“God requires these three things, which were bestowed in Holy Baptism, from every man: correct belief in soul. Truth on his tongue, and moderation in his body.”  This saying of an ancient father of the desert suggests that we are not saved on our own terms, but instead judged by God based on his requirements. This is why the faithful have been encouraged to:

“My soul thirsts for God, the living God; when can I go meet with God.”  These words of Psalm 42, attributed to the Prophet and King David Psalm, although brief, communicate a longing for God that ought to be the desire and longing of each and every Christian soul. 

One of the differences between the eloquent philosophy of the Greeks and the faith of Christians is that the Greeks’ philosophy can be clearly expressed in words and understood through reading.  But the Christian faith cannot be fully grasped in this way.  For the learning of the Faith, the example of its teacher, Jesus, is indispensible, and both reading and practice of what is read are necessary.  The truths of Christian faith are better understood by practice. 

A young abbot was counseled in this way by a holy man.  Today many people wishing for an excuse not to do what God asks of them find fault with the teaching of the Holy Church and reject correct Christian belief.  Instead, they choose to believe what they wish.  This is akin to a man not wishing to believe that he will die, simply because the notion does not comfort him.  Not only will he fail to prepare for death, as one ought to do, but he will inevitably find himself in the snare of death.  Correct belief is not based on what we wish were true, but on truth itself. 

Saint Anthony, once exclaimed, “Now I no longer fear God, I love him, for love casts out fear.”  “Love” according to Bishop Nikolai of blessed memory, “…is joy, strength, peace and fortitude, and it anoints the human heart with these qualities.  The love of God, like a fragrant oil, is shed up on our hearts in no other way than by the Holy Spirit.”  If we desire to transition from the fear of God to the love of God as did the great ascetic father and this blessed bishop of the Church, we must contemplate as did Saint John of Kronstadt:  “How can we love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and all our strength, and all our thoughts?”  He concludes:

One day, Motovilov was walking in a field with the Elder, Saint Seraphim, near the Sarov Monastery.  The Elder sat him down and said,

The Lord has revealed to me that in your childhood you had a great desire to know the aim of our Christian life, and that you continually asked many great spiritual persons about it but no one has given you a precise answer.  They said to you, ‘Go to church, pray to God, do the commandments of God, do good-that is the aim of the Christian life.’  Some were even indignant with you for being occupied with curiosity displeasing to God and said to you:  ‘Do not seek things which are beyond you.’  But they did not speak as they should.  And now poor Seraphim will explain to you in what this aim really consists. 

this article is reprinted from the March 2010 edition of the Orthodox Observer

In the ninth century before Christ lived the most holy and pious Elias of Thisbe or Thesbe, a town of Gilead, beyond the Jordan. We know from Scripture that he was of priestly lineage, a man of a solitary and ascetical character, clothed in a mantle of sheepskin, and girded about his loins with a leathern belt. His zeal for the glory of God was compared to fire, and his speech for teaching and rebuke was likened unto a burning lamp. From this too he received the name Zealot. Therefore, set aflame with such zeal, he:
- Reproved the impiety and lawlessness of Ahab and his wife Jezebel.

Father Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory wrote of Pascha:

For Easter is not the remembrance of an event in the past.  It is the real encounter in happiness and joy, with him whom our hearts long ago knew and encountered as the life and light of all light.  Easter night testifies that Christ is alive and with us, and that we are alive with him.  The entire celebration is an invitation to look at the world and life, and to behold the dawning of the mystical day of the Kingdom of light.  “Today the scent of Spring begins,” sings the church, “and the new creation exults…” It exults in faith, in love and in

In the eighteenth century, Saint Kosmas Aitolos exclaimed: “As work according to God is called virtue, so unexpected affliction is called a test.”  The Great and Holy Week of the Church beckons us to confront our trials and afflictions by “look[ing] at the Crucified One” in the words of the elder Epiphanios of the Holy Hermitage of the Graceful Mother of God in Trizina.