Food (or not) for Thought

It has been said that fasting without prayer is only dieting and that prayer without fasting is only mumbling.

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Angels talk all the way while they’re flying you up to heaven. The basic message is where you went wrong before you got dead.

— Daniel, age 9

From one of those emails my wife gets from friends gone by. (Some of you, no doubt, recognize the Toll Houses 🙂

Gluttony makes a man gloomy and fearful, but fasting makes him joyful and courageous. And, as gluttony calls forth greater and greater gluttony, so fasting stimulates greater and greater endurance. When a man realizes the grace that comes through fasting, he desires to fast more and more. And the graces that come through fasting are countless.

— Saint Nikolai of Zicha

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Can Married Folks Be Saved?

Some people living carelessly in the world put a question to me: “How can we who are married and living amid public cares aspire to the monastic life?” I answered: “Do whatever you may. Speak evil of no one. Tell no lie. Despise no one and carry no hate. Do not separate yourself from the church assemblies. Show compassion to the needy. Do not be a cause of scandal to anyone. Stay away from the bed of another, and be satisfied with what your own wives can provide you. If you do all this, you will not be far from the kingdom of heaven.”

— St. John Climacus – The Ladder of Divine Ascent