Christian Monks

"121. Happy is the man who thinks himself no better than dirt."

"120. Happy is the spirit that attains to complete unconsciousness of all sensible experience at the time of prayer."

"119. Happy is the spirit that becomes free of all matter and is stripped of all at the time of prayer."

"118. Happy is the spirit which, praying with distraction, goes on increasing its desire for God."

"117. Let me repeat this saying of mine that I once expressed on some other occasions: Happy is the spirit that attains to the perfect formlessness at the time of prayer."

"114. Do not by any means strive to fashion some image or visualize some form at the time of prayer."

"113. By true prayer a monk becomes another angel, for he ardently longs to see the face of the Father in heaven."

"101. Just as bread is nourishment for the body and virtue for the soul, so is spiritual prayer nourishment for the intelligence."

"86. Knowledge! The great possession of man. It is a fellow-worker with prayer, acting to awaken the power of thought to contemplate the divine knowledge."

"85. Psalm-singing is an image of wisdom which is many-sided; prayer is the prelude to immaterial and uniform knowledge."

"83. The singing of Psalms quiets the passions and calms the intemperance of the body. Prayer, on the other hand, prepares the spirit to put its own powers into operation."

"70. You will not be able to pray purely if you are all involved with material affairs and agitated with unremitting concerns. For prayer is the rejection of concepts."

"65. If you long to pray, then avoid all that is opposed to prayer. Then when God draws near, he has only to go along with you."

"60. If you are a theologian, you truly pray. If you truly pray, you are a theologian."

"52. The state of prayer can be aptly described as a habitual state of imperturbable calm. It snatches to the heights of intelligible reality the spirit which loves wisdom and which is truly spiritualized by the most intense love."

"37. First of all pray to be purified from your passions. Secondly, pray to be delivered from ignorance. Thirdly, pray to be freed from all temptation and abandonment."

"36. Do you long to pray? Renounce all things. You then will become heir to all."

"35. Prayer is an ascent of the spirit to God."

"6. Pray with tears and your request will find a hearing. Nothing so gratifies the Lord as supplication offered in the midst of tears."

"5. Pray first for the gift of tears so that by means of sorrow you may soften your native rudeness. Then having confessed your sins to the Lord you will obtain pardon for them."

"3. Prayer is a continual intercourse of the spirit with God. What state of soul then is required that the spirit might thus strain after its Master without wavering, living constantly with him without intermediary?"

"81. Agape is the progeny of apatheia. Apatheia is the very flower of ascesis. Ascesis consists in keeping the commandments. The custodian of those commandments is the fear of God which is in turn the offspring of true faith. Now faith is an interior an interior good, one which is to be found even in those who do not yet believe in God."

"64. The proof of apatheia is had when the spirit begins to see its own light, when it remains in a state of tranquility in the presence of the images it has during sleep and when it maintains its calm as it beholds the affairs of life."

"52. To separate the body from the soul is the privilege of only of the One who has joined them together. But to separate the soul from the body lies as well in the power of the man who pursues virtue. For our Fathers gave to the meditation of death and to the flight from the body a spiritual name: anachoresis [withdrawal]."

"The demon of avarice, it seems to me, is extraordinarily complex and is baffling in his deceits. Often, when frustrated by the strictness of our renunciation, he immediately pretends to be a steward and a lover of the poor; he urges us to prepare a welcome for strangers who have not yet arrived or to send provisions for absent brethren. He makes us mentally visit prisons in the city and ransom those on sale as slaves. He suggests that we should attach ourselves to wealthy women, and advises us to be obsequious to others who have a full purse. And so, after deceiving the soul, little by little he engulfs it in avaricious thoughts and then hands it over to the demon of self-esteem."

"In the whole range of evil thoughts, none is richer in resources than self-esteem."

"Just as it is possible to think of water both while thirsty and while not thirsty, so it is possible to think of gold with greed and without greed. The same applies to other things."

"Do you desire, then, to embrace this life of solitude, and to seek out the blessings of stillness? If so, abandon the cares of the world, and the principalities and powers that lie behind them: free yourself from attachment to material things, from domination by passions and desires, so that as a stranger to all this you may attain true stillness."

"Do not desire wealth for giving to the poor."

"Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience."

