The Catalog of Good Deeds: Life and guidance of the Holy Fathers

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1. Faith is the foundation of all goodness you need both in this life and to secure a good fate in the future everlasting eternity.

2. When our autocratic volition, guided by reason, wants to do good, i.e., to fulfil God’s will, and proves it by deed, it is pleasing unto God, and God helps us in performing those actions. When our foolishness wants to do something contrary to God’s will and insists on committing it, God allows it to happen because he doesn’t restrict our volition. However, He awards us for the first choice and punishes us for the second choice.

3. Our salvation is in our neighbour, and the Lord commands us to seek not our own benefit but the benefit of our neighbour.

4. Pride is the reason for all our disasters and alienation from God… It hides in the heart so well that a person who has it doesn’t notice or understand it unless God sends him a temptation to make it visible.

5. When we make God angry at our sins, we will not succeed in our worldly affairs, either.

6. Teach your children moral values and, when they are worth it and when it’s useful for them, God is able to enrich them or grant them things that they need and that will suffice them.

7. Our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to us what the love of God consists of: “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me” (John 14:21). That is why when we trespass God’s commandments, there is no love of God in us any longer.

8. When you don’t have a lot of time for prayer, use the time that you have. God will accept your will; remember: the publican’s repentance in prayer is pleasing unto God. Be careful not to put a price tag on your prayer: it’s God’s business, not ours.

9. If our thoughts are pure, we see everyone as holy and good. When we see that people are bad, it is caused by our own disposition.

10. You must be aware that every failure is preceded by pride; which is why you have to look at your heart closely and not let that serpent to creep into your heart. Our downfalls make us humble, so you should know that and you will be made free of those passions.

11. You should teach yourself to be patient not when you are rebuked for your actual guilt but when you are innocent and nevertheless scolded and admonished.

12. You have to struggle with your passions both if you live together with other people and if you live alone. However, secluded living is not for everyone, especially those who haven’t defeated their passions—abstract theorizing, rage, guile, and the like. Such people have to learn to defeat their passions through interaction with other people first.

13. Reading spiritual books enlightens our minds and shows us the road to salvation. It nurtures the soul in the same manner as physical food nurtures the body.

14. All our actions are not enough if they are not enlightened by consideration. Consideration is caused by humility. Humility in turn is born out of sorrows.

15. The Kingdom of God is within you, the Lord said (Luke 17:21), i.e., in your heart; so you must look for it in your heart by cleansing it from passions and temptations of the enemy, and by refraining from judgment or finding faults with anyone…

September 20, 2018

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

1. You mustn’t live idly. Instead, do the labour blessed by God. Idleness is the cause of all evil. He who lives in idleness, sins continually. The weak and the elderly, who cannot work, are an exception.

2. Be cautious of all kinds of sin. Treat them like a deadly poison because all kinds of sin offend the Almighty God and make him angry. He who sins is alienated from God and cannot acquire eternal salvation. Beware of the sin that can kill you forever.

3. Do not do what your conscience forbids you to do, for the same actions, which your inerrant conscience forbids, God’s Law forbids, too. Good conscience is in tune with God’s Law <…>

4. Worship God not with your body and outward appearance but with a good conscience, fear, love, obedience, gratitude, prayer, and faith. God is the Spirit that has no shape or substance, and therefore isn’t worshipped by anything other than spirit and truth.

5. Seek to please God with faith and obedience, that is, do what He wants and what He pleases, and do not do what He doesn’t want and what He doesn’t like. Whatever you do, it’s impossible to please God if you aren’t obedient.

6. Be afraid to mention the Name of God jokingly or deceitfully to avoid being punished by God immediately, for our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29).

7. Invoke the Name of your Lord God in the beginning of anything you do, and start with a prayer so that the Lord would help you to begin and to finish your planned action. Hence, a Christian must not do anything that goes contrary to God’s Law; only an action that complies with it.

8. Do not imitate everything other people do. Those who imitate others recklessly, are spoiled and corrupted; evil multiplies every hour and piety dwindles accordingly. Instead, listen to what the Word of God teaches you.

9. True Christians reside in this world like travellers, pilgrims, and strangers, who are always looking for their Heavenly homeland with their spiritual eyes and in faith, and aspire to achieve it. Be a traveller and a pilgrim in this world, and look for the Heavenly homeland, and aspire to achieve it. The world with its lures and lust will be an abomination for you. If you are a person who seeks eternal bliss and wants to receive it, hold all temporary things in contempt so as not to lose the eternal by seeking the ephemeral.

