Saints

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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 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.."

"Divine way is extremely difficult to tread, but you should not despair. If you have courage, true aspiration, and ardency of love, then come to this path, otherwise be silent."

"O poor-fellow! Do you know what is renunciation and what is piety? It is that you don't go to the places of the king, nor roam about in quest of livelihood nor base yourself for sake of worldly wealth, nor sit in the company of the world lings."

"You are captive of your lower-self (ego); you nullify it and break the snare so that you arrive at your real nest."

"When an irrational animal like camel dances at the tune of bell, why don't you, being the best of creation, attain absorption and ecstasy in the love of God, or go into rapture by listening the name of the Beloved."

"O the people of faith, when you open inner eyes, you will see beauty of the Beloved, radiant everywhere. In every mirror you see Him. In every color of His manifestation you will notice fire of His love."

"To remain satisfied and grateful for the pleasure of the Beloved, at the cost of religion and heart is necessarily passionate love, which in Sufi terminology is called faithfulness."

"The Beloved created your being from His own love so that He could see His own beauty in the mirror of your heart and make you privy of His mysteries."

"When you recognize the Beauty, you will also recognize the Beloved and fall in love with Him."

"The beauty of worldly allurements makes it lovers so much oblivious that they forget the passage of temporal as well as celestial worlds. They fail to understand the challenge before them."

"Become lover. Think both the worlds beauty of the Beloved and think own self the beauty of the Beloved."

"We are enraptured lover and insane, we searched the Beloved everywhere. When I smell the fragrance of His divinity, I get intoxicated in His lane."

"Beloved has been created in your image and sent to you in order to put you on the right path."

"Renunciation of the World is the most essential mark of the spiritual journey to God."

"When Divine providence graces you, and you are endowed with passion of love and alienated from your ego, at that time Divine love enters your inmost being and He shows His Beauty to you."

"God knows best who we are and why we were created and therefore, we should concern ourselves only with the fear of God, love of God and obedience to God's commands."

"When His (God) beauty has permeated in each and every iota of the world, why should I sit like an ascetic (hermit) in a corner!"

"Search your heart within where lies the key to all Divine mysteries, and where God has placed treasures of Divine, mystical and spiritual powers."

"God loves only those who are not concerned with anything else."

"Recollection of God leades to the conversion of human qualities into the Divine Attributes."

"Though Divine knowledge transcends all thoughts and symbols, yet the mystic's sincere meditation discovers the Ultimare Truth."

"The worshipper, when completely annihilates himself in His adoration, realize the real state of proximity to Him. God Himself removes the barrier between such an inspired devotee and Himself and reveals His Godhead."

"Devotion to God and service to fellow beings is the pivot of life."

"God says to His favorites; "Night and day are two veils spread out all that I have created but because I have chosen thee for Myself, I have lifted the two veils that thou might see Me and thou has seen Me, therefore, stand in thy place before Me and continue in the vision of Me, for otherwise thou will be snatched away by everything that happens to districts thee. So stand firm and attribute to Me alone all which I have manifested to thee."

"Thrones and crowns of worldly kings carry worth less than shows of donkey for us."

"By authority of these present Letters, We order that each and every Jew of both sexes in Our Temporal Dominions, and in all the cities, lands, places and baronies subject to them, shall depart completely out of the confines thereof within the space of three months after the present Letters shall have been made public. They shall be despoiled of all their goods, and be prosecuted according to the due process of law. They shall become bondsmen of the Roman Church, and shall be subjected to perpetual servitude. And the said Church shall claim the same right over them as other dominions over their slaves and bondsmen."

"Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven."

"‘Wicked kings began to rule, and they exploited their subjects like thieves. Themselves worse than Shudras they converted people of all castes. Such being the condition ( sinful and sacrilegious) Brahmans gave up studying the scriptures; they became drunkards, served the ignominious, and fed themselves like dogs...on the leavings from the Turks’ table.’"

"Christ takes on the appearance of each of the poor and assimilates Himself to all of them so that no one who believes in Him will be arrogant towards his fellow being. On the contrary, he will look on his fellow being and his neighbor as his God, regarding himself as least of all in comparison just as much with his neighbor as with his Creator, honoring his neighbor as if he were his Creator, and exhausting his all in his service, just as Christ our God poured out His blood for our salvation."

"One day, as he stood repeating more in his intellect than with his mouth the words, 'God, have mercy upon me, a sinner' (Luke 18:13), suddenly a profuse flood of divine light appeared above him and filled the whole room. As this happened the young man lost his bearings, forgetting whether he was in a house or under a roof; for he saw nothing but light around him and did not even know that he stood upon the earth. He had no fear of falling, or awareness of the world, nor did any of those things that beset men and bodily beings enter his mind. Instead he was wholly united to non-material light, so much so that it seemed to him that he himself had been transformed into light. Oblivious of all else, he was filled with tears and with inexpressible joy and gladness. Then his intellect ascended to heaven and beheld another light, more lucid than the first. Miraculously there appeared to him, standing close to that light, the holy, angelic elder of whom we have spoken and who had given him the short rule and the book."

"Arrogance cannot bear to see itself scorned and humility held in honor."

"Then sit down in a quiet cell, in a corner by yourself, and do what I tell you. Close the door, and withdraw your intellect from everything worthless and transient. Rest your beard on your chest, and focus your physical gaze, together with the whole of your intellect, upon the centre of your belly or your navel. Restrain the drawing-in of breath through your nostrils, so as not to breathe easily, and search inside yourself with your intellect so as to find the place of the heart, where all the powers of the soul reside. To start with you will find there darkness and an impenetrable density. Later, when you persist and practise this task day and night, you will find, as though miraculously, an unceasing joy. For as soon as the intellect attains the place of the heart, at once it sees things of which it previously knew nothing. It sees the open space within the heart and it beholds itself entirely luminous and full of discrimination."

"Where comes a cow, there follows a woman; and where comes a woman follows trouble."

"Thou shalt go no further, nor touch the man; go back with all speed."

"First I will confess very often and I will receive Communion whenever the confessor gives me permission. Second: I wish to sanctify feastdays. Third: my friends will be Jesus and Mary. Fourth: death but not sins."

"Like Saint Dominic Savio, be missionaries of good example, good words, good action at home, with neighbours and colleagues at work. At every age we can and we must bear witness to Christ! Commitment to bear witness is permanent and daily."

"God has filled our hearts with desires so vast and so magnificent that nothing in creation is capable of satisfying them. Thus it is that in the hope of finding some pleasure, we attach ourselves to created objects and that we have no sooner possessed and sampled that which we have so ardently desired than we turn to something else, hoping to find what we wanted. We are, then, through our own experience, constrained to admit that it is but useless for us to want to derive our happiness here below from transient things. If we hope to have any consolation in this world, it will only be by despising the things which are passing and which have no lasting value and in striving towards the noble and happy end for which God has created us. Do you want to be happy, my friends? Fix your eyes on Heaven; it is there that your hearts will find that which will satisfy them completely."

"They adopted al-Matiti and al-Zawawi ***** as well as Ibn Sahl for every Zawi"