"The Good God provides each of us with a cross to bear – analogous to the strength of each – not to punish us, but to enable us to climb from that cross to Heaven – because in essence, the cross is a ladder to Heaven."

• St Paisios of Mt Athos

"The Lord hears the prayers of everyone. Only those of the proud He does not accept. But He always accepts the prayers of the humble and those who reproach themselves. The Lord helps us. He cannot abandon us, for He loves us."

• St Anatoly of Optina

`Amo``ng other things, we are baptized to see the cunning, our enemy —the devil. Yes, brothers, let the cunning see how we are overshadowed by the sign of the cross, let him see because he does not like that sign. As he fears Jesus Christ Himself, so he is also cunningly afraid of the sign of Christ—the Cross. The cross is the most reliable weapon against the devil, the strongest protection from him, the sharpest sword against the enemy.

• St Seraphim of Sarov☦️`

"Blessed is the man who uses his sufferings, knowing that all suffering in this brief life is loosed on men by God in His love for mankind, for the benefit and assistance of men. In His mercy, God looses suffering on men because of their sins – by His mercy and not His justice. For, if it were by His justice, every sin would inevitably bring death, as the Apostle says: “Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1: 15). In place of death, God gives healing through suffering. Suffering is God’s way of healing the soul of its sinful leprosy and its death."

• St Nikolai Velimirovich

"Reflect concerning the most glorious miracles of God which have been performed upon His servants from the beginning of the world, and especially of how the Lord, having humbled Himself and suffered for the sake of our salvation, has benefacted and sanctified the human race; and for all this give thanksgiving to God, the Lover of mankind."

• St Paisius Velichovsky

"He hath shewed strength with His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath shewed strength with His arm" means that the Lord, through His incarnation, reigned over the enemies of our salvation, and, having conquered them by His power, and made His Mother Sovereign Queen of heaven and earth, "He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts," that is, the Devil and the powers assisting him, the spirits of evil, He conquered them on the cross, scattering their hordes."

• St John of Kronstadt

"If someone asks you, why do you pray to heartless icons, what is the use of them to you? Tell them that we receive incomparably more benefits from our icons than from the most kind and charitable person; tell them that there always comes from icons gracious power and help to our souls, delivering us from sins, sorrows and diseases, especially from the icons of the Savior and the Mother of God; that a single hearty faith in them, as living and near us, saves us from evil sorrows, passions and spiritual darkness, that if touching the Savior’s robes and the shawls of the apostles made the sick healthy, then the faces of the Savior and Our Lady are strong to heal the believers from all sorrow, by faith in the Lord and the Mother of God."

• St John of Kronstadt

"Every blessing comes from the Lord providentially. But this fact escapes the notice of the ungrateful and the idle."

• St Mark the Ascetic

"If we truly wish to please God and to enjoy the grace of His friendship, we should present to Him an intellect that is stripped bare — not weighed down with anything that belongs to this present life, with any skill or notion or argument or excuse, however highly educated we may be in the wisdom of this world."

• St John of Karpathos