To the Desert Fathers and Mothers fasting and weeping were not simply disciplines, but they were lifestyles that enabled them to embrace a deeper, more intimate union with the Spirit of God.

When external matters define you, you begin to sacrifice your humanity for something material. You are a not an Apple, Android, Honda, Ford, Mac, or PC person. You are you.

This is the power of the gospel, Christ died while we were sinners. He did not die for your perfection, he died for your brokenness.

For most, practical wisdom is not found in systematic approaches. Sure, you can broadly group the sayings and writings into categories like the active and contemplative life, but who is the one being helped with those categories?

“A mind without purity cannot approach the knowledge of God; if it tries, it tires the body out, but without achieving anything.”

“I am aware that the strength of the Lord surrounds my weakness like a wall of bronze, and there is no other power that can rise against it."

"...just as salt is to bread, so also is love to the virtues; and without it, one cannot achieve virtue as he ought. Indeed, love and humility are the sure criteria of all genuine virtue.”

"If we are unable to learn by ourselves things of the arts and sciences...how, then, would it not be foolish and idiotic to believe that we are able to succeed in learning the spiritual arts, which are more difficult and demanding than all the arts and sciences, without a teacher?”

God the Father is, by nature, entirely inseparable from His Word. Therefore, one who receives the Divine commandment, and applies it, receives also the Word of God, Who exists in it.

For a soul cannot be sent into the midst of men for their edification if it has some defect of its own. And those who go before they are made perfect, go at their own will and not at God’s.