What a great thing it is for a person to have peace within themselves. The peaceful person is truly very happy; it is not the strong, the rich, the famous, or the educated who are happy, but the person who has peace in their heart.
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We don't get married to live happily ever after, to have children, to have a home. No, the main point is to enter the Kingdom of God together, which means that I am ready at any time to pay any price, to make any sacrifice and to endure any difficulty in marriage. Therefore, you cannot break off your marriage at the first difficulty that appears, or even if the difficulty continues, but it must be preserved... Marriage must rest and be built on this foundation, and that the mutual bond is built and strengthened on the joint march of the spouses to the Kingdom of God. This means that one must support the other, and both will move forward together towards the Kingdom of God.
Athanasios of Limassol
We should go to the Liturgy even if we stand there like logs. Someone might say: ‘I'm not what I should be, I don't understand anything there, I can't concentrate.' But go as you are. An elder says: ‘When you enter a perfumery and then leave, your clothes will smell nice, even if you didn't want them to, even if you didn't buy anything.' He says the same thing happens when you go to the Liturgy.
Maybe you couldn't do anything spiritual, but it's already something that you went, that you stood there like a log. So tell yourself: ‘I am going as I am – an unpolished log. Because God can work with an unpolished log.' And if you don't go because you say, ‘I can't concentrate', things will get worse and worse, and you will never improve.
Athanasios of Limassol
