Sayings of the Holy Fathers:
"A true Christian is made by faith and love toward Christ. Our sins do not in the least hinder our Christianity, according to the word of the Saviour Himself. He deigned to say: not the righteous have I come to call, but sinners to salvation; there is more joy in heaven over one who repents than over ninety righteous ones. Likewise concerning the sinful woman who touched His feet, He deigned to say to the Pharisee Simon: to one who has love, a great debt is forgiven, but from one who has no love, even a small debt will be demanded. From these judgments a Christian should bring himself to hope and joy, and not in the least accept an inflicted despair. Here one needs the shield of faith."
St. Herman of Alaska
"The offspring of virtue is perseverance. The fruit and offspring of perseverance is habit, and the child of habit is character."
St. John Climacus
"Love, therefore, is the foremost of all excellent achievements and the first of the commandments of the law. If ever, then, the soul reach this goal, it will be in no need of anything else; it will embrace that plenitude of things which are, whereby alone it seems in any way to preserve within itself the stamp of God's actual blessedness. For the life of the Supreme Being is love, seeing that the Beautiful is necessarily lovable to those who recognize it, and the Deity does recognize it, and so this recognition becomes love, that which He recognizes being essentially beautiful. This True Beauty the insolence of satiety cannot touch; and no satiety interrupting this continuous capacity to love the Beautiful, God's life will have its activity in life; which life is thus in itself beautiful, and is essentially of a loving disposition towards the Beautiful."
St. Gregory of Nyssa
St. Herman of Alaska
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"The offspring of virtue is perseverance. The fruit and offspring of perseverance is habit, and the child of habit is character."
St. John Climacus
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"Love, therefore, is the foremost of all excellent achievements and the first of the commandments of the law. If ever, then, the soul reach this goal, it will be in no need of anything else; it will embrace that plenitude of things which are, whereby alone it seems in any way to preserve within itself the stamp of God's actual blessedness. For the life of the Supreme Being is love, seeing that the Beautiful is necessarily lovable to those who recognize it, and the Deity does recognize it, and so this recognition becomes love, that which He recognizes being essentially beautiful. This True Beauty the insolence of satiety cannot touch; and no satiety interrupting this continuous capacity to love the Beautiful, God's life will have its activity in life; which life is thus in itself beautiful, and is essentially of a loving disposition towards the Beautiful."
St. Gregory of Nyssa
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