Even death is afraid to approach the one who fears God, and then only comes to him when told to separate his soul from his body.
Saint Ephraim the Syrian
Condemning Others
2 November 2025
We cannot be too gentle, too kind. Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other. Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of one who gives and kindles joy in the heart of one who receives. All condemnation is from the devil. Never condemn each other, not even those whom you catch committing an evil deed. We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves. When we gaze at our own failings, we see such a morass of filth that nothing in another can equal it. That is why we turn away, and make much of the faults of others. Keep away from the spilling of speech. Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace. Keep silent, refrain from judgement. This will raise you above the deadly arrows of slander, insult, outrage, and will shield your glowing hearts against the evil that creeps around.
St. Seraphim of Sarov
Spiritual Warfare
1 November 2025
Life is spiritual warfare. If you're not fighting, you're losing.
St. Kosmas the Aetolian
Baptism
27 October 2025
Without Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper no one can be a Christian. As the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer are gifts given by God, so also Holy Baptism. What it benefits, gives, and works is all summed up in the fact that it saves. To be saved, we know, is nothing else than to be delivered from sin, death, and the devil, and to enter the kingdom of Christ and live with Him forever. Where God’s Name is, there must also be life and salvation. “Baptism is not a work which we do, but a treasure which God gives and faith grasps, just as the Lord Christ upon the cross is not a work but a treasure, comprehended and offered to us in the Word and received by faith. […] Therefore every Christian has in baptism enough to learn and to exercise all his life long. There he has always enough to keep him going, firmly believing what it promises and brings—victory over death and the devil, forgiveness of sins, God’s grace, all of Christ and the Holy Spirit and His gifts. […] We have, therefore, no greater jewel in body and soul, for by it we are made holy and are saved. There is no other life, never a work on earth that can obtain this.” (Large Catechism IV: 37, 41, 46) A Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, begun at a particular point in time and to be exercised always.
Norman Nagel
Prayer
15 October 2025
Lord! Thou knowest all things. Do with me as Thou willest!
St. Theophan the Recluse
On Holy Scripture
13 October 2025
The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books, but that we should engrave them upon our hearts.
John Chrysostom
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