Quote of the Day: Elder Ephraim of Philotheou

Compel yourselves; say the prayer; stop idle talk; close your mouths to criticism; place doors and locks against unnecessary words. Time passes and does not come back, and woe to us if time goes by without spiritual profit.

Quote of the Day: Leo Tolstoy

"What’s important is that you do pray every day; that’s very good. It is totally different from going to church. There the people would say ‘what a good person – he remembered the Nativity of the Mother of God and went to church!’ But to pray to God by yourself, to cross yourself, to address Him when no one knows what you have said to Him, what you have asked, is a different thing altogether."

Quote of the Day: St. Ephraim of Syria

I Ephrem am dying and writing my testament,
To be a witness for the pupils who come after me:
Be constantly praying, day and night;
As a ploughman who ploughs again and again,
Whose work is admirable.
Do not be like the lazy ones in whose fields thorns grow.
Be constantly praying, for he who adores prayer
Will find help in both worlds.

Quote of the Day: St. Ephraim of Syria

Blessed is the person who has consented to become the close friend of faith and of prayer: he lives in single-mindedness and makes prayer and faith stop by with him. Prayer that rises up in someone's heart serves to open up for us the door of heaven: that person stands in converse with the Divinity and gives pleasure to the Son of God.

Quote of the Day: Fr. Zachariah of Tolleshunt Knights

Prayer is a matter of love.

Prayer in Orthodoxy

Fr. Stephen Freeman recently posted an excellent article on prayer in our faith. You can find it here.

Quote of the Day: St. Nectarius of Pentapolis

"God reveals Himself to the humble, who live in accordance with virtue. Those who take up the wings of the imgination attempt the flight of Icharus and have same end. Those who harbor fantasies do not pray; for he that prays lifts his mind and heart towrds God, whereas he that turns to fantasies diverts himself. Those who are addicted to the imagination have withdrawn from God's grace and from the realm of Divine revelation. They have abandoned the heart in which grace is revealed and have surrendered themselves to the imagination, which is devoid of all grace. It is only the heart that receives knowledge about things that are not apprehended by the senses, because God, Who dwells and moves within it, speaks within it and reveals to it the substance of things hoped for."

Quote of the Day: St. Mark the Ascetic

“It is better to say a well-intentioned prayer for your neighbor than to accuse him in all types of sin.”