Fasting, vigils, the study of Scripture, renouncing possessions and the world – these are the means not the end. Perfection is not found in them, but through them. It is pointless to boast about such practices when we have not achieved the love of God and our fellow humans. Those who have achieved love of God within themselves, are always mindful of God.
JOHN CASSIAN
God cannot be comprehended by the faculty of intelligence, but is totally and perfectly intelligible through the power of love. Every single creature, moreover will know him differently. Dwell on this if you have the grace to do so, because to experience this for oneself is everlasting joy, and the contrary is everlasting pain.
The Cloud of Unknowing
If a man is moved to love God apart from any sweetness he feels, he is already focusing his love upon God, whom he does not feel. If he sets his will upon pleasurable and consoling feelings, thinking about them and resting in them, he is setting his will on creatures or related things, making them into an end instead of a means. That man would be very ignorant who thinks that because sweetness and delight are failing him, God is failing him, or should think that in having these he is having God. He would be still more ignorant if he followed God looking for sweetness, and rejoiced and rested in it when obtained. In this case his love is not set purely on God alone above all things, for clinging to and desiring what is created, his will cannot soar to God.
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS Letter XI
The Lord waits for us to respond day by day to his holy counsels by our actions. In fact the days of this life are given us as a respite to correct our error errors, as the Apostle Paul says: ‘Do you not know that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?’ (Romans 2.4). And in his loving-kindness the Lord says, ‘Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked… and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?’ (Ezekiel 18.23)
BENEDICT OF NURSIA Rule, Prologue, 35-38
In his great love God was unwilling to restrict our freedom, even though he had the power to do so. He has left us to come to him by the love of our heart alone.
ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises, 81
Once the intellect has arrived at true and pure prayer it is likely that the demons . . . will offer it an illusory vision of God beneath a form pleasing to the senses, so as to make it believe that it has fully attained the goal of its prayer. Now all of that, as an admirable gnostic said, is the work of the passion of vainglory and of a demon whose assaults make the brain reel.
EVAGRIUS OF PONTUS On Prayer, 73 (Philokalia I, 183)
I have seen impure souls who threw themselves headlong into physical eros to a frenzied degree. It was their very experience of that eros that led them to interior conversion. They concentrated their eros on the Lord. Rising above fear they tried to love God with an insatiable desire. That is why, when Christ spoke of the woman who had been a sinner, he did not say that she had been afraid, but that she had loved much and had easily been able to surmount love by love.
JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 5th Step
‘The Kingdom of God is within you’ (Luke 17.21). From this we learn that by a heart made pure . . . we see in our own beauty the image of the Godhead . . . You have in you the ability to see God. He who formed you put in your being an immense power. When God created you he enclosed in you the image of his perfection, as the mark of a seal is impressed on wax.
GREGORY OF NYSSA Homilies on the Beatitudes, 6
Keep yourself carefully from setting your thoughts upon what happens in the community, and still more from speaking of it except to the proper person at the proper time. Nor should you ever be shocked or marvel at what you see or hear, but should try to keep your soul forgetful of it all. For if you want to ponder on all that happens you would always discover something amiss even if you lived among angels.
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS
What God demands of us is not this or that; He demands everything.
PIERRE REVERDY TO JACQUES MARITAIN
If we are rushed for time, sow time and we will reap time. Go to church and spend a quiet hour in prayer. You will have more time than ever and your work will get done.
DOROTHY DAY 15 Days of Prayer With Dorothy Day
Nothing should be held true merely because it is eloquently expressed, no false because it sounds harsh upon the lips. And a thing is not true because rudely uttered, nor is it false because its utterance is splendid. I have learned from you that wisdom is like wholesome food and folly like unwholesome food: they can be set forth in language ornate or plain, just as both kinds of food can be served on rich dishes or on peasant ware.
SAINT AUGUSTINE Confessions