Words from the Saints -- August 6, 2020

"Pray simply. Do not expect to find in your heart any remarkable gift of prayer. Consider yourself unworthy of it. Then you will find peace. Use the empty cold dryness of your prayer as food for your humility."--St. Macarius of Optina

"If someone shuts a snake and a scorpion up in a bottle, in time, they will be completely destroyed. So it is with evil thoughts: they are suggested by the demons; they disappear through patience." --St. Poemen

"Discouragement does not allow the one who falls to get back up, and laziness throws down the one who is upright. The latter deprives us constantly of the goods that we gain; it does not allow us to escape from the evils that are to come. Laziness throws us down even from heaven, while discouragement hurls us down even to the very abyss of wickedness. Indeed, we can quickly return from there if we do not become discouraged." --St. John Chrysostom

"Of course, it would be easier to get to paradise with a full stomach, all snuggled up in a soft feather-bed, but what is required is to carry one’s cross along the way, for the kingdom of God is not attained by enduring one or two troubles, but many!" --St. Anthony of Optina

"Life without Christ is not life. That's just the way it is... If you don't see Christ in everything you do, you are without Christ." --St. Porphyrios the Kapsokalyvite

"It is impossible for those who have not first lived in obedience to obtain humility; for everyone who has learned an art on his own, fancies himself." --St. John of the Ladder