Leo and Suz > Recent Status Updates

"The Lord Himself has fashioned ... the cosmos [for] our growing closer to Him [and] to be our support in prayer. [...] Great indeed is the reward of those who will allow the crucifixion of their heart in order to welcome within it the crucified Son of God. Their reward is great, not because of any power or merit, but because the Christian's power is made perfect in weakness, and that power is God Himself."

"To unite the mind and heart in prayer as [St. Seraphim of Sarov] instructs, a discipline of interior quietude is required [...] To foster the heart in prayer and seek this guardianship of the interior life, one must first strive to calm the thoughts [...] It is impossible for a mind to be without thoughts, without words or images, unit it has learned to control and restrain its activity."

Prayer is the call of God to the heart, and the response of the heart to God. [...] If we wish to pray, then, let us begin by combating anger, defeating lust, and destroying pride. [...] Fall upon prayer as your only aid and help in this life [for] prayer is the sacrament of the heart [and] transforms the receptive heart into the vessel and throne of God."

"The beginnings of prayer reside in the desire of the heart to know God [...] for prayer is the highest, and also the truest, form of human existence. [...] Prayer may require our work, our effort, yet it is fundamentally a gift of God. [...] and so our task is to foster growth in prayer, that we may enter more fully into the promises of God."

"Evil is not a substance or independent reality: it is the willful misuse and distortion of God's sacred creation [...] As the passions are perversions of natural impulses, particularly grounded in self-love and the disfigured appetite that seeks sensual pleasure, it is understandable that they have a distinct root... that of arrogance, of pride [...] Obedience is the virtue of life in which self-will is sacrificed."

"[O]ur daily task is great: to look inward, to the depth of the heart, to discover there the chains that bind us deep to the bottommost parts of the sea, and by the grace of Christ to struggle against them. [...] Christianity is a life rooted in Christ's own. Its charge is not to live for self but to live for Christ; and its goal its not satisfaction but transformation."