10. Keep away from luxury like you would from a plague. It paralyses a Christian soul, teaching it to steal other people’s property, to harm people and refrain one’s hand from giving alms — which a Christian is expected to do. Luxury is like a gluttonous stomach that knows no satisfaction or like a voracious abyss that devours everything. It needs more and more, and keeps changing things. It leads you to think, “My house isn’t great, I should build a bigger one. My dress isn’t fine, I should have a more fashionable one. I’m ashamed of riding a cab, I should buy a luxurious horse carriage. This meal is bland, why not cook a more delicious one. I don’t want to drink plain wine, I think vodka is better. My servants are poorly dressed, I think I should buy them a more appropriate uniform, etc.” That is how luxury devours everything and debilitates your mind. Beware of luxury. To a natural man, even a little will suffice; lust and luxury demand more and more.

11. Do not adorn your body with snappy clothes, like some people who call themselves Christians have a habit of doing. May your clothes conform to your status. Christian clothes are clothes of your soul. Christians must adorn their souls, not their bodies. The beauty of your soul is the image of God unto which we are created. Seek this beauty, and it will suffice.

12. When in church, focus on what is being read and sung. Affection, true prayer, heartfelt singing, and thankfulness will come as a result of it. Do not allow your mind to wander outside of the church even as your body is present in church, so as not to merit the reproach determined by the Holy Writ, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15: 8). If your body is in church, your spirit must be there with it, for you stand in front of God.

13. Beware of dinners and banquets. It is extremely difficult to go there without damaging your conscience. You won’t return home the same, so take heed. There is nothing better and safer than to stay at home. The things, which your eyes don’t see and your ears don’t hear, will not affect your heart. There is no better way to attract good and God-pleasing thoughts than seclusion and silence. If you mix with a lot of people, you will lose all the good that you’ve earned while alone.

14. If you have to get out of your house and meet somebody, be attentive and guard your heart with all caution. Remember the Lord your God wherever you go. May the holy fear of God be like a candle that lights up your way and directs your steps. Wherever you go and whomever you meet, God is there with you. He knows everything about you. He sees what you do and hears what you say. Therefore, be careful.

15. If you happen to sin or do something wrong, do not be desperate but as soon as you discover that you have sinned, kneel before the merciful God humbly and ask for his mercy with a publican’s prayer, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!” (Cf. Luke 18: 13) — and your sin will be absolved. Amen.

Prepared by The Catalog of Good Deeds

August 26, 2018

Q: I’ve noticed, Elder, that sometimes babies smile at the time of Divine Liturgy.

A: They don’t do that only at the Divine Liturgy. Babies are in constant contact with God, because they’ve got nothing to worry about. What did Christ say about little children? ‘Their angels in heaven continually gaze upon the face of my Father who is in heaven’. They’re in touch with God and with their guardian angel, who’s with them all the time. They smile in their sleep sometimes, and at other times cry, because they see all sorts of things. Sometimes they see their guardian angels and play with them- the angels stroke them, tease them, shake their fists and they laugh. On other occasions they see some kind of temptation and cry.

Q: Why does temptation come to babies?

A: It helps them to feel the need to seek their mothers. If there wasn’t this fear, they wouldn’t need to seek the comfort of being cuddled by their mothers. God allows everything so that it’ll turn out well.

Q: Do they remember what they see as babies when they grow up?

A: No, they forget. If a little child remembered the number of times it had seen its guardian angel, it might fall into pride. That’s why, when it grows up, it forgets. God’s wise in His doings.

Q: Do they see these things after baptism?

A: Of course after baptism.

Q: Elder, is it all right for an unbaptized child to reverence relics?

A: Why not? And they can be blessed with the holy relics. I saw a child today, it was like a little angel. I asked, ‘Where are your wings?’ It didn’t know what to say! At my hermitage, when spring comes and the trees are in blossom, I put sweets on the holm-oaks next to the gate in the fence and I tell the little boys who come: ‘Go on, boys, cut the sweets from the bushes, because if it rains they’ll melt and spoil’. A few of the more intelligent ones know that I’ve put them there and laugh. Others really believe that they’ve grown there and some others have to think about it. Little children need a bit of sunshine.

Q: Did you put lots of sweets, Elder?

A: Well, of course. What could I do? I don’t give good sweets to grown-ups; I just give them Turkish delight. When people bring me nice sweets, I keep them for the kids at the School [the Athoniada]. ‘See, last night I planted sweets and chocolates and today they’ve come up! See that? The weather was good, the soil was well-turned because you’d dug it over well and they came up just like that. See what a flower garden I’ll make for you. We’ll never need to buy sweets and chocolates for kids. Why shouldn’t we have our own produce?’ (Elder Païsios had planted sweets and chocolates in the freshly dug earth and put lilac blossoms on top to make it seem that they were flowering).

Q: Elder, some pilgrims saw the chocolates you planted in the garden because the paper stood out against the soil. They didn’t know what to make of it. ‘Some kid must have put them there’, they said.

A: Why didn’t you tell them that a big kid put them there?

Q: Elder, why does God give people a guardian angel, when He can protect us Himself?

