Sayings of the Holy Fathers:
"My child, if you want to live amongst people, you must watch the following: Do not criticize anyone at all; do not ridicule anyone; do not become angry; do not despise anyone. Be very careful not to say 'so-and-so lives virtuously,' or 'so-and-so lives immorally,' because this is exactly what 'judge not' means. Look at everyone in the same way, with the same disposition, the same thought, with a simple heart. Accept them as you would accept Christ. Don't open your ears to a person who judges."
St. Nephon
"Let us then also learn hence to consider all things secondary to the hearing of the word of God, and to deem no season unseasonable, and, though a man may even have to go into another person's house, and being a person unknown to make himself known to great men, though it be late in the day, or at any time whatever, never to neglect this traffic. Let food and baths and dinners and other things of this life have their appointed time; but let the teaching of heavenly philosophy have no separate time, let every season belong to it. For Paul saith, 'In season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort (2 Tim. 4:2); and the Prophet too saith, 'In His law will he meditate day and night' (Ps. 1:3)."
St. John Chrysostom
"Faith, the fear of God, and the observance of His commandments, bring us a reward in proportion to our purity. For as we are purified, so we rise from fearing God to loving Him. It is like making progress and passing out of fear into God's love. It is then that we hear: 'He who accepts My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me.' So then, let us redouble our efforts to prove our love by our works. For when we have done this, He Himself loves us just as He promised and His Father loves us in the same way, and the Holy Spirit, of course, comes before Him to prepare a dwelling place. So it is that by the indwelling unity of the hypostases, we become the home of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit."
St. Symeon the New Theologian
St. Nephon
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"Let us then also learn hence to consider all things secondary to the hearing of the word of God, and to deem no season unseasonable, and, though a man may even have to go into another person's house, and being a person unknown to make himself known to great men, though it be late in the day, or at any time whatever, never to neglect this traffic. Let food and baths and dinners and other things of this life have their appointed time; but let the teaching of heavenly philosophy have no separate time, let every season belong to it. For Paul saith, 'In season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort (2 Tim. 4:2); and the Prophet too saith, 'In His law will he meditate day and night' (Ps. 1:3)."
St. John Chrysostom
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"Faith, the fear of God, and the observance of His commandments, bring us a reward in proportion to our purity. For as we are purified, so we rise from fearing God to loving Him. It is like making progress and passing out of fear into God's love. It is then that we hear: 'He who accepts My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me.' So then, let us redouble our efforts to prove our love by our works. For when we have done this, He Himself loves us just as He promised and His Father loves us in the same way, and the Holy Spirit, of course, comes before Him to prepare a dwelling place. So it is that by the indwelling unity of the hypostases, we become the home of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit."
St. Symeon the New Theologian
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