"Every age and degree of understanding should have its proper measure of discipline. With regard to boys and adolescents, therefore, or those who cannot understand the seriousness of the penalty of excommunication, whenever such as these are delinquent let them be subjected to severe fasts or brought to terms by harsh beatings, that they may be cured."

"There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence."

"Renounce yourself in order to follow Christ (Matt 16:24; Luke 9:23); discipline your body (1 Cor 9:27); do not pamper yourself, but love fasting. You must relieve the lot of the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick (Matt 25:36), and bury the dead. Go to help the troubled and console the sorrowing. Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else."

"Nullus diues nisi nummularius, nullus clericus nisi causidicus, nullus presbiter nisi, ut uerbo parum Latino utar, firmarius."

"That fatal day for England, the sad destruction of our dear country [dulcis patrie]."

"We have experienced the truth of this prophecy, for England has become the habitation of outsiders and the dominion of foreigners. Today, no Englishman is earl, bishop, or abbott, and newcomers gnaw away at the riches and very innards of England; nor is there any hope for an end of this misery."

"This Arthur is the hero of many wild tales among the Britons even in our own day, but assuredly deserves to be the object of reliable history rather than of false and dreaming fable."

"I must confess that I have never read W. Malmsb. de Pont. His Kings are enough to make me thoroughly despise him as a lying affected French scoundrel."

"For the people of God there is no such thing as distance, even if they be thousands of miles apart. However far away our fellow human beings may be, we must stand by them."

"What is the spiritual battle? Well, the soul is a garden divided into two parts. On one half are planted thorny bushes, and on the other half flowers. We also have a water pump with two taps and two channels. The one guides the water to the thorns and the other to the flowers. I always have the choice to open one or the other tap. I leave the thorns without water and they dry up, I water the flowers and they blossom."

"From the moment I became a monk I believed that death does not exist. That’s how I felt and how I always feel – that I am eternal and immortal. How magnificent!"

"Pray without forming images in your mind. Don’t try to imagine Christ. The Fathers emphasized the need for prayer to be free of images. With an image, the focus of prayer is easily lost, because one image can easily be displaced by another. And the evil one may intrude images and we lose the grace."

"Prayer should be interior, prayed with the mind and not with the lips, so as not to cause distraction with the mind wandering here and there. Let us bring Christ into our mind in an unforced manner by repeating very gently, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’ Don’t think anything except the words, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’. Nothing else. Nothing at all."

"God is everywhere present and fills all things. I try to take wings to infinity and fly amidst the stars. My mind is lost in the magnificence of Gods omnipotence as I contemplate the distances of millions of light years. I feel this omnipotent God before me and I open my arms and I open my soul to be united with Him, to participate in the Godhead ..."

"In prayer what is important is not the duration but the intensity. Pray albeit for five minutes, but abandoning yourself to God with love and longing. One person may pray all night long and another person only for five minutes and yet the five-minute prayer may be superior. This is a mysterious matter, of course, but that’s the way it is."

"Prayer is beneficial for everything, even for the simplest of things. For example, if you are suffering from insomnia, don’t think about sleep. Get up and leave your bedroom and then come back in and lie down on your bed as if for the first time, without thinking about whether you will sleep or not. Then concentrate your mind, recite the doxology and then repeat the prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ...’, three times over and that way you will fall asleep."

"Make the most of beautiful moments. Beautiful moments predispose the soul to prayer; they make it refined, noble and poetic. Wake up in the morning and see the sun rising from out of the sea as a Icing robed in regal purple. When a beautiful landscape, a picturesque chapel, or something beautiful inspires you, don’t leave things at that, but go beyond this to give glory for all beautiful things so that you experience Him who alone is ‘Comely in beauty’. All things are holy – the sea, swimming and eating. Take delight in them all. All things enrich us, all lead us to the great Love, all lead us to Christ."

"Observe all the things made by man – houses, buildings large or small, towns, villages, peoples and their civilizations. Ask questions to enrich your knowledge about each and everything; don’t be indifferent. This helps you meditate more deeply on the wonders of God. All things become opportunities for us to be joined more closely with everything and everyone. They become occasions for thanksgiving and prayer to the Lord of All. Live in the midst of everything, nature and the universe. Nature is the secret Gospel. But when one does not possess inner grace, nature is of no benefit. Nature awakens us, but it cannot bring us into Paradise."

"Lord, grant me the strength to change the things I can, the serenity to deal with the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference."

"He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist."