PURCHASE HARD COPY OF THIS BOOK >> Booklet 6 of 12 from a series of talks given by Priest Daniel Sysoev entitled “How to Inherit Eternal Life.” Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God. There is a heart that is the focal point of our spirit, and into it we must enter during prayer. Prayer however must involve not only the soul, but also the body, which is an integral…

In Holy Scripture the Holy Spirit teaches us to marvel at our own nature, and Saint Justin (Popovic) said that, after God, man is the most mysterious creature in the universe. Man is directly linked to the Creator, not only by virtue of his creation but in a special way: he is created in the image of God, and hence from the beginning he has been a being that is focused on the heights, striving ever upward.

Curbing gluttony and avarice is a means of curbing self-love, and not an end in itself. Some passions run deeper, while others are more superficial. The latter emerge from the former, like a stalk from the root. The very first passion was the passion of egoism, in which a person considers himself the most important thing in the world.

The sin of envy is one of the three sins belonging to Satan himself. The apostle Paul says that there is no place for an envious person in the Kingdom of God. No other passion so destructive to a person is spawned in the human soul. Despondency—or, as it is called in the world, depression—is a sin that is very widespread today and a great boon to the pharmaceutical industry.

From the beginning inequality was established in the world, for it is a great blessing, and it will remain for all time. If there is inequality in the world there must also be a force to harmonize that inequality, that everything in the universe might find its place in this choir.

The prototypical father is God, just as the mother must model her parenting after the Mother Church. Holy Scripture never permits a person to arrange his life “on autopilot”: it requires that every action a person takes, particularly those of importance such as the relationship between children and parents, be arranged on the basis of the commands of the Lord God Himself.