What is it then to be a fool for Christ? It is to control one’s thoughts when they stray out of line. It is to make the mind empty and free so as to be able to offer it in a state of readiness when Christ’s teachings are to be assimilated, swept clean for the words of God that it needs to welcome.
JOHN CHRYSOSTOM On the Incomprehensibility of God, Sermon 5
We have to take particular care to follow the Gospel precept that bids us go into our inner room and shut the door to pray to our Father. This is how to do it.
We are praying in our inner room when we withdraw our heart completely from the clamor of our thoughts and preoccupations, and in a kind of secret dialogue, as between intimate friends, we lay bear our desires before the Lord.
We are praying with our door shut when, without opening our mouth, we call on the One who takes no account of words but considers the heart.
We are praying in secret when we speak to God with the heart alone and with concentration of the soul, and make known our state of mind to him alone, in such a way that even the enemy powers themselves cannot guess their nature. Such is the reason for the deep silence that it behoves us to keep in prayer…
Thus our prayers should be frequent but short, for fear that if they are prolonged the enemy might have an opportunity to insinuate distraction into them. This is true sacrifice: ‘A broken and contrite heart, oh God, thou will not despise’ (Psalm 51.17).
JOHN CASSIAN Conferences IX
There are three stages in the life of those who are converted: the beginning, the middle, and perfection. At the beginning, those converted encounter the enticements of sweetness; in the middle, battles against temptation; at the end, the perfection of fullness. Sweetness at first to strengthen them; then bitterness to test them; finally the delight of the ultimate joy to establish them.
GREGORY THE GREAT Commentary on Job
It is not by fighting against the passions that one prevents them entering the heart. That is achieved rather by the gratification of conscience, by the knowledge with which the soul is filled, and by the desire for its own acts of contemplation.
ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascestic Treatises, 38
To see visible objects we need the eyes of the body. To understand intelligible truths we need the eyes of the mind. To have the vision of divine things we cannot do without faith. What the eye is for the body, faith is for reason. To be more precise; the eye needs the light which puts it in contact with visible things; reason needs faith to show it divine things.
THEODORET The Cure of Pagan Diseases
Some people live to eat, just as the animals do ‘whose life is no more than feeding their stomachs’. But our Teacher exhorts us to eat in order to live. Nourishment is not what we are here for, nor is pleasure our purpose in life. We only use them during our sojourning here as the Word instructs us, and he chooses our nourishment with immortality in view.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA The Teacher
If our Savior himself has declared: “By your endurance you will gain your souls,” should it not be a man's great happiness to possess his soul? The more perfect our patience, the more absolutely do we possess it. Let us frequently call to mind that as our Lord has saved us by patient suffering, so we also ought to work out our salvation by sufferings and afflictions; enduring injuries and contradictions with all possible meekness.
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES