Category Archives: love

Twilight of marketing day.

March 27, 2022love, quotes, saints, workSt. Nikolai Velimirovich, St. Paphnutius, treasureGretchenJoanna

“St. Paphnutius prayed to God to reveal whom he (Paphnutius) resembled. He heard a voice which spoke to him: ‘You are similar to a merchant who seeks goodly pearls; arise and do not be idle!’ But why does God not say to every one of us that we are like a merchant who seeks goodly pearls? Because many of us do not seek pearls, but rather bury ourselves under heavy layers of worthless dust.

“Not everything that the net raises up from the bottom of the sea is a pearl; sometimes it is only mud and sand. The ignorant vie for that mud and sand as though it were a pearl. Only the merchant who recognizes a true pearl casts the net into the sea an untold number of times. He hauls it up, sifts out the mud and sand, until he finds one seed pearl!

“Why does God compare Paphnutius to a merchant? Because Paphnutius gave away all of his possessions and invested all of his effort and time in order to find that one true seed pearl. That true pearl is a heart cleansed of all passions and evil thoughts and warmed by the flame of love toward God. You too arise, O man, and do not be lazy! Your marketing day is approaching its twilight.”

-St. Nikolai Velimirovich

People held out their thin arms.

March 2, 2022love, poetryR.S. Thomas, The SaviorGretchenJoanna

THE COMING

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
………………..On a bare
Hill, a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

-R.S. Thomas, 2013-2000

For what purpose?

February 21, 2022love, quotespurpose, simplicity, St. John of KronstadtGretchenJoanna

For what purpose does the Lord add day after day, year after year, to our existence? In order that we may gradually put away, cast aside, evil from our souls, each one his own, and acquire blessed simplicity; in order that we may become truly gentle; in order that we may learn not to have the least attachment to earthly things, but as loving and simple children may cling with all our hearts, all our souls, and all our thoughts, to God alone, and so to love Him, and our neighbor as ourselves. Let us therefore hasten to pray to the Lord, fervently and with tears, to grant us simplicity of heart, and let us strive by every means to cast out the evil from our souls.

-St John of Kronstadt

This feeling expresses itself.

January 21, 2022church, love, quotesformality, ritual, Sergei FudelGretchenJoanna

“People who believe in God in their own way, yet do not believe in the Church, often say, ‘Does God really need all this ritual? Why do we have to have all these formalities? We only need love, beauty and humaneness.’

“A man, on his way to the woman he loves, seeing flowers, buys them or picks them and brings them to her, never stopping to think whether this is a formality or not. Yet this is the very concept of church ritual.

“Love for God gives birth to the beauty and humanity of the ritual, which we lay, like flowers, at the feet of God. Faith is love, and the essence of Christianity is to be in love with God and to feel that the Church is His body, which has remained with us and lives with us on earth. This feeling expresses itself in actions which we call ritual.”

-Sergei Fudel, Light in the Darkness