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Εveryone today seeks happiness on earth, and they think this is ‘Christianity’; true Orthodox Christians know that the age of persecutions, which began again under the Bolsheviks, is still with us, and that only by much sorrow and tribulation are we made fit to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” —Fr. Seraphim Rose of Platina
“It may be, brethren, that soon you will again experience a time of turmoil, and some of you will be called to take the path of denying those sacred laws and to submit to laws established by mere human authority. Beware of such a path! Beware of the path taken by the thief on the left, for by the weight of blasphemy, by the weight of reviling Christ he went to his eternal perdition. Those who revile the laws of the Church revile Christ Himself, Who is the Head of the Church, for the laws of the Church were given by the Holy Spirit through the Apostles. And the laws of local Churches are based on those same laws and canons of the Church. Let us not consider ourselves wiser than those saints and hierarchs who established the rules of the Church; let us not imagine ourselves to be great sages. Rather, let us humbly call out together with the wise thief: Remember me, O Lord, in Thy kingdom!” —St. John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco, Sermon on the Sunday of Orthodoxy
“Brothers and sisters! Let us aspire towards ascetic labor, in which is expressed precisely the essence of our Orthodox Christian faith, which is the labor of imitating Christ in bearing the cross and self-crucifixion – a faith of labor and, laboring lawfully as the Word of God teaches, let us suffer all things for the Truth, not moving away from it, as do many because of their poverty of spirit or self-interest. And let us remember well: where there is no labor, where there is no steadfastness in the faith – there is neither Orthodoxy nor true faith in God and in His Christ. Amen.” —Archbishop Averky (Taushev) of Syracuse
“The humility of Jesus is not a superfluous detail in the gospel narrative. The humility of Jesus is essential to the gospel. If Jesus lacked humility, there would be no incarnation, no crucifixion, and no redemption.” —Jack Wisdom
“When they are refuted by the Scriptures, they take to maligning the Scriptures themselves. … But when we refer them to that tradition which originates with the apostles and which is preserved in the churches through the succession of the presbyters, they attack the tradition, claiming that they themselves are wiser not merely than the presbyters but even than the apostles. [However] anyone who wants to see the truth can look to the tradition of the Apostles which is clearly manifested throughout the whole world; and we can list those who were set up as bishops in the different churches as well as their successors right down to our own time, men who neither taught nor knew anything like what these [Gnostics] are raving about. For if the apostles had known secret doctrines which they were in the habit of teaching to the “perfect” clandestinely and apart from the rest, they would most certainly have communicated these things to those to whom they were entrusting the churches themselves.
And if a dispute should arise over some point or other, should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches, in which the apostles were actively interested, and find out from them what is certain and clear with regard to the point at issue? What if, in fact, the apostles had left us no Writings? Would it not be necessary to follow the line indicated by the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they entrusted the churches?” —St. Irenaeus of Lyons
“[Heretics] should not be admitted to any discussion of the Scriptures…
The Lord Jesus sent the apostles to preach. … Now what they actually preached can, as I must here likewise prescribe, be proved only by those very same churches which the apostles themselves founded by preaching to them both viva voce, as they say, and later by letters. Such being the case, it is consequently certain that any doctrine which agrees with [what is held by] these apostolic churches, moulds and original sources of the faith, must be considered the truth, undoubtedly containing that which these churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God; but any other doctrine must be presumed false, since it smacks of opposition to the truth of the churches, of the apostles, of Christ, of God."
Come now! Would they all have fallen into error? Would the steward of God, the Vicar of Christ [the Holy Spirit] have neglected His duty by allowing the churches to understand and believe otherwise than what He Himself taught the apostles? Is it likely that so many and such outstanding churches would all have strayed into the one [false] faith? No chance happening ever has the same outcome in the case of many different individuals. A doctrinal error in so many different churches would of necessity have taken different forms. But when unity exists amid diversity, this can be the result, not of error, but only of Tradition.
