What Carries Over

“Don’t be distressed if you have inherited faults, and don’t boast if you have inherited virtues, because God will examine the efforts people have made on their old selves.” – Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain

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Covetousness stands with the Goats

If a man does not keep himself from covetousness, he shall be defiled by idolatry, and shall be judged as one of the heathen. — The Epistle Of Polycarp To The Philippians

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It has destroyed me. It has upheld me.

No Christian believing rightly in God should ever be off his guard. He should always be on the look-out for temptation, so that when it comes he will not be surprised or disturbed, but will gladly endure the toil and affliction it causes, and so will understand what he is saying when he chants with [...]

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Contemplating One’s Own Navel

Batiushka said regarding condemnation and criticism of other’s faults and sins: “You need to pay such close attention to your own internal life, that you not focus on what is happening around you. Then you will not condemn.” — Counsels of the Venerable Elder St. Amvrossy of Optina
Those who live without paying attention to themselves [...]

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The One Ring that Rules them All

The desire for possessions is dangerous and terrible, knowing no satiety; it drives the soul which it controls to the heights of evil. Therefore, let us drive it away vigorously from the beginning. For once it has become master it cannot be overcome. — St. Isidore of Pelusium

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Self Esteem is a Passion

The passion of self-esteem is a three-pronged barb heated and forged by the demons out of vanity, presumption and arrogance. Yet those who dwell under the protection of the God of heaven (cf. Ps. 91.1) detect it easily and shatter its prongs, for through their humility they rise above such vices and find repose in [...]

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Lent, Poverty, and Alms

Money! Money! Power! Honor! These are the temptations which, unfortunately, many people are unable to resist.
This is the source of all the disputes, disagreements and divisions among Christians.
This is the root of people’s forgetting the “one thing needed” which is proposed to us by the true Christian faith and which consists of prayer, acts of [...]

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The Wall

Let us too imitate these men [Prop. David, Apos. Paul & Silas], building a wall around our life with the habit of prayer and letting nothing ever prove an obstacle to us. There is, in fact, nothing that can be an obstacle to us provided we are on the alert. Listen, after [...]

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A List of the Passions

by St. Peter of Damaskos

The passions are:
harshness, trickery, malice, perversity, mindlessness, licentiousness, enticement, dullness, lack of understanding, idleness, sluggishness, stupidity, flattery, silliness, idiocy, madness, derangement, coarseness, rashness, cowardice, lethargy, dearth of good actions, moral errors, greed, over-frugality, ignorance, folly, spurious knowledge, forgetfulness, lack of discrimination, obduracy, injustice, evil intention, [...]

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Waging war against the passions

by St. Nikodemus the Hagiorite and St. Theophan the Recluse
If you want to gain a speedy and easy victory over your enemies, brother, you must wage ceaseless and courageous war against all passion, especially and preeminently against self-love, or a foolish attachment to yourself, manifested in self-indulgence and self-pity. For it [...]

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