St. Augustine: "Shed over me Your light"

"GOD, OUR FATHER, who exhortest us to pray, who also bringest this about, that supplication is made to You; since when we make supplication to You, we live better, and are better: hear me groping in these glooms, and stretch forth Your right hand to me. Shed over me Your light, revoke me from my wanderings; bring Yourself into me that I may likewise return into You. Amen."

~St. Augustine: Soliloquies, Book II, 9.

St. John Climacus: "A Christian is an imitator of Christ"

“A transgressor is someone who observes the divine law only in his own depraved fashion and holds on to heretical belief in opposition to God. A Christian is an imitator of Christ in thought in thought, word and deed, as far as humanly possible, and he believes rightly and blamelessly in the Holy Trinity. A friend of God is the one who lives in communion with all that is natural and free from sin and who does not neglect to do what good he can.”

~St. John Climacus (A.D. 579 - 649): The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 1.

St. John of the Ladder

“God’s angry man, His crotchety scholar"

[Just for fun....a poem about the temperamental St. Jerome]

THE THUNDERER

God’s angry man, His crotchety scholar
Was Saint Jerome,
The great name-caller
Who cared not a dime
For the laws of Libel
And in his spare time
Translated the Bible.
Quick to disparage
All joys but learning
Jerome thought marriage
Better than burning;
But didn’t like woman’s
Painted cheeks;
Didn’t like Romans,
Didn’t like Greeks,
Hated Pagans
For their Pagan ways,
Yet doted on Cicero all of his days.

A born reformer, cross and gifted,
He scolded mankind
Sterner than Swift did;
Worked to save
The world from the heathen;
Fled to a cave
For peace to breathe in,
Promptly wherewith
For miles around
He filled the air with
Fury and sound.
In a mighty prose
For Almighty ends,
He thrust at his foes,
Quarreled with his friends,
And served his Master,
Though with complaint.
He wasn’t a plaster sort of a saint.

But he swelled men’s minds
With a Christian leaven.
It takes all kinds
To make a heaven.

—From Times Three: Selected Verses From Three Decades With Seventy New Poems, by Phyllis McGinley.

St. Gregory of Nyssa: "Consider your royal dignity!"

“O MAN, scorn not that which is admirable in you! You are a

poor thing in your own eyes, but I would teach you that in reality you are a great thing! . . . Realize what you are! Consider your royal dignity! The heavens have not been made in God’s image as you have, nor the moon, nor the sun, nor anything to be seen in creation. . . . Behold, of all that exists there is nothing that can contain your greatness.”

~St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395): In cantica, homily 2.

St. Leo I: The Epiphany

"THE DAY, dearly-beloved, on which Christ the Saviour of the world first appeared to the nations must be venerated by us with holy worship: and today those joys must be entertained in our hearts which existed in the breasts of the three magi, when, aroused by the sign and leading of a new star, which they believed to have been promised, they fell down in presence of the King of heaven and earth. For that day has not so passed away that the mighty work, which was then revealed, has passed away with it, and that nothing but the report of the thing has come down to us for faith to receive and memory to celebrate; seeing that, by the oft-repeated gift of God, our times daily enjoy the fruit of what the first age possessed."

~Pope St. Leo I (c. 395-461 AD): Excerpt from Sixth Sermon on the Epiphany. (Sermon 36)

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"The Magi Journeying" (Les rois mages en voyage) by James Tissot
(French, 1836-1902).
Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper,
1894; Brooklyn Museum.

St. Anthony the Great to the monks

"Let it be your supreme and common purpose not to grow weary in the work you have begun, and in time of trial and affliction not to lose courage and say: Oh, how long already have we been mortifying ourselves! Rather, we should daily begin anew and constantly increase our fervor. For man's whole life is short when measured against the time to come, so short, in fact, that it is as nothing in comparison with eternity. . . . Therefore, my children, let us persevere in our acts of asceticism. And that we may not become weary and disheartened, it is good to meditate on the words of the apostle: 'I die daily.' If we live with the picture of death always before our eyes, we will not sin. The apostle's words tell us that we should so awaken in the morning as though we would not live to evening, and so fall asleep as if there were to be no awakening. For our life is by nature uncertain and is daily meted out to us by Providence. If we are convinced of this and live each day as the apostle suggests, then we will not fall into sin; no desire will enslave us, no anger move us, no treasure bind us to earth; we will await death with unfettered hearts."

~St. Anthony the Great ("Father of Monks") (AD 250-356) 

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"Temptation of St. Anthony" by Lelio Orsi.
Oil on canvas, 1570s; The Getty Center

St. Augustine: The definition of a Christian

"He is a Christian who follows the way of Christ, who imitates Christ in all things, as is written: "He who says that he abides in Christ ought himself to walk just as He walked." He is a Christian who shows mercy to all, who is not disturbed by any injury, who does not permit the poor to be oppressed in his presence, who assists the needy and helps those in want, who sympathizes with the sorrowful and feels the grief of another as his own, whose goods all share and no one feels slighted, who serves God day and night, who reflects and meditates on His precepts at all times, who makes himself poor in this world to become rich in the eyes of God, who suffers himself to be despised among men that he may please God and the angels, who is seen to hold nothing concealed in his heart, whose soul is simple and spotless, whose conscience is faithful and pure, whose whole thought is directed to God, and whose whole hope is in Christ, who desires heavenly rather than earthly possessions, who contemns earthly goods in order to acquire divine. As for those who love this world and who are content and well pleased with this life, hear what the Scripture says to them: "Do you not know that the friendship of this world is enmity with God?" Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of this world becomes an enemy of God."

~St. Augustine