Gleanings from Orthodox Christian Authors and the Holy Fathers

love_of_god

4 Entries

This is the spiritual passion [i.e., the Love of God] with which the apostles and the martyrs were inebriated. With it the first travelled the world over, toiling and being reviled, while the second, although their members were severed, and although they shed their blood like water and suffered the most dreadful torments, yet they did not grow faint-hearted but endured courageously, and bring truly wise, were thought fools. Still others wandered in mountains and caves and dens of the earth, and amid disorder they were most well-ordered. The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian

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Love of God proceeds from conversing with him; this conversation of prayer comes about through stillness, and stillness comes with the stripping away of the self. St. Isaac the Syrian, "The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life," Sebastian Brock, Cistercian Publications;

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The purpose of prayer is for us to acquire love for God, for in prayer can be discovered all sorts of reasons for loving God. St. Isaac the Syrian, "The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life," Sebastian Brock, Cistercian Publications;

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When you desire to do something for love of God, put death as the limit of your desire, in this way you will rise in actual deed to the level of martyrdom in struggling with the passion, suffering no harm from whatever you may meet within this limit, if you endure to the end and do not weaken. St Isaac Of Syria

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