Peter Kay🌟 🌈
Christ is the summit of desire ♥️
There is nothing higher ☦️
MAKE JESUS CHRIST THE LOVE OF
YOUR LIFE.♥️💖♥️💖♥️💖♥️💖♥️
The closer one is to God in reality -- and not simply in one's imagination -- the more one feels unworthy and sinful, more sinful than anyone else.
The Holy Fathers felt this way. There are many examples of this. The publican considered himself a sinner for altogether other reasons.
Nevertheless, he realized his sinful state and did not try to justify himself. He asked only for mercy and forgiveness of the Lord, and he received it.
Everybody has an insolvent debt before God. No amount of ascetic struggles can repay this debt. The Lord Himself says: If you do all that is demanded of you (that is, follow all the commandments), consider yourselves unprofitable servants whose duty it is to fulfill the master's order (Luke 17:10).
How necessary it is for us, who constantly break the commandments, to keep the same disposition of soul as the publican: not to look for virtues in ourselves.
Regardless of any spiritual labors we might undertake, we shall always remain abominable slaves. Only by the mercy of God, those who repent are forgiven and are vouchsafed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
For this reason, the seeking of high spiritual states is forbidden by the Lord and by the Holy Fathers.
All our inner struggle should be concentrated on repentance and on everything which promotes that penitent state. God's grace will then enter by itself when the soul is clean and if the Lord Himself so wills.
If an ascetic has no sincere, heartfelt acknowledgment of his sinfulness, if he has not a contrite heart, he is most definitely in a state of prelest [self-deception].
You have anxieties about your life… Pray fervently to the Lord from your heart in this way: ‘I place my fate in Your hands, O my Saviour. In the way that You know, arrange my life as is best. From now on I cut off every care about myself, having but one care, to do what is pleasing before You.’ Speak to God in this way, and by doing so you will already have placed yourself completely in His hands, not being concerned about anything, but calmly accepting every sort of situation, pleasant or unpleasant, as being arranged for you purposely by God. Your only concern should be to act according to God’s commandments in everything. This is all that is required of you.
-- St. Theophan the Recluse ☦️
"You cannot conquer any passion, any sin without gracious help; therefore, always ask the help of Christ, your Saviour. It was for this that He came into the world, for this that He suffered, died, and rose from the dead, in order to help us in everything, to save us from sin, and from the violence of the passions, to cleanse us from our sins, to bestow upon us power in Holy Spirit to do good works, to enlighten us, to strengthen us, to give us peace. You ask how you can save yourself when sin stands at every step, and you sin at every moment? There is a simple answer to this: at every step, at every moment, call upon the Saviour, remember the Saviour, and you will save yourself and others.
I am morally nothing without the Lord. I have really not one true thought or good feeling, and can do no good works; without Him I cannot drive away from me any sinful thought, any passionate feeling such as malice, envy, fornication, pride, and so forth. The Lord is the accomplishment of everything good that I think, feel, and do.
O, how boundlessly wide is the Lord's grace acting in me! The Lord is everything to me, and so clearly, so constantly. Mine — is only my sinfulness; mine — are only mine infirmities.
O, how we ought to love our Lord, Who was pleased to call us into existence from non-existence, to honour us by His image and likeness, to establish us in a paradise of delights, to subdue all the earth unto us, and Who — when we did not keep His commandments, but were allured by the enticement of the Devil, and immeasurably offended our Creator by our ingratitude, and assimilated unto ourselves all the qualities of the tempter (pride, malice, envy, ingratitude) and all his evil arts, which he taught us as his prisoners — did not reject us for ever, but deigned to redeem us from sin, from the curse and death into which we had fallen through sin, and Himself appeared upon earth, having taken our nature upon Him; He Himself became my Teacher, my Healer, my Worker of miracles, my Saviour; He Himself bore the punishment for us, died for us in order that we should not be eternally lost. He rose from the dead, in order to raise us too after death.
He ascended into heaven, in order that we, too, should ascend, we who had fallen so low through sin; and He became everything to us — food, drink, light, purification, sanctification, health — and the power that protects, saves, preserves, and has mercy upon us."
My Life in Christ St. John of Kronstadt. ☦️
