St. Symeon the New Theologian Orthodox Church

Wisdom from Elder Thaddeus(+2003)

"God is perfect, He is faultless. And so, when Divine love becomes manifest in us in the fullness of Grace, we radiate this love --- not only on the earth, but throughout the entire universe as well. So God is in us, and He is present everywhere. It is God’s all-encompassing love that manifests itself in us. When this happens, we see no difference between people: everyone is good, everyone is our brother, and we consider ourselves to be the worst of men --- servants of every created thing."

"The Lord is always waiting for us to unite ourselves with Him in love; but instead, we drift further and further away from Him. We know that there can be no life without love. This means that there is no life without God, for God is Love. But His love is not according to the understanding of the world. The love that the world gives us consists of suffering and enslavement, because the spirits of evil interfere with it. There is a little bit of love, but mostly it is just enslavement."

"We know that the Lord, while in the flesh, was kind to all people, even those who persecuted Him --- Him, the Almighty God. He showed us how to avoid evil and not oppose it. He said so Himself [cf. Matt. 5:39]. Not opposing evil means preserving one’s inner peace. Opposing evil is evil; it involves a desire to return evil for evil, on which the fallen spirits thrive. However, when they attack us and find that we do not oppose them, then our peacefulness disarms them; and they are defeated. Therefore, we must try to always pray like this: ‘Lord, help me to preserve my inner peace, teach me to be calm and peaceful and kind, just like Thine angels."

"When we talk to our fellow men and they tell us about their troubles, we will listen to them carefully if we have love for them. We will have compassion for their suffering and pain, for we are God’s creatures; we are a manifestation of the love of God. However, we often consider this a great burden; for we are oppressed by our own cares worries and weaknesses. "

"As we take more concern for our neighbors’ cares and problems, they soon become our own. And our thoughts immediately become occupied with them. If we listen to our neighbor with only half our attention, of course we will not be able to answer them or comfort them. ... We are distracted. They talk, but we do not participate in the conversation; we are immersed in our own thoughts. But if we give them our full attention, then we take up both our own burden and theirs."

"If we have a burden beyond our bearing, we must turn to the Lord immediately --- like this: ‘0 Lord, I cannot even bear my own infirmities, yet now I must bear the burden of so-and-so. I cannot cope with all this responsibility. I cannot do this myself, and - because I feel I have no desire to cope either - all this weighs even more heavily on my conscience. I wish to help my fellow man, but I don’t have the means. My neighbors think that I don’t want to help, and that is an additional burden to me."

That Secret Things Might be Revealed...

"All images reveal and make perceptible those things which are hidden. For example, a man does not have immediate knowledge of invisible things, since the soul is veiled by the body. Nor can man have immediate knowledge of things which are distant from each other or separated by place, because he himself is limited by place and time. Therefore the icon was devised that he might advance in knowledge, and that secret things might be revealed and made perceptible. Therefore, icons are a source of profit, help, and salvation for all, since they make things so obviously manifest, enabling us to perceive hidden things. Thus, we are encouraged to desire and imitate what is good and to shun and hate what is evil."

- St. John of Damascus

Prayer

"The entire day, Father Joachim from St. Anne’s (on Mt. Athos) would pray without stopping. Whether at work or sitting or conversing with anyone, he managed to keep always in contact with God. He would say sweetly, “If you take away from a monk his prayer, then you deprive him of the right to feel that he is truly a child of God.”
Frequently he would visit us while we were working on our obedience tasks and would ask us if we were praying the Jesus Prayer or saying the salutations to Panagia. He rarely talked, and only then if it were necessary. But he was constantly praying. He had found a peaceful spot in a small forest behind his hut where he could raise his hands to heaven for hours at a time and so with joy communicated with Jesus privately in prayer. And if one were to ask him where he had been delayed, he would reply, “I was at Gethsemane’s Garden; that’s where I was.”"

- From An Athonite Gerontikon