about him, in order to conceal their deeds against him."

"When he heard confessions, he did not make it a big thing... he called confession a "dusting off"... the layers of ungodly impressions which settle upon the soul automatically if the soul does not resist and preserve its freshness. After each confession from Archbishop John, which as I said was nothing extraordinary, I felt very enlightened, although I must confess I always feared him because I knew he clairvoyant."

"Most people neither hear nor understand God speaking in their hearts: they listen to the urging of passion, which inhabits the soul and with its clamour drowns the still small voice of God."

"No sin is unforgivable except the sin that is not repented of."

"There are known instances when Blessed Staretz Silouan in prayer beheld something remote as though it were happening close by; when he saw into someone's future, or when profound secrets of the human soul were revealed to him. There are many people still alive who can bear witness to this in their own case but he himself never aspired to it and never accorded much significance to it. His soul was totally engulfed in compassion for the world. He concentrated himself utterly on prayer for the world, and in his spiritual life prized this love above all else."

"In my young days ... I had been attracted to the idea of pure creativity, taking the form of abstract art. ... I derived ideas for my abstract studies from life around me. I would look at a man, a house, a plant, at intricate machinery, extravagant shadowscapes on walls or ceilings, at quivering bonfire flames, and would compose them into abstract pictures, creating in my imagination visions that were not like actual reality. ... Fortunately I soon realised that it was not given to me, a human being, to create from 'nothing', in the way only God can create. I realised that everything that I created was conditioned by what was already in existence. I could not invent a new colour or line that had never existed anywhere before. An abstract picture is like a string of words, beautiful and sonorous in themselves, perhaps, but never expressing a complete thought ..."

"No one on this earth can avoid affliction; and although the afflictions which the Lord sends are not great men imagine them beyond their strength and are crushed by them. This is because they will not humble their souls and commit themselves to the will of God. But the Lord Himself guides with His grace those who are given over to God's will, and they bear all things with fortitude for the sake of God Whom they have so loved and with Whom they are glorified for ever. It is impossible to escape tribulation in this world but the man who is given over to the will of God bears tribulation easily, seeing it but putting his trust in the Lord, and so his tribulations pass."

"There are three things I cannot take in: nondogmatic faith, nonecclesiological Christianity and nonascetic Christianity. These three - the church, dogma, and asceticism - constitute one single life for me."

"If one rejects the Orthodox creed and the eastern ascetic experience of life in Christ, which has been acquired throughout the centuries, then Orthodox culture would be left with nothing but the Greek minor [key] and Russian tetraphony."

"Stand on the edge of the abyss and when you feel that it is beyond your strength, break off and have a cup of tea.""

"Self-love is a twisted love for one's self. This love is insane and fallen. He who is full of self-love, passionate for fleeting pleasure, for sinful indulgence, is an enemy of himself. He is a self-murderer. Thinking to love himself and pamper himself, he ends up hating and destroying himself eternally."

"Indulging sinful and vain desires always leads to obsession with them, and after the obsession comes slavery, which is death to everything spiritual. Those who allowed themselves to follow their desires and carnal mind became obsessed with them, enslaved by them, forgot God and eternity, and waster their earthly lives pointlessly, dying an eternal death."

"Earthly wealth does not belong to us, as those who have never thought about this erroneously believe. Otherwise, it always and forever would remain in our possession. But it changes hands constantly, thereby proving that it is given only for us to watch over temporarily."

"Wealth belongs to God; man is only the temporary caretaker. A faithful caretaker will follow exactly the wishes of the one who has entrusted the wealth to him. And we, temporarily ruling over the wealth given to us, must rule over it according to the will of God. Let us not use it as a means of indulging our desires and passions, as a resource for eternal perdition. Let us use it for the good of mankind, which lives in need and suffering."

"Let us not foolishly waste our abilities of soul and body; let us not bring them as a sacrifice to the vain and fading world."

"When you read the Gospels, do not seek enjoyment, do not search for exalted feelings, do not try to find brilliant thoughts. Seek instead to perfectly see holy Truth."

