Sayings of the Holy Fathers:
Let no one have wicked thoughts within, but let us cleanse our minds, and as we are approaching a clean Sacrifice, let us make our souls holy. And this can be accomplished in a single day.
How? In what way? If you have anything against your enemy, get rid of your wrath, heal the wound, let go of your hostility, that you may receive healing from the Table, for you are approaching the awesome and holy Sacrifice.
The slain offering is Christ. And for whom was He slain, for what purpose? That He might make peace between heaven and earth, to make you a friend of angels.
St. John Chrysostom
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God asks three things of anyone who is baptized: to keep the true Faith with all his soul and all his might; to control his tongue; to be chaste in his body.
It is better to be punished and cleansed now, than to be sent to the torment to come, when it will be time for punishing only, not for cleansing.
St. Gregory the Theologian
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"Fasting is acceptable to God when abstention from food is accompanied by refraining from sins, from envy, from hatred, from calumny, from vainglory, from wordiness, from other evils. He who is fasting the true fast `that is agreeable' to God ought to shun all these things with all his strength and zeal, and remain impregnable and unshakeable against all the attacks of the Evil one that are planned from that quarter. On the other hand, he who practices abstention from food, but does not keep self-control in the face of the aforesaid passions, is like unto one who lays down splendid foundations for a house, yet takes serpents and scorpions and vipers as fellow-dwellers therein. For just as the establishment of goodly foundations for that house becomes a deadly trap to those that come nigh, as the lurking reptiles fall upon them unawares with their poison, so also that person who has established his fame among men by means of fasting, while fostering within him the beastlike heads of the passions, is fatal to those that meet him."
St. Photios the Great
How? In what way? If you have anything against your enemy, get rid of your wrath, heal the wound, let go of your hostility, that you may receive healing from the Table, for you are approaching the awesome and holy Sacrifice.
The slain offering is Christ. And for whom was He slain, for what purpose? That He might make peace between heaven and earth, to make you a friend of angels.
St. John Chrysostom
+ + +
God asks three things of anyone who is baptized: to keep the true Faith with all his soul and all his might; to control his tongue; to be chaste in his body.
It is better to be punished and cleansed now, than to be sent to the torment to come, when it will be time for punishing only, not for cleansing.
St. Gregory the Theologian
+ + +
"Fasting is acceptable to God when abstention from food is accompanied by refraining from sins, from envy, from hatred, from calumny, from vainglory, from wordiness, from other evils. He who is fasting the true fast `that is agreeable' to God ought to shun all these things with all his strength and zeal, and remain impregnable and unshakeable against all the attacks of the Evil one that are planned from that quarter. On the other hand, he who practices abstention from food, but does not keep self-control in the face of the aforesaid passions, is like unto one who lays down splendid foundations for a house, yet takes serpents and scorpions and vipers as fellow-dwellers therein. For just as the establishment of goodly foundations for that house becomes a deadly trap to those that come nigh, as the lurking reptiles fall upon them unawares with their poison, so also that person who has established his fame among men by means of fasting, while fostering within him the beastlike heads of the passions, is fatal to those that meet him."
St. Photios the Great
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