In our prayer we should ask only for the salvation of our soul. Didn't the Lord say, Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you? Easily, without the slightest difficulty, Christ can give us what we want. And remember the secret. The secret is not to think about asking...

The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God--and by filling the world with this eucharist, he tranforms his life, the one that he receives...

It is not accidental, therefore, that the biblical story of the Fall is centered again on food. Man ate the forbidden fruit. The fruit of that one tree, whatever else it may signify, was unlike every other fruit in the Garden: it was not offered as a gift to man. Not given, not blessed by God, it...

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.'