{"id":2246,"date":"2017-11-05T01:21:15","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T22:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/?p=2246"},"modified":"2017-11-05T01:21:15","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T22:21:15","slug":"elder-thaddeus-of-serbia-sayings-of-instruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/2246\/elder-thaddeus-of-serbia-sayings-of-instruction\/","title":{"rendered":"Elder Thaddeus of Serbia, Sayings of Instruction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/?p=2246\" target=\"_top\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 0 17px;text-indent:0;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/frthad.jpg\" alt=\"Thaddeus of Serbia\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Spiritual life is noetic life, which is higher than all the desires and feelings of this world. <\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Communion with God is the normal spiritual state.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The first step to communion with God is to give ourselves up to God completely. <\/p>\n<p>\u2014 A soul which has given itself up to God\u2019s will does not fear anything and is not troubled by anything.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 As well as keeping peace in your heart, practice standing before the Lord. This means constantly keeping in mind the fact that the Lord is looking at us.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The mind, the will and the heart are at one among the enlightened, but among the unenlightened they are most often divided and many human misfortunes result from this.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The pure heart will see God but the impure will feel shame to eternity.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The Lord looks into our hearts and when we turn to Him from the heart, He immediately consoles us.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 There is no such thing as an unforgivable sin except for an unrepentant for sin.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The sign that a sin has been forgiven is if the sin is repeated and there is still peace in the soul.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The thoughts that we give ourselves up to define our life.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Even the slightest thought that is not founded on love destroys peace.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Cease to think evil of your superiors or colleagues at work, change your evil thoughts to good ones and you will see how the behaviour of your one time \u2018enemies\u2019 will change.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Just as even a tiny speck of dust which has got into your eye can stop you seeing, so also a small care about some irrelevant matter can stop you praying.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 To pray is to draw energy from the Source of life.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Humility is a Divine characteristic. Where there is humility, whether in the family or in society, it always spreads Divine peace and joy.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 He who is humble is utterly content with what God has given him and he is happy at heart. Such people feel sorry for those who do not want or do not know how to amend their lives.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Here on earth we frequently experience many misfortunes and hardships, but all of these are because we have not humbled ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sometimes the Lord reveals to us in our thoughts the answers to various questions and mysteries, but sometimes He is silent, so that we might turn to others for advice and so become humble.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 We can find something edifying in everybody\u2019s life. Even the worst thief has something good in him.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Life here on earth is unceasing physical and spiritual warfare.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Divine life cannot bear selfishness.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 When you find a soul akin to your own, stay with it, for it is a great joy to make friends with those who think alike.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Today all civilization is directed towards distracting the attention of people, especially of the young, from themselves, from the self, from looking inside, into the heart.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The world is ever more sunk into sin and evil and confuses love and passion, yet love and passion have nothing in common. Love is God and passion is what comes from evil spirits.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 We scorn our politicians who are in power, yet they are our children. We were the ones who were wrong before them, for we set them living examples which they could only equal.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 There are no atheists! They do not exist. Even the enemy believes and trembles, only he does not do good.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 50 years of Communism have caused us far more evil than 500 years of the Turkish yoke. Communism removed people from God.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 We suffer because our thoughts and desires are evil. We are ourselves the cause of our sufferings, for there is no repentance among our people. There is repentance neither among believers, nor among unbelievers.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Grace is Divine strength which is active everywhere, but especially in the souls of those who seek the source of life, who seek God.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 We cannot keep inner peace if our conscience reproaches us for something. First of all we must make peace with our conscience.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Repentance means changing our lives, abandoning the old man with all his evil habits and turning to God and the truth, so that we can be peaceful, still, good and meek.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 If your parents are atheists and you are a believer, do not reproach or taunt them with your faith but pray for them and be good to them.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 We must help people to know their faith.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 We must not preach from our heads but from our hearts. Only what is said from the heart can reach another heart.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 It is dangerous to be strict with others.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Those who are strict with others can only reach a certain level in spiritual life. They remain at the stage of physical asceticism.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 As is our relationship to our neighbor, so is our relationship to God.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Our neighbor is he who seeks our help.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 As long as we pay attention to the negative sides of those we meet, we will not find peace or quiet.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The fear of God is not the instinctive animal fear of this world. That is a hellish quality. We live in a constant state of fear: what will happen tomorrow, in the future? The fear of God is similar to that when you love someone from your heart and you are careful not to offend him or annoy him with your whole being, not only through your actions, but through your thoughts too.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 There is not a single being who is perfect. We can only be perfect with God; without Him it is impossible.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 A family which is pleasing to God must be filled with love, nobility, meekness, humility, piety and prayerfulness.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 When a child is born he cries because he does not know what sins await him. But when someone dies, he is happy because he enters into eternal life. Then everyone around him cries because they have to stay here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2014 Spiritual life is noetic life, which is higher than all the desires and feelings of this world. \u2014 Communion with God is the normal spiritual state. \u2014 The first step to communion with God is to give ourselves up to God completely. \u2014 A soul which has given itself up to God\u2019s will does [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[332,2379,166,94,682,5650],"class_list":["post-2246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orthodox-christianity","tag-bible","tag-christian-theology","tag-christianity","tag-new-testament","tag-repentance","tag-thaddeus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}