Fasting
In the final analysis he who does not fast does not believe in God. – A Monk of the Orthodox Church
Philosophy
…philosophy is a state of moral integrity combined with a doctrine of true knowledge concerning reality. Both Jews and Greeks fell short of this, for they rejected the Wisdom that is from heaven and tried to philosophize without Christ, who alone has revealed the true philosophy in both His life and His teaching. For by the purity of His life He was the first to establish the way of true philosophy. He always held His soul above the passions of the body, and in the end, when His death was required by His design for man’s salvation, He laid down even His soul. In this He taught us that the true philosopher must renounce all life’s pleasures, mastering pains and passions, and paying scant attention to the body: he must not overvalue even his soul, but must readily lay it down when holiness demands. — St. Neilos the Ascetic
Unworthy
All shall be saved and yet I alone shall be condemned. (Monastic saying.)
I am one of the goats, but as for the sheep, God alone knows who they are. — Sayings of Desert Fathers
Who crucified Christ? I did. — a catechism
When you have done all that is commanded you, say: “We are useless servants: we have only done what was our duty” — Our Lord
For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. — St. James the Apostle
I am guilty of all of which I may be accused, except one thing alone. I have not ceased to say that Holy Orthodoxy is the one Faith. (An Orthodox father.)
Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come into my roof, but speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed. – the Gregorian Rite
Keep your mind in Hell and despair not. — Fr. Silouan of Mount Athos
Death to the World
Accept all cultures — Embrace none. – Death to the World #2
The last true rebellion is death to the world. To be crucified to the world and the world to us. – Death to the World #1
Why did we stand at the door and knock, but you did not answer? Because you knocked at the door of the Lord with doubt, but at the door of the world with faith. – St. Nikolai (Velimirovic), Prayers by the Lake
A man who is angry, even if he were to raise the dead, is not acceptable to God. – St. Agathon
From Popular Music
If God had a face what would it look like? And would you want to see If seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets? — Joan Osborne
Forgive me all my blindnesses my weakness and unkindnesses as yet unbending still. Struggling so hard to see my fist against eternity and will you break my will? – Suzanne Vega
A pilgrim’s life is always confessing between the lines. — Justin Matthews
From Protestantism
I went into church and sat on the velvet pew. I watched as the sun came shining through the stained-glass windows. The minister, dressed in a velvet robe, opened the golden gilded Bible, marked it with a silk bookmark and said, “If any man will be my disciple, said Jesus, let him deny himself, take up his cross, sell what he has, give it to the poor, and follow me.” And I looked around and nobody was laughing. — Attributed to Soren Kierkegaard
We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in thy manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.
But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy;
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore ever dwell in him, and he in us.
— Anglican Prayer of Humble Access
Reading the Fathers
Many pious Christians are not scholars. This is a fact that one hardly need argue. However, this does not mean that the rich witness of the great Fathers of the Christian Church should be closed off to them, simply because these Fathers wrote of lofty theological ideas and did so in philosophical and theological terminology that the average reader cannot understand. Indeed, there is in every Father of the Church an element of that forceful Christian spirit that speaks equally to the learned and the unlearned, that shines forth in the most exalted language and in the most humble expressions, and that touches – if it is correctly received – both the heart and the mind, enlightening the mind through the heart, in the simple; opening up the heart through the mind, in the learned; and in some, who are especially gifted by God, sometimes impressing itself on the mind and the heart in a single moment. It is this spirit which lingers in the Fathers and, beyond their personal styles, their individual genius, and the topics of their particular discourses or apologies, their greatest importance to the Christian seeker is simply as channels for the expression of this Spirit. — Archimandrite Chrysostomos
The Fasts
He who does not fast is not Orthodox, whatever else he may pretend. — St. Seraphim of Sarov
The Church
He who has not the church for his mother, has not God for his Father. — St. Cyprian of Carthage
Outside the Church there is no salvation. — St. Cyprian of Carthage
Wherefore it is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church,—those who, as I have shown, possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the certain gift of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. But to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession, and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or again as hypocrites, acting thus for the sake of lucre and vainglory. For all these have fallen from the truth. — St. Irenaeus of Lyons
Other Quotes From the Fathers on the Visible, Unified Church
Theosis / Deification / Divinization
God became man that man might become God. — St. Athanasius the Great
He became what we are by nature, that we might become what He is by grace. — St. Athanasius the Great
If the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods. — St. Irenaeus of Lyons
Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. — St Maximus the Confessor
St Maximos the Confessor On Deification
The Bishop
Where the Bishop is, there is the Church. — St. Cyprian of Carthage
Let all reverence the deacons as an appointment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father, and the presbyters as the Sanhedrin of God, and assembly of the apostles. Apart from these, there is no Church. — St. Ignatius of Antioch
Be subject to the bishop as to the Lord, for “he watches for your souls, as one that shall give account to God.”
As therefore the Lord does nothing without the Father, for says He, “I can of mine own self do nothing,” so do you, neither presbyter, nor deacon, nor layman, do anything without the bishop. Nor let anything appear commendable to you which is destitute of his approval. For every such thing is sinful, and opposed to God. Come together into the same place for prayer. Let there be one common supplication, one mind, one hope, with faith unblameable in Christ Jesus, than which nothing is more excellent. Do you all, as one man, run together into the temple of God, as unto one altar, to one Jesus Christ, the High Priest of the unbegotten God.
Wherefore I write boldly to your love, which is worthy of God, and exhort you to have but one faith, and one preaching, and one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ; and His blood which was shed for us is one; one loaf also is broken to all [the communicants], and one cup is distributed among them all: there is but one altar for the whole Church, and one bishop, with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants. Since, also, there is but one unbegotten Being, God, even the Father; and one only-begotten Son, God, the Word and man; and one Comforter, the Spirit of truth; and also one preaching, and one faith, and one baptism; and one Church which the holy apostles established from one end of the earth to the other by the blood of Christ, and by their own sweat and toil; it behooves you also, therefore, as “a peculiar people, and a holy nation,” to perform all things with harmony in Christ.
See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid… It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize, or to offer, or to present sacrifice, or to celebrate a love-feast. But that which seems good to him, is also well-pleasing to God, that everything you do may be secure and valid.
And say I, Honor God indeed, as the Author and Lord of all things, but the bishop as the high-priest, who bears the image of God—of God. inasmuch as he is a ruler, and of Christ, in his capacity of a priest. After Him, we must also honor the king. For there is no one superior to God, or even like to Him, among all the beings that exist. Nor is there any one in the Church greater than the bishop, who ministers as a priest to God for the salvation of the whole world. Nor, again, is there any one among rulers to be compared with the king, who secures peace and good order to those over whom he rules. He who honors the bishop shall be honored by God, even as he that dishonors him shall be punished by God. For if he that rises up against kings is justly held worthy of punishment, inasmuch as he dissolves public order, of how much sorer punishment, do you suppose, shall he be thought worthy, who presumes to do anything without the bishop, thus both destroying the[Church’s] unity, and throwing its order into confusion? For the priesthood is the very highest point of all good things among men, against which whosoever is mad enough to strive, dishonors not man, but God, and Christ Jesus, the First-born, and the only High Priest, by nature, of the Father. Let all things therefore be done by you with good order in Christ. Let the laity be subject to the deacons; the deacons to the presbyters; the presbyters to the bishop; the bishop to Christ, even as He is to the Father.
The Ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch which is also the Ecclesiology of the Church
Miscellaneous
He is the Logos that recapitulates all Logoi. – BP