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Character |
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Humility is not hating yourself, it's not looking down on yourself, it's not beating yourself up, it's not afflicting yourself; humility is to empty yourself. The point of Christianity or Orthodoxy is not to be a good Christian (you're never going to be a good Christian in many ways, Christ promised that. "No one is good but God alone"). The point is to be an empty Christian. If you can empty yourself out of egoism then suddenly your heart becomes an empty vessel that can be filled by the grace
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Fr. Paul Truebenbach
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Homily
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Ordinary people don't know how much time and effort it takes to learn how to read. I've spent eighty years at it, and I still can't say that I've reached my goal.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Conversations with Eckermann
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Repentance has no end on earth, because the end of repentance would mean that we had become like Christ in everything.
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St. Sophrony (Sakharov)
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Spiritual Excerpts
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The greatest commandment of the New Testament is to commend ourselves before God as useless and unworthy of Him, then we'll be able to love Him with all our heart and with all our being, and our fellows as ourselves. The greatest commandment of the gospel is to commend ourselves as unworthy of Him - totally useless - and keeping a humble spirit which will enable us then to love Him with all our heart and with all our being. You see - it's all written in the scriptures.
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Fr. Zacharias
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Human Relationships in the Light of Christ
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The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing
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Socrates
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Plato's Dialogues
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We cannot receive the grace of the Holy Spirit without humility according to the laws expressed in the scriptures. God gives grace to the humble and resists the proud - that is the law that governs our spiritual life.
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Fr. Zacharias
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Human Relationships in the Light of Christ
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We suffer because we have no humility and we do not love our brother. From love of our brother comes the love of God. People do not learn humility, and because of their pride cannot receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, and therefor the whole world suffers.
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St. Silouan the Athonite
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None
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With humility you attract the grace of God. You surrender yourself to the love of God, to worship and to prayer. But even if you do all in the world, you achieve nothing if you haven't acquired humility.
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St. Porphyrios
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Wounded by Love
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Without humility there is no true love. And humility we acquire through obedience to one another, and especially through obedience to the commandments of God.
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Fr. Zacharias
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Human Relationships in the Light of Christ
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