You will be able to pray…
Strive to render your mind deaf and dumb at the time of prayer, and then, you will be able to pray.
–Evagrius Ponticus (345-399)
Better served by our silence…
It is a good discipline to wonder in each new situation if people wouldn’t be better served by our silence than by our words.
–Henri Nouwen (1932–1996)
Revelation of glory…
The Word of God, born once in the flesh (such is his kindness and his goodness), is always willing to be born spiritually in those who desire him. In them he is born as an infant as he fashions himself in them by means of their virtues. He reveals himself to the extent that he knows someone is capable of receiving him. He diminishes the revelation of his glory not out of selfishness but because he recognises the capacity and resources of those who desire to see him. Yet, in the transcendence of mystery, he always remains invisible to all.
–Saint Maximos the Confessor (580-662)
Let self-will cease…
What does God hate or punish except self-will? Let self-will cease, and there will be no hell. On what does that fire feed except on self-will?
–Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
Inordinate love of the flesh…
Inordinate love of the flesh is cruelty, because under the appearance of pleasing the body we kill the soul. Take even bread with moderation, lest an overloaded stomach make you weary of prayer.
–Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
So in the saints…
As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, become like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated but to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God… The human substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory.
–Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
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