Sayings of the Holy Fathers

If artists who make statues and paint portraits of kings are held in high esteem, will not God bless ten thousand times more those who reveal and beautify His royal image? – for man is the image of God. When we teach our children to be good, to be gentle, to be forgiving – all attributes of God, to be generous, to love their neighbor, to regard this present age as nothing, we install virtue in their souls, and reveal the image of God within them. This, then, is our task: to educate both ourselves and our children in godliness; otherwise what answer will we have before Christ’s judgment seat? … Let us be greatly concerned for our wives and our children, and for ourselves as well. The good God Himself will bring this work to perfection, so that all of us may be counted worthy of the blessings He has promised.

St. John Chrysostom

+ + +

"Those of you who earn your bread by means of your toil and sweat should rejoice, because that bread is blessed; and if you give a little of it as alms it is reckoned as much. But those who live by means of injustice and grasping should mourn, for what you thus acquire is cursed; and if you give alms out of these they do not benefit you at all, being fire that consumes you."


St. Cosmas Aitolos

+ + +

"He who loves God both believes truly and performs the works of faith reverently. "

"But he who only believes and does not love, lacks even the faith he thinks he has; for he believes merely with a certain superficiality of intellect and is not energized by the full force of love's glory. "The chief part of virtue, then, is faith energized by love."

St. Diadochos of Photiki