Never pray as a matter of routine…
Whether you pray alone or in the company of others, try never to pray simply as a matter of routine but always with conscious awareness of what you are doing.
—Evagrius Ponticus (345-399)
Guard against your anger…
Always be on your guard against your anger, and then you will not be carried away by other violent desires. Anger gives fuel to all sorts of other passions and always clouds the spiritual eye, disrupting the state of pure prayer.
—Evagrius Ponticus (345-399)
If you store up grievances…
If you store up grievances and nurse old animosities inside yourself, and then try to pray, you will be like someone going to the well for water with a bucket that is full of holes.
—Evagrius Ponticus (345-399)
Jesus sustains us…
Who sustains us? Christ Jesus, the Word and Wisdom of God. Moreover, he sustains us not merely for a day or two, but forever.
— Origen (c. 184- c. 254)
God never asks…
God never asks his servants to do what is impossible. The love and goodness of his Godhead is revealed as richly available. It is poured out like water upon all. God furnished to each person according to his will the ability to do something good. None of those seeking to be saved will be lacking in this ability, given by the one who said: ‘whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward‘ (Mark 9:41).
— Saint Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395)
The perfection of the Christian life…
The perfection of the Christian life — and I mean that life which is the only one the name of Christ is used to designate — is that in which we participate not only by our mind and soul but in all the actions of our lives, so that our holiness may be complete, in accordance with the blessing pronounced by Paul, in our ‘whole body and soul and spirit‘ (I Thess. 5:23), constantly guarded from all admixture with evil.
— Saint Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395)
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