Prayer

2 February 2026

 

Whether you are in church, or in your house, or in the country;

whether you are guarding sheep, or constructing buildings..., do not stop praying. When you are able, bend your knees, when you cannot, make intercession in your mind, 'at evening and at morning and at midday’. If prayer precedes your work and if, when you rise from your bed, your first movements are accompanied by prayer, sin can find no entrance to attack your soul.

 

        St Ephraim the Syrian

On Temptations

29 January 2026

 

Satan always tempts the pure; the rest are already his.

 

        Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

On Holiness

28 January 2026

 

Holiness consists simply in doing God's will, and being just what God wants us to be.

 

       Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Be a Light

24 January 2026

 

Be a lamp in brightness, and make the works of darkness cease, so that whenever your doctrine shines, no one may dare to heed the desires of darkness.

 

        Ephrem the Syrian

By Compunction

23 January 2026

 

When your soul is pricked by compunction and gradually changed, it becomes a fountain flowing with rivers of tears and compunction. ... If any one of you ever happens to communicate with tears, whether you weep before the Liturgy or in the course of the divine Liturgy, or at the very time that you receive the divine Gifts, and does not desire to do this for the rest of his days and nights, it will avail him nothing to have wept merely once. It is not this alone that at once purifies us and makes us worthy; it is daily compunction that does not cease until death.

 

        Symeon the New Theologian

Loving God

22 January 2026

 

We truly love God and keep His commandments if we restrain ourselves from our pleasures. For he who still abandons himself to unlawful desires certainly does not love God, since he contradicts Him in his own intentions. . . Therefore, he loves God truly, whose mind is not conquered by consent to evil delight. For the more one takes pleasure in lower things, the more he is separated from heavenly love.

 

        St. Gregory the Great

Accuse Ourselves

17 January 2026

 

The beauty of woman is the greatest snare. Or rather, not the beauty of woman, but unchastened gazing! For we should not accuse the objects, but ourselves, and our own carelessness. Nor should we say, Let there be no women, but Let there be no adulteries. We should not say, Let there be no beauty, but Let there be no fornication. We should not say, Let there be no belly, but let there be no gluttony; for the belly makes not the gluttony, but our negligence. We should not say, that it is because of eating and drinking that all these evils exist; for it is not because of this, but because of our carelessness and insatiableness. Thus the devil neither ate nor drank, and yet he fell! Paul ate and drank, and ascended up to heaven!

 

        St. John Chrysostom