Selected quotes from St. Gregory Palamas

"Patient endurance is the fruit of love, for 'love patiently endures all things' (I Cor. 13:7), and teaches us to achieve such endurance by forcing ourselves so that through patience we may attain love..."

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"When through self-control we have purified our body, and when through divine love we have made our incensive power and our desire incentives for virtue, and when we offer to God our intellect cleansed by prayer, then we will possess and see within ourselves the grace promised to the pure in heart (cf. Matt. 5:8)."

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"It is our sacred wisdom that should legitimately be called a gift of God and not a natural gift, since even simple fishermen who receive it from on high become, as Gregory the Theologian says, sons of Thunder whose word has encompassed the very bounds of the universe. By this grace, even publicans are made merchants of souls, and even the burning zeal of persecutors is transformed, making them Pauls instead of Sauls, turning away from the earth to attain 'the third heaven' and 'hear ineffable things.' By this true wisdom we too can become conformed to the image of God and continue to be such after death."