This (not) just in

In case anyone had been wondering... I haven't been updating as much this summer as I've been intensively studying Russian for most of my days.
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Woe! (Nelly)

...woe to them who wish to defend the power of Christ with the impotence of man’s weapons!
Aleksey Khomiakov

The contradiction of deviation

… whenever the teaching of faith deviates even a little from its basic purity, the deviation, growing little by little, cannot help becoming a contradiction to faith. The lack of wholeness and inner unity of faith compels one to seek unity in abstract thinking; and reason, having received equal rights with Divine Revelation, first serves as the ground of religion, and subsequently replaces it.
Ivan Kireevskii

The unmaking of man

‘Don’t people decrease in their sense of life when buildings increase?’ Voshchev hesitated to believe. ‘Man will make a building and unmake himself. Who will live in it then?’
Andrei Platonov. The Foundation Pit.

The well concealed menace

Serving the tyranny, the corruption and abuse of language becomes better known as propaganda. …the most perfect propaganda achieves just this: that the menace is not apparent but well concealed. Still, it must remain visible; it must remain recognizable. At the same time, those for whom the menace is intended must nevertheless be led and eased into believing (and this is the true art!) that by acquiescing to the intimidation, they really do the reasonable thing, perhaps even what they would have wanted to do anyway.
Josef Pieper

We will resist these trials

if we would but remember Christ crucified on the Cross for us and so many thousands of martyrs for the Faith who, in their patience, conquered all and emerged from the flames as gold and who for centuries glow among the angels and among men.
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

Included in the concept of the Church is this:

...the Church is that point at which dogma becomes moral teaching and Christian dogmatics become Christian life. The Church thus comprehended gives life to and provides for the implementation of Christian teaching. Without the Church there is no Christianity; there is only the Christian teaching which, by itself, cannot 'renew the fallen Adam.'
St. Hilarion (Troitsky)

But one rung

The absolute atheist stands on the last rung but one before most absolute faith (whether he steps higher or not), while an indifferent man has no faith at all, nothing but dismal fear, and that, too, only occasionally, if he is a sensitive man.
Fr. Tikhon in Devils by FD

Heavenly King

…the apophaticism which characterizes the mystical theology of the Eastern Church appears as a witness to the fullness of the Holy Spirit—to this Person who, though He fills all things and brings all things to their ultimate fulfillment, yet remains Himself unknown.
Vladimir Lossky

A lesson from the lesser

Camels and mules behave more decently than some people at wedding receptions!
St. John Chrysostom

Condemned by truth

It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen of the jury, it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death. Slow and elderly as I am, I have been caught by the slower pursuer, whereas my accusers, being clever and sharp, have been caught by the quicker, wickedness. I leave you now, condemned to death by you, but they are condemned by truth to wickedness and injustice.
Plato

What we need is a deep clean

The struggle and effort to be rid of passions should be associated with the return of the nous to the heart. A therapeutic treatment which is limited to the surface, without also being aimed at curing the nous is only moralisation. Here we see the value of the neptic theology of our Church. To eliminate hesychasm from Christian living is to make Orthodoxy worldly. This is why we must adapt the therapeutic treatment to curing the nous.
Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos)

The perpetual revolution

A doubt about the possibility or reality of a communication between living and dead through Christ and in Christ is too un-Christian to want an answer. To ascribe to the prayers of living Christians a power of intercession which is refused to the Christians admitted into heavenly glory would be a glaring absurdity. If Protestantism were true to logic, as it pretends to be, I may boldly affirm that not only Anglicans, but all Protestant sects (even the worst) would either admit serious and earnest addresses to saints and angels, or reject the mutual prayers of Christians on earth. Why, then, are they rejected, nay, often condemned? Simply because Protestantism is for ever and ever protesting.
Aleksey Khomiakov

The guarantee of the word

Our every word comes before the assembly of the angels of God. Hades receives our every evil word and retains it as a guarantee of our eternal death and Paradise receives every good word and retains it as a guarantee of our eternal life. Truly, does the Old Testament sage wisely speaks and promptly reminds us with the words that: 'Death and life are in the power of the tongue.'
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

On the "branch theory"

…the godless system of the heresies is a road with many branches, and whenever a man has strayed from the one straight way, then he falls down precipices again and again.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem

Spiritual swimming

One should nourish the soul with the word of God: for the word of God, as St. Gregory the Theologian says, is angelic bread, by which are nourished souls that hunger for God. Most of all one should occupy oneself with reading the New Testament and the Psalter, which one should do standing up. From this there occurs an enlightenment in the mind, which is changed by a Divine change.
One should habituate oneself in this way so that the mind might as it were swim in the Lord’s law; it is under the guidance of this law that one should direct one’s life.
St. Seraphim of Sarov

Seeming rage

It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn thunder, and to see the lightning; and, while thinking with awe of the tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to consider how beneficent they are, and how upon the smallest flower and leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage, which seemed to make creation new again.
Charles Dickens - Bleak House

Behold!

...the bolsheviks have destroyed the monastery; they destroyed the cemetery, too. Behold twentieth century civilization!
Archimandrite Gerasim (Schmaltz)

Apropos to the feast of St. Abba Dorotheos of Gaza

Do you realise the enormity of his pride? Do you see his obstinacy? Do you see his insubordination? Therefore, when He saw his impudence God said: 'He is a fool, he does not know how to be happy. If he does not have a hard time, he will be totally lost. If he does not learn what sorrow is, he will not learn what rest is. Then He gave him that what he deserved and expelled him from paradise'. Thus, Man was given up to self-love and to his own desires which would crush his bones, so as to learn not to trust himself but the commandment of God.
Abba Dorotheos

Only death

He who does not love God, not only does he not love God but does not love anything that is from God, i.e., neither the beauty of the stars nor the order of the seas and mountains nor the living power that is in animals and plant life. He who does not love God, removes and distances God from nature. What else then is left? Only dead, formless, dark, dust only death. Even that dust is created by God. And that dust, the blasphemer of God must return to God and that, which is left over, he can love. What is there left over? Only that which does not touch God, i.e., death, sin and the devil. He who does not love God he, in essence, loves death, sin and the devil. Every blasphemer of God is a toy of the devil, the fruit of sin and a pawn of death.
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovich)