Sunday, May 31, 2009

After John had been elected


[Patriarch of Alexandria, he said to all in the Patriarch's council-chamber]... 'Go therefore through the whole city, please, and make a list of all my masters down to the last'. But his hearers could not imagine who these could be, and besought him to tell them, as they were astonished that any could possibly be masters of the Patriarch; and he opened his angelic mouth again and said: 'Those whom you call poor and beggars, these I proclaim my masters and helpers. For they, and they only, are really able to help us and bestow upon us the kingdom of heaven.'

St. John the Almsgiver, in his Life

Friday, May 29, 2009

If you want to be freed


from all the vices simultaneously, renounce self-love, the mother of evils.

Thalassios the Libyan, in the Philokalia, vol. ii, p. 311

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Paphnutius


recounted of a friend of the poor who died, and could not cross the river of fire which had separated him from Paradise, that the poor to whom he had given alms then lay down and formed a bridge, by means of which he attained to the Kingdom of God.

Venerable Paphnutius of Borovsk, in the Synaxarion