Curbing gluttony and avarice is a means of curbing self-love, and not an end in itself. Some passions run deeper, while others are more superficial. The latter emerge from the former, like a stalk from the root. The very first passion was the passion of egoism, in which a person considers himself the most important thing in the world.

The sin of envy is one of the three sins belonging to Satan himself. The apostle Paul says that there is no place for an envious person in the Kingdom of God. No other passion so destructive to a person is spawned in the human soul. Despondency—or, as it is called in the world, depression—is a sin that is very widespread today and a great boon to the pharmaceutical industry.

From the beginning inequality was established in the world, for it is a great blessing, and it will remain for all time. If there is inequality in the world there must also be a force to harmonize that inequality, that everything in the universe might find its place in this choir.

The prototypical father is God, just as the mother must model her parenting after the Mother Church. Holy Scripture never permits a person to arrange his life “on autopilot”: it requires that every action a person takes, particularly those of importance such as the relationship between children and parents, be arranged on the basis of the commands of the Lord God Himself.

The coming resurrection of the dead and the renewal of the universe is not the result of some natural process, but is rather the direct effect of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. From Him proceeds the source of immortal life for all that exists. The kingdom of God is possible on this corruptible earth, and it has already come!

В этой небольшой книжке излагается цельное и последовательное учение святителя Феофана Затворника о молитве. Начиная с азов науки молитвенной, святитель учит, как возгревать и сохранять молитвенный дух в продолжение дня, как сочетать молитву с другими добродетелями и как, наконец, подняться к вершине молитвенной жизни – к молитве непрестанной с всецелым преданием себя воле Божией.