Floods of Inward Sorrows

Beware, lest the floods of inward sorrows and afflictions should draw you away from the Lord Jesus Christ, for the enemy endeavours by every means to turn us aside from the Lord: both by the enticement of pleasures and by the weight of misfortunes, like Job, and especially by inward distresses and afflictions. Endure everything, thanking God, for '' all things work together for good to them that love God." (Romans 8:28).

- Saint John of Kronstadt

Spiritual Gifts

“If a man has some spiritual gift and feels compassion for those who do not have it, he preserves the gift because of his compassion. But a boastful man will lose it through succumbing to the temptations of boastfulness.”

- Saint Mark the Ascetic

Sick People

“Just as sick people need surgery and cautery to recover the health they have lost, so we need trials, and toils of repentance, and fear of death and punishment, so that we may regain our former health of soul and shake off the sickness which our folly has induced. The more the Physician of our souls bestows upon us voluntary and involuntary suffering, the more we should thank Him for His compassion and accept the suffering joyfully: For it is to help us that He increases our tribulation, both through the sufferings we willingly embrace in our repentance and through the trials and punishments not subject to our will. In this way, if we voluntarily accept affliction, we will be freed from our sickness and from the punishments to come, and perhaps even from present punishments as well. Even if we are not grateful, our Physician in His grace will still heal us, although by means of chastisement and manifold trials. But if we cling to our disease and persist in it, we will deservedly bring upon ourselves agelong punishment. We will have made ourselves like the demons and so will justly share with them the agelong punishments prepared for them; for, like them, we will have scorned our Benefactor.”

- Saint Peter of Damaskos

All Goodness

"All goodness is without beginning because there is no time prior to it: God is eternally the unique author of its being, and God is infinitely above all beings, whether participant or participial."

- Saint Gregory Palamas

Your Sins Melt Away

"As soon as you have told the Lord your sins with a contrite heart, they melt away: as soon as you have sighed and sorrowed for your sins, they are no more. "Tell thine iniquities, that thou mayest be justified." As they came, so they go away. They are an illusion. As soon as you have recognized that they are an illusion, an absurdity, a madness; as soon as you have formed the resolution to do righteously in the future, God cleanses you of them, through His minister and the Holy Mysteries."

- Saint John of Kronstadt

Every One in Need

“[R]eceive everyone in need as you would the Lord, do what you can for Him with the thought that you are doing it for God, and you will receive the reward not only of a prophet and a righteous man, but of the Lord.”

- Saint Theophan the Recluse

Reference: http://days.pravoslavie.ru/en/Days/20120707.htm

Self-reform and Peace

“Self-reform and peace are not achieved through the patience which others show us, but through our own long-suffering towards our neighbor.”

- Saint John Cassian