Humility is Speed

The more we humble ourselves in painful repentance, the more rapidly our prayer reaches God. When, though, we lose humility, no ascetic striving will help us. The action in us of pride, criticism of our brethren, self-exalting and hostility towards our neighbor, thrusts us away from the Lord. – unknown

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scarcely escaping the Judgment

Abba Orsisius said, “If an unbaked brick is put in the foundations near the river, it does not last for a single day, but baked, it lasts like stone.
the man with a carnal disposition of soul, who has not been in the fire through fear of God like Joseph, utterly disintegrates when he accepts a [...]

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Humility

“I prefer a sinful person, who knows his faults and is humbled, over a self-complacent person of virtue.” – Abba Sarmatias

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Knowledge proceeds, properly, to Apophasis

All I know is that I don’t know anything – Elder Gabriel of Kazaa

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To be Dead to the World

A desert father was teaching his disciple about humility. He told the young man to spend the day in the cemetery and to yell insults at the graves. The young monk then spent the day hurling rebukes and insults at the dead. The next day, the abba told him to spend the day praising the [...]

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Because I have walked in great pride

“And he answered me, saying, The most High has made this world for many, but the world to come for few. . . . For as the husbandman sows much seed upon the ground, and plants many trees, and yet the thing that is sown good in his season does not come up, nor does [...]

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Our Life is Astonishment and Fear

“How should thy vessel then be able to comprehend the way of the Highest and, the world being now outwardly corrupted, to understand the corruption that is evident in my sight? . . . And we pass away out of the world as grasshoppers, and our life is astonishment and fear, and we are not [...]

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Intentional Inferiority Complex

“The way of humility is this: self-control, prayer, and thinking yourself inferior to all creatures.” – Abba Tithoes

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Being a Goat

“I am one of the goats, but as for the sheep, God alone knows who they are.”  — Sayings of the Desert Fathers

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Hope vs. Concern

“He who has once placed his hope in God no longer is concerned over himself.” · St. Paisius Velichkovsky

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