A Discourse for the Monday of the Twenty-Ninth Week: On Miracles and Signs (Part 4)

Humble-mindedness is inseparable from spiritual reason. The holy Isaac the Syrian says: “Only he who has humility can be recognized as wise; he who does not have humility will never attain wisdom.” Living faith opens to the soul’s sight God; God’s Word unites the soul with God. One who has thus beheld God, who has thus felt God, perceives his nothingness, is filled with ineffable reverence toward God, toward all His works, toward all His commandments, toward all His teaching, and acquires humble-mindedness. The humble-minded man will not dare even to be curious about what is accomplished outside God’s will, what was timely condemned by God’s Word: the signs of the antichrist will remain foreign to the humble-minded as having no relation to him. The vision of one’s nothingness and one’s weakness, the vision of God, His majesty, omnipotence, and infinite goodness stirs the soul to turn in prayer to God. All the hope of such a soul is concentrated in God, and therefore there are no causes for distraction for it during prayer; it prays, uniting all its strength and turning to God with its whole being; it, as far as possible, frequently has recourse to prayer, it prays without ceasing. At the approach of great sorrows in the times of the antichrist, all those who truly believe in God will cry out with intense prayer to God. They will cry out for help, for protection, for the sending of Divine grace in support and guidance for them. The powers of men, though faithful to God, are insufficient to resist the united forces of rejected angels and men, who will act with fury and desperation, foreseeing their impending ruin (Rev 12:12). Divine grace, overshadowing God’s chosen ones, will make the seducer’s deceptions ineffective for them, his threats not formidable, his miracles contemptible; it will grant them to courageously confess the Saviour who accomplished the salvation of men and to expose the false messiah who came to ruin men; it will lead them to the scaffold as to royal thrones, as to a wedding feast. The sensation of love toward God is sweeter than the sensation of life. Just as the torments preceding and accompanying death constitute the beginning of eternal torments for the sinner, so the torments for Christ and violent death for Him constitute the beginning of eternal joys of paradise. We see this clearly from the action of Divine grace in relation to the martyrs of the first centuries of Christianity: initially, it was permitted them to display their free will; upon their accepting the first torments, help from on high descended upon them, making for them both the torments and death for Christ desirable. The Lord, foretelling the sorrows that were to precede the second coming, commanded His disciples to watchfulness and prayer: “Watch and pray”,“ He said to them, ”“for you do not know when the time will come” (Mk 13:33). Prayer is always necessary and beneficial for man: it keeps him in communion with God and under God’s protection; it guards him from self-confidence, from the deception of vanity and pride, both those springing from his fallen nature and those brought in thoughts and dreams from the realm of fallen spirits. In times of sorrows and dangers, visible and invisible, prayer is especially necessary: being an expression of the rejection of self-confidence, an expression of reliance on God, it attracts God’s help to us. The Almighty God becomes the actor for the one who prays in his difficult circumstances and brings his servant out of them by His wonderful Providence.

Knowledge of God, living faith, gracious humble-mindedness, pure prayer—these are the characteristics of spiritual reason; they are its constituent parts. Conversely, ignorance of God, unbelief, blindness of spirit, pride, self-confidence, and conceit—these are the characteristics of carnal reasoning. It, not knowing God, not receiving and not understanding the means offered by God to obtain knowledge of God, devises for itself an erroneous, soul-destroying way to acquire knowledge of God, in accordance with its disposition: it asks for “a sign from heaven”. Amen.

(Lk 15:10); Macarius the Great. Discourse 30, ch. 7

Discourse 30, ch. 7

“The Commentary”, on Mt 16

Life of the holy Apostle Peter. The Menaion Reader, June 29. Pinetti, who lived at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, performed similar miracles. Others have performed and continue to perform them

The venerable Ephrem the Syrian. Homily 106. On the Antichrist, pt. 2

The venerable Ephrem the Syrian. Homily 106. On the Antichrist, pt. 2

The venerable Macarius the Great. Discourse 31, ch. 4

“The Commentary”. Explanation on Jn 5

The venerable Ephrem the Syrian. Homily 106, pt. 2

“Look up to heaven (it is most seldom fitting for the practitioner of prayer) for fear (out of caution) of the wicked spirits in the air, for which reason they are called aerial spirits, who produce many and various spiritual deceptions in the air.” Symeon the New Theologian. On the Third Form of Attentiveness. The Philokalia, pt. 1

The venerable Ephrem the Syrian, Homily 106

“The Commentary”. Explanations of the cited passages from the holy Gospel

“The Commentary”. Explanation on Mk 11:13-14

Explanation on (2 Cor 3:18)

Reply 4 to the brother of Saint Niphon of Constantinople

Discourse 1 of the holy John Chrysostom on Pentecost

Homily 36. By the translation of Elder Paisius

The holy Isaac the Syrian. Homily 1

Discourse 7, ch. 4

Saint Thichon of Voronezh. Vol. 15, Letter 103, point 4

Homily 56

Discourse 27, ch. 16

The Alphabetical Patericon

Patrologiae 50, 73. De vitis patrum, lib. 4, cap. 13

The Alphabetical Patericon

Homily 34

The venerable Mark the Ascetic. 226 Chapters on those who think to be justified by works, ch. 6

The Alphabetical Patericon

The Alphabetical Patericon

The venerable Isaiah the Hermit. Homily 27

The venerable Abba Dorotheus. Instruction 7

Reply 130

Homily 37

“The Commentary”. On (Mk 8:11-12)

The holy Isaac the Syrian. Homilies 25, 26, 27, and 28

The Ladder. Homily 26, ch. 52

The holy Isaac the Syrian. Homily 28

Homily 89

The venerable Ephrem the Syrian. Homily 106

The holy Isaac the Syrian. Homily 38

This thought belongs to the holy martyr James the Persian. The Menaion Reader, November 26