A mother came here with her little child, posessed with a devil, who said to his mother, 'Get up woman, let us go away from here.' She replied, 'I cannot walk any futher,' and the little child said to her, 'I will carry you myself.' I wondered at the devil's tricks and how eager he was to make them...

Abba Gregory said, 'These three things God requires of all the baptized: right faith in the heart, truth on the tongue, temperance in the body.'

Once the order was given at Scetis, 'Fast this week.' Now it happened that some brothers came from Egypt to visit Abba Moses and he cooked something for them. Seeing some smoke, the neighbours said to the ministers, 'Look, Moses has broken the commandment and has cooked something in his cell.' The...

What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as 'play' is perhaps what he Himself takes most seriously. At any rate, the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is...

Abba Peter said that when Abba Macarius received all the brethren in simplicity, some of them asked him why he mixed with them like this. He replied, 'For twelve years I served the Lord, so that he might grant me this gift, and do you all advise me to give it up?'