A: That’s God looking after us especially carefully. The guardian angel is God’s providence. And we’re indebted to Him for that. The angels particularly protect little children. And you wouldn’t believe how! There were two children once, playing in the street. One of them aimed at the other to hit him on the head with a stone. The other one didn’t notice. At the last moment, apparently, his angel drew his attention to something else, he leapt up and got out of the way. And then there was this mother who went out into the fields with her baby. She breast-fed it, put it down in its cradle and went off to work. After a bit, she went to check and what did she see? The child was holding a snake and looking at it! When she’d suckled the child, some of the milk had stayed on its lips, the snake had gone to lick it off and the baby had grabbed hold of it. God looks after children.

Q: Elder, in that case, why do so many children suffer from illnesses?

A: God knows what’s best for each of us and provides as necessary. He doesn’t give people anything that’s not going to benefit them. He sees that it’s better for us to have some sort of defect, a disability instead of protecting us from them.

From “Discourses 4, Family Life”, published by the Holy Monastery of

Saint John the Theologian

Source: http://myocn.net/elder-paisios-children-joys-difficulties/

1. God is the perfect good that we must love; sin is the utter evil that we must abhor and disdain. God is the immeasurable ocean of perfection, while sin is the abyss of evil. God is the goodness infinitely higher than all goodness; sin is the evil infinitely worse than all evil.

2. Wake up, O brother, be vigilant and seek to abstain from every kind of sin that defiles you. Upon partaking of the most pure Sacraments, say to yourself, “Now I am the house of God. How can I let myself to convert into the den of sin?”

3. Beloved brother, think about the love that God shows to you in the gift of the Holy Communion. It is in this Sacrament that his love reaches the apex of its perfection. Saint John the Evangelist states that Jesus having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. (John 13: 1). A furnace is known by its heat; similarly, the Lord’s love is known by the Sacrament of the Divine Eucharist.

4. We must love God more than anyone else because it is in him that the plenitude of all virtues—beauty, wisdom, might, holiness, majesty, goodness, infiniteness, life, peace, liberty, glory, justice, and salvation—abounds. All these are not God but they are God’s qualities.

5. The true sacrifice is almsgiving, doing all kinds of good, and cutting off passions.

6. When a pious and virtuous soul does not purify itself from minor sins, they do a lot of damage because if they remain in the soul for too long, it starts to pay attention to them; hence, chastity of virtue and the fragrance of the Divine grace withdraw from it, and it becomes extremely difficult for such a soul to achieve perfection.

7. The vocation of a Christian is that of a warrior. Regardless of how tempting worldly pleasures might appear, they can’t overcome a Christian warrior.

8. Faith is the power that dwells in the mind and the will of a human being. One’s mind is kindled by the heavenly light and stores the truths revealed to it by the Lord. Likewise, one’s will is moved by God to do everything that is true and is guided by the mind. When one’s faith is powerless, one’s mind can’t grasp God’s mysteries, while the will doesn’t want to love them even before the mind comprehends them.

9. You might ask: is it a sin to sleep peacefully, eat and drink well, and have fun? This is a question that you justify yourself with because, although it isn’t a sin, it encourages you to sin. It prevents you from tasting spiritual gifts from God.

10. It is hard to describe how pride devastates one’s soul. Consider this: the worst evil in this world is sin; the greatest good is Divine grace. Pride is the root of all evil. It opposes God’s grace and does us immense harm. It is the worst of mortal sins because it leads one to commit all other sins.

11. Christ and pride cannot coexist in one’s heart: where there is pride, there is no Christ, and vice versa.

12. O wretched man, do you want to know what you really are like? Consider this: Prophet Isaiah says that the nations are as a drop of a bucket before God (Is. 40: 15). Now divide that drop into the number of all people, dead and living and those who will live after we die, and see how tiny each of us is. You are that tiny particle of a drop of a bucket. Your powers are as negligible as you are. You are nothing, and your power is zero. You’ve solved this problem, now be proud of yourself, if you can. If you continue to think high of yourself even after that, behold: you’re very close to failure…

13. Persevere in this life so as not to hear the dreadful words of Christ, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things (Luke 16:25). Understand at last that the Heavenly Kingdom is achieved by those who exert themselves, as the Lord said, The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force (Matthew 11:12), and not by those who sit idle and comfortable.

14. While we are alive, we can turn our lives into the time of repentance and cling to the merciful Lord who is always ready to forgive us and grant us everlasting bliss in his paradise, even though we often forget about our sins.

15. Do not praise yourself and do not seek to be the first. Do not attempt to look better than others because that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God (Luke 16:15). Remember that the Lord can tolerate any of your sins except pride. Bring to mind the mockery, the insults, and the disgrace that Jesus Christ endured on the Cross. It will help you to humble yourself down.

From Homilies by St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

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