Current quote(s) from our Fathers
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One cannot befriend a snake and carry it about in one’s shirt, or attain holiness while pampering
and cherishing the body above its needs. It is the snake’s nature to bite whoever tends it, and the
body’s to defile with sensual pleasure whoever indulges it. When it offends, the body should be
whipped mercilessly like a drunken runaway slave; it should taste the Lord’s scourge. Slavish
nocturnal thing of perishable clay that it is, there must be do dallying allowed it; it must be made
to recognize its true and imperishable mistress. Until you leave this world, do not trust the flesh.
‘The will of the flesh,’ it is said, ‘is hostile to God; for it is not subject to the law of God. The
flesh desires against the Spirit. They that are in the flesh cannot conform to God’s will; but we
are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit’ (c.f. Rom 8:7-9; Gal 5:17).
–St. Hesychius the Priest, “On Watchfulness and Holiness,” # 33, The Philokalia, Vol. 1, p.
168.
