Take care of your body as if you were going to live forever; and take care of your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow.
Saint Augustine
The Body and Blood of Christ
25 August 2025
But it is not only the martyrs who share in his passion by their glorious courage! The same is true, by faith, of all who are born again in Baptism. That is why we are to celebrate the Lord’s paschal sacrifice with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The leaven of our former malice is thrown out, and a new creature is filled and inebriated with the Lord himself. For the effect of our sharing in the body and blood of Christ is to change us into what we received. As we have died with him, and have been buried and raised to life with him, so we bear him within us, both in body and in spirit, in everything we do.
St. Leo the Great
Cheerful Giving
25 August 2025
If you give something to one in need, let the cheerfulness of your face precede your gift, and comfort his sorrow with kind words. When you do this, by your gift the gladness of his mind surpasses even the needs of his body.
Saint Isaac of Syria
Spiritual Life
24 August 2025
Spiritual life does not mean being in the clouds while saying the Jesus Prayer or going through the various motions. It means discovering the laws of this spiritual life as they apply to one’s own position, one’s situation. This comes over the years by attentive reading of the Holy Fathers with a notebook, writing down those passages which seem most significant to us, studying them, finding how they apply to us, and, if need be, revising earlier views of them as we get a little deeper into them, finding what one Father says about something, what a second Father says about the same thing, and so on.
Seraphim Rose
The Mystery of Repentance
21 August 2025
The mystery of repentance is the greatest and most blessed mystery, which prepares us perfectly beforehand for Heaven…There is no sin on earth which is unforgivable for the person who will repent, and for the God of love Who receives him.
Elder Ephraim of Philotheou
On Music
18 August 2025
I am not satisfied with him who despises music, as all fanatics do; for music is an endowment and a gift of God, not a gift of men. It also drives away the devil and makes people cheerful; one forgets all anger, unchasteness, pride, and other vices. I place music next to theology and give it the highest praise.
Martin Luther
On Our Hearts
17 August 2025
If we want, Christian, to have our heart filled with divine love we must first empty them of the love of this world, its frivolous and sinful customs and then turn our hearts to the one God, our only good and happiness.
Saint Tikhon
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