St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)
Rating: 10|Votes: 4
Pray without ceasing—and pray without anger or thinking. Know that every thought that distances the mind from God, no matter how good it might seem in and of itself, is from the devil, who constantly sows high-sounding and irrational dreams only in order to distract the mind from God, from His commandments and His good works. The attention must not attach itself to any such thing, but rather it should firmly tear itself away and cleanse the heart in every way from evil suggestions. The devil tries very hard to distance the mind from God and enmesh it in worldly delights.
Rating: 6,6|Votes: 5
In general, in the church of God one should preserve the utmost reverence and order, for the glory of God, as well as for one's own soul's profit and for the profit of those people present, who are to be instructed in reverence by the monastics. But lack of reverence disturbs them, scandalizes them and harms them.
Ivan Shmelev
(From Year of the Lord.) It all seems to me that everyone is only thinking about apples. The Lord is also here with all of us, and He is also thinking about apples; after all, we’ve brought them to Him—look, Lord, how good they are! And He looks at them and says to all, “Well, good, and eat them to your health, children!” And they will be eating completely different apples—not store-bought, but church apples, holy ones. This is the very Transfiguration.
St. Gregory Palamas
Rating: 9|Votes: 17
Thus, this Light is not a light of the senses, and those contemplating it do not simply see with sensual eyes, but rather they are changed by the power of the Divine Spirit. They were transformed, and only in this way did they see the transformation taking place amidst the very assumption of our perishability, with the deification through union with the Word of God in place of this.
Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin
The theory of "Pentarchy", deprived of both canonical and historical foundations, provided consequentially false pretexts for the defense of hegemony of Grecophone Churches over the non-Greek Orthodox Churches. The tendency expressed in this theory, as strange as it might seem, turns up from time to time in the modern era.
