God and You Quotes

“Father Matta El-Maskeen, a Coptic Orthodox priest, has written, So we receive the power of the resurrection in baptism when we undergo burial in the water, but it remains an invisible and unsubstantiated resurrection power until it is put into effect in earnest spiritual living. It is like the case of a child who is born with the natural ability to stand on his feet and walk, but remains unable to do either before he develops and grows strong.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“For too many of us religion has come by inheritance. We have never said to God as Job did, “I had heard of You, Lord, by the hearing of the ear, but now I have seen You.” In other words, “Now I have seen You with my own eyes. Now I know you personally.” Most of us have become disciples of the disciples of the disciples of someone in the past who had personally experienced God. But it is impossible to transmit real love or commitment this way.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“THE MAGIC OF LOVE

The magic of personal love works miracles as this true story testifies:

Even one person’s intimate love can deeply heal another. For example,Tom, a simple person without training in psychotherapy, worked as an orderly in a mental hospital. One of the sickest patients in the hospital, a deeply psychotic woman, had been there for eighteen years. She never spoke to anyone, or even looked in another’s eyes. She sat alone all day in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth. One day during his dinner break, Tom found another rocking chair, pulled it over, and rocked along beside her as he ate his dinner. He returned the next day, and the next. Tom worked only five days per week, but he asked for special permission to come in on his days off so he could rock with the psychotic woman. Tom did this every day for six months. Then one evening as he got up to leave, the woman said, “Good night.”
It was the first time she had spoken in eighteen years. After that, she began to get well. Tom still came to rock with her every day, and eventually she was healed of her psychosis.*

*Healing the Eight Stages of Life. M. Linn, S. Fabricant, D. Linn. Paulist Press. 1988.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair, “said G.K. Chesterton.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“Someone said once, “If you want to fill a dozen milk bottles, you must not stand back and spray them with a hose. You can get them wet, but you won’t fill them. You must take them one by one.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“Again, as wine when drunk helps to put an end to our sorrow and brings gladness to the heart, so also the spiritual wine brings joy to the soul. - St. John Chrysostom”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“You cannot wait to be in the mood of prayer; you have to use the spur of your Prayer Rule to force yourself to pray,” as Sergei Fudel writes in his excellent book Light in the Darkness.[xliii”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“How can one pray the daily hours and not develop, as a result, a deeply personal relationship with Jesus?”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“Although the baptismal Christ and the indwelling Paraclete never cease for one moment to work within us, most of us - save on rare occasions - remain virtually unaware of this inner presence and activity. The prayer, then, signifies the rediscovery and manifestation of baptismal grace. To pray is to pass from the state where grace is present in our hearts secretly and unconsciously, to the point of full inner perception and conscious awareness when we experience and feel the activity of the Spirit directly and immediately. In the words of St. Kallistos and St. Ignatios (14th century),”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“prays.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“The Orthodox Church, as did the early Christians, does not separate the personal from the communal. We do not confuse “personal” with “individual.” Our personal relationship with Jesus is anchored on our communal relationship to the Church as the nurturing and soul-sustaining Body of Christ.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“God can and does make His presence felt. He can and does speak to you in the silence of your soul. He can and does warm and thrill you until you no longer doubt that He is near. You cannot force such experience from God. He gives it freely. He gave it to Abraham, Moses and the saints. There is not one to whom God refuses His closer presence. But you have to ask... and ask... and ask. Seek... and seek... and seek. Knock... and knock... and knock. You have to be persistent and be willing to spend time with Him.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“We can consider our church attendance a failure if we do not experience this emotion.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“All sin is against love. Our relationship to God is like the intimate relationship of husband and wife. As such, sin is infidelity to love. When we sin, we break not just a commandment; we break God’s heart, as the heart of one partner in marriage is broken when the other is unfaithful. Sin is personal unfaithfulness to Christ our Bridgegroom.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“How often people come to us, children to parents, wives to husbands, friends to friends, trying to unload their burdens, and as we sit there listening, our minds and hearts are thousands of miles away. If we were completely present to each other, we would rightfully expect miracles to happen. To be completely present to others is to help them experience the personal love of God.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“ON BEING COMPLETELY PRESENT

Mark Von Doren said once:

“There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who do it to the limit of their ability.

…We can be completely present. We can be all there. We can control the tendency of our minds to wander from the situation we are in, toward yesterday, toward tomorrow, toward something we have forgotten, toward some other place we are going next. It is hard to do this, but it is harder to understand afterward wherein it was we fell so short. It was where and when we ceased to give our entire attention to the person, the opportunity before us.

…Those who have fewest regrets are those who take each moment as it comes for all that it is worth. It will never come again, for worse or better. It is ours alone; we can make it what we will.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“The teacher was still alive, so he sought her out and asked the old but still alert lady what magic formula she had used to pull these boys out of the slums into successful achievement.

The teacher’s eyes sparkled and her lips broke into a gentle smile. “It’s really very simple,” she said. “I loved those boys.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person

“Relationships, with all the pain and joy they bring, are an inherent part of life, as unavoidable as breathing. After all, we are all born in relationship. We are conceived in the relationship of husband and wife. Nine months later we emerge, not from an egg to hatch on its own, but from the womb, wet and bawling, literally tied to our mother. We are programmed from the beginning, from the moment that first tie (the umbilical cord) is severed, we are programmed to feel that we are relational beings dependent on one another. Relationships are central to our lives. Our learning, our work, the discovery of ourselves all depends on relationships. We cannot truly know ourselves if we do not have another person to relate to. Of course, the most important relationship for us Christians is our relationship with God Whom we are called to know and love with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength in order to establish thereby a relationship of love with our neighbor. Thus, the first and greatest commandment “You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart…and your neighbor as yourself,” is a personal call to love and commitment.”
― Anthony M. Coniaris, God and You: Person to Person