Gregory Palamas

“To the Most Reverend Nun Xenia online at orthodoxchurchfathers.com”

“Some people, because their minds have gone so long without nourishment, lose their desire to eat and so do not notice the harm they are suffering.”

“Famine means being deprived of and desiring necessary food. But there is something worse and more wretched than this famine: when someone is deprived of the necessary means of salvation and does not perceive his misfortune, having no desire to be saved.”

“Thanksgiving for the benefits received from God is made acceptable by humility and not looking down on those who lack them. It is rendered unacceptable, however, by being conceited, as if those benefits resulted from our own efforts and knowledge, and by condemning those who have not received them.”

“Anybody who thinks he is something great, even before God, is rightly abandoned by God, as one who thinks that he does not need His help.”

“Let us take off our life’s complex covering of rapacity and greed, since it is ugly in God’s sight and condemned, and let us put on, as the elect of God, compassion, humility, modesty and meekness.”

“Anyone who states that God should not have made those people who will be punished, is also saying that He should not have made those who will be saved, or any rational and free beings at all.”

“How can someone have the freedom to choose and the power to act freely, unless he were able to be evil, should he so wish?”

“Do you see? There exists a kind of knowledge that is without love. It does not purify the psyche in any way, but kills it, as it lacks the love that is the head, the body, and very root of all virtue.”

“The summit of evil, the crime most natural to the devil, pride, was born of knowledge. But if this is so, how can it be possible that all the passions result from ignorance? Does knowledge purify the psyche? Paul says: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Corinthians 8:1).”

“As the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. And this death of the soul is the true death.”

“The soul completely dominated by its desire for spiritual instruction is never sated.It is because of this that Wisdom says of herself, 'Those who eat Me will still be hungry' (Eccles. 24:21); while the Lord, who has instilled this divine desire in the soul, says of Mary who chose 'what is best' that it will not be taken away from her (cf. Luke 10:42).”

“Anyone who considers himself guilty before God and repents must believe that the reproach and contempt of others towards him is just and to be endured.”