An elder replied, ‘I tell you, many have ruined their bodies with no discernment and gone away without finding anything. We may have evil-smelling breath because of our fasting, we may know the Scriptures by heart, we may recite all the psalms. . . and still lack what God is looking for—love and humility.”
–The Desert Fathers
It is not necessary that those who seek the Lord seek him outside themselves; rather, those who seek him should seek him in themselves through faith.
–Saint Maximos the Confessor (580-662)
God purifies, humbles, instructs our souls, and renders them pliable to his will; everything defective, everything deformed, everything disagreeable to his sight, he removes from them, and at the same time embellishes them with all the ornaments which can make them pleasing in his eyes. And when he finds them faithful, full of patience and good-will; when the long endurance of tribulations has brought them, with the assistance of his grace, to such a degree of perfection that they suffer with tranquillity and joy all manner of temptation and afflictions: then he unites them not intimately to himself, confides to them his secrets and his mysteries and communicates himself to them without reserve.
–Saint Louis de Blois (1506-1566)
A well ordered exterior results from an awareness of God’s presence.
–Saint Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641)
So, since Christ died for us, out of love, it follows that, when we offer the sacrifice in commemoration of his death, we are asking for love to be given us by the coming of the Holy Spirit. We beg and we pray that just as through love Christ deigned to be crucified for us, so we may receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. And we ask that by that grace the world should be a dead thing in our eyes and we should be dead to the world, crucified and dead.
–Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe (Fifth — Sixth Century)