Let us inquire, therefore, whether tradition, unless it be written, should be accepted. Certainly we shall say that it ought not to be accepted if we can allege as precedent no cases of other practices which we justify without any written document, but solely on the grounds of tradition and because of the approval of subsequent custom… If you demand scriptural justification for these and other such practices, you will find none. Tradition will be held out to you as their author, custom as their consolidator, and faith as their observer.” —Tertullian
“Since there are many who think they share the mind of Christ and yet some of them think differently from their predecessors, let the preaching of the Church be held fast, that preaching which has been handed down from the apostles through the ranks of succession and perdures in the churches to the present day. That alone is to be believed as the truth which varies in no wise from ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition.” —Origen
“It suffices as proof of our thesis that we have a tradition coming to us from the fathers, like a legacy handed down from the apostles through the saints who followed them in succession.” —St. Gregory of Nyssa
“Of the beliefs and practices [disciplinary regulations] preserved in the Church, some we possess from teaching handed down in written form; others we have received as delivered to us in a mystery from the tradition of the Apostles, and both of these have the same force as far as religion is concerned.” —St. Basil the Great
“There is need of tradition also; for not everything can be found in Scripture. That is why the most holy apostles left some things in writing and others in tradition. Paul affirms this very fact as follows: ‘as I handed it on to you.’ Likewise in another passage: ‘This is my teaching and thus have I handed it on to the churches.’ Similarly: ‘If you continue to cling firmly to it, as I preached it to you—unless your faith has all been for nothing.’” —St. Epiphanius
“It is therefore clear that [the apostles] did not teach everything in epistolary form, but that they taught many things besides in unwritten form, and these things, too, are worthy of acceptance. Wherefore we should consider the tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. If there is a tradition, look no further.” —St. John Chrysostom
“A false interpretation of Scripture causes that the gospel of the Lord becomes the gospel of man, or, which is worse, of the devil.” —St. Jerome
“One who knows oneself, knows God: and one who knows God is worthy to worship Him as is right. Therefore, my beloveds in the Lord, know yourselves.” —St. Anthony the Great
“God is truth and light, God's judgement is nothing else than our coming into contact with truth and light. In the day of the Great Judgement all men will appear naked before this penetrating light of truth. The ‘books’ will be opened. What are these ‘books’? They are our hearts. Our hearts will be opened by the penetrating light of God, and what is in these hearts will be revealed. If in those hearts there is love for God, those hearts will rejoice in seeing God's light. If, on the contrary, there is hatred for God in those hearts, these men will suffer by receiving on their opened hearts this penetrating light of truth which they detested all their life. So that which will differentiate between one man and another will not be a decision of God, a reward or a punishment from Him, but that which was in each one's heart; what was there during all our life will be revealed in the Day of Judgement. If there is a reward and a punishment during this revelation – and there really is – it does not come from God but from the love or hate which reigns in our heart. Love has bliss in it, hatred has despair, bitterness, grief, affliction, wickedness, agitation, confusion, darkness, and all the other interior conditions which compose hell.” —St. Symeon the New Theologian
“In whatever state a person is, he sometimes finds himself making pure and intense prayers. For even from that first and lowest sort, which has to do with recalling the future judgment, the one who is still subject to the punishment of terror and the fear of judgment is occasionally so struck with compunction that he is filled with no less joy of spirit from the richness of his supplication than the one who, examining the kindnesses of God and going over them in the purity of his heart, dissolves into unspeakable gladness and delight. For, according to the words of the Lord, the one who realizes that more has been forgiven him begins to love more.” —St. John Cassian
“Here are those of whom I speak and who are called heretics by me. They are the ones who say that in our present age there is no one in our midst who is able to observe the commandments and be like the holy fathers…. Those who declare this is impossible have fallen not into one particular heresy but into all of them, so to speak – a heresy surpassing all others in its impiety and greatest blasphemy. They are buried underneath it…. The one who speaks in such a manner turns all of Scripture upside down…. These antichrists affirm, ‘It is impossible, impossible’. Why then is it impossible? Tell me. In what other way did the saints shine on earth and did they become lamps of the world? If it were impossible, they would never have succeeded in it. For they were men like us, and possessed no more than we do except a will directed toward the good. They had zeal, patience, humility, and love for God. Therefore, acquire all this and your soul which today is as hard as rock shall become a fountain of tears inside you. However, if you refuse to suffer such anguish and affliction, at least do not say that all this is impossible.” —St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses, Discourse XXIX: The Heresy of Pusillanimity
“…The ambition of men, who have no fear of God, rushes into high posts, and exalted office is now publicly known as the prize of impiety. The result is, that the worse a man blasphemes, the fitter the people think him to be a bishop. Clerical dignity is a thing of the past. There is a complete lack of men shepherding the Lord’s flock with knowledge.
Ambitious men are constantly throwing away the provision for the poor on their own enjoyment and the distribution of gifts. There is no precise knowledge of canons. There is complete immunity in sinning; for when men have been placed in office by the favour of men, they are obliged to return the favour by continually showing indulgence to offenders. Just judgment is a thing of the past; and everyone walks according to his heart’s desire. Vice knows no bounds; the people know no restraint. Men in authority are afraid to speak, for those who have reached power by human interest are the slaves of those to whom they owe their advancement. And now the very vindication of Orthodoxy is looked upon in some quarters as an opportunity for mutual attack; and men conceal their private ill-will and pretend that their hostility is all for the sake of the truth. Others, afraid of being convicted of disgraceful crimes, madden the people into fratricidal quarrels, that their own doings may be unnoticed in the general distress. Hence the war admits of no truce, for the doers of ill deeds are afraid of a peace, as being likely to lift the veil from their secret infamy.
All the while unbelievers laugh; men of weak faith are shaken; faith is uncertain; souls are drenched in ignorance, because adulterators of the word imitate the truth. The mouths of true believers are dumb, while every blasphemous tongue wags free; holy things are trodden under foot; the better laity shun the churches as schools of impiety; and lift their hands in the deserts with sighs and tears to their Lord in heaven. Even you must have heard what is going on in most of our cities, how our people with wives and children and even our old men stream out before the walls, and offer their prayers in the open air, putting up with all the inconvenience of the weather with great patience, and waiting for help from the Lord.” —St. Basil the Great, Letter 92, To the Italians and Gaul
“He who in his heart is proud of his tears and secretly condemns those who do not weep is like a man who asks the king for a weapon against his enemy and then commits suicide with it.” —St. John Climacus