"Do not content yourself with unproductive reading of the Gospels; strive to fulfill its commandments, read it with deeds. This is the book of life, and one must read it with one's life."

"Consider how wise and careful you must be. Do not gamble with your eternal fate."

"Try to integrate the Gospel into your mind and heart so that your mind will in a manner of speaking, swim in it, live in it. Then your every action will truly become evangelical."

"Conversation and acquaintance with a saint will impart sanctity."

"Do you want to belong in heaven and to its society; do you want to be a sharer of its blessedness? From this moment, begin to spend your time with the saints. When you leave your mortal body, they will accept you as their own, as an acquaintance, as a friend."

"As someone who is in one mind and heart with the Holy Fathers, you will be saved."

"The books of the Holy Fathers, according to the words of one of their number, are like a mirror—the soul who looks at them often and with attention will be able to see its deficiencies."

"The truth of the scribes and Pharisees contented itself with studying the letter of the Law of God without any corresponding study of the life according to the Law, so instead they led a life contrary to God's Law. As a result of their superficial knowledge, those who limit themselves to studying the letter of the Law fall into pride and conceit."

"Do not waste time trying to determine who is right and who is wrong, you or your neighbor. Instead, try to accuse yourself and preserve peace with your neighbor through your humility."

"The only mind that is healthy is the one that wholly and completely follows the teaching of Christ."

"The Lord came to the earth to save sinners, and so he expects an inevitable admission of sinfulness from every person; judging one's neighbor is a rejection of this acknowledgement."

"Brothers! Let us study the all-powerful and life-giving commandments of our great God, Creator, and Redeemer. Let us learn them assiduously, by word and by life. They are read in the holy Gospels, but they are known only as much as they are done in actual fact."

"The fall has become so assimilated to the essence of all mankind that rejection of the fall has become tantamount to rejection of our very life."

"Despair is a mortal sin; it is the rejection of an active, living faith in Christ."

"All the saints assiduously avoided distraction. Constantly, or at the very least as often as possible, they concentrated their thoughts within themselves, paying attention to every movement of the mind and heart, directing these according to the commands of the Gospels."

"Those who desire to learn attentiveness must reject all empty activity in their lives."

"Our helmsman, the mind, sometimes loses his way and takes our whole life along with him down the wrong path."

"Our heart distracts us when it inclines to the fulfillment of its own fallen desires, when it leaves the path of God's will."

"The world pushes us off course because it serves vanity and death and tries to force everyone else to serve its fallen masters, sometimes with kind words, sometimes with outright persecution.."

"The light of Christ's teaching is heavy and intolerable for the sons of the world. They run from it into their dark, soundless pits—into distraction, into various earthly pastimes, into carnal pleasures. There, in their moral darkness, they live their earthly life with no spiritual, eternal goals."

"Even in Eden, the mind tried to acquire knowledge without wisdom and attentiveness, and the knowledge proved to be lethal!"

"The prince of this world tries to keep us in constant diversion, darkening us through the pleasures of the body!"

"Let us guard our senses, not allowing them to be the channel for sin to enter into the cell of the soul."

"Being offended at the sins of others is a serious spiritual disease."

"The spiritual harvest requires a heart that is harrowed by repentance, softened by compunction, and irrigated by tears."

"A desire fulfilled is a desire that will return with twice the demands."

"It is harder to fool the conscience than the mind.The conscience is capable of fighting long and hard against the mind deluded by its love of sin."

"Guard your conscience. Do not forget that you are the image and likeness of God, that you are obliged to present this image in purity and holiness to God himself.Woe to you if God will not recognize His image, will not find in it any similarity with Himself! He will utter the dreadful words: "I do not know you.""

"He who has felt spiritual love will only despise carnal love, seeing it for the unsightly parody of love that it is."

"If you think that you love God, but in your heart lives an unpleasant disposition toward even one person, you are grievously self-deluded."

"Do you want to learn to love God? Separate yourself from any word, deed, thought and feeling forbidden by the Gospels."

"In religion three things do not exist but these things preserve it: national language, national dress and national customs."