“Since we are human beings, it is not in our nature to pursue birds through the air or fly as they do. Similarly, without watchful and frequent prayer we cannot prevail over bodiless, demonic thoughts, or fix the eye of the nous fully and intently upon God. Without such prayer, we merely hunt after earthly things.”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 181
“In this way the soul can attain in the Lord that state of beauty, loveliness and integrity in which it was created by God in the beginning. As Antony, the great servant of God, said, ‘Holiness is achieved when the nous is in its natural state.’ And again he said: ‘The soul realizes its integrity when its nous is in that state in which it was created.’ And shortly after this he adds: ‘Let us purify our mind, for I believe that when the mind is completely pure and is in its natural state, it gains penetrating insight, and it sees more clearly and further than the demons, since the Lord reveals things to it.’”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 179
“The fruit starts in the flower; and the guarding of the nous begins with self-control in food and drink, the rejection of all evil thoughts and abstention from them, and stillness of heart.”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 165
“Just as it is impossible to cross the sea without a boat, so it is impossible to repulse the provocation of an evil thought without invoking Jesus Christ.”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 142
“Aaron, the brother of Moses, is an ikon of the outer self. On this account we too should bring angry accusations against our outer self as Moses did against Aaron when he sinned: ‘In what way did Israel do you wrong, that you should hasten to turn them from the Lord, the living God and Ruler of all?’”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 140
“The Fathers regard Moses the Lawgiver as an ikon of the nous. He saw God in the burning bush; his face shone with glory; he was made a god to Pharaoh by the God of gods; he flayed Egypt with a scourge; he led Israel out of bondage and gave laws. These happenings, when seen metaphorically and spiritually, are activities and privileges of the nous.”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 139
“The Old Testament is an ikon of outward bodily asceticism. The Holy Gospel, or New Testament, is an ikon of attentiveness, that is, of purity of heart. For the Old Testament did not perfect or fulfill the relationship of the inner self to God — ‘the law made no one perfect,’ as the Apostle says — it simply forbade bodily sins. But to cut off evil thoughts from the heart, as the Gospel commands, contributes much more to purity of soul than an injunction against putting out a neighbor’s eye or knocking out his teeth.”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 112
“Many of our thoughts come from demonic provocation, and from these derive our evil outward actions. If with the help of Jesus we instantly quell the thought, we will avoid its corresponding outward action. We will enrich ourselves with the sweetness of divine knowledge and so will find God, who is everywhere. Holding the mirror of the nous firmly towards God, we will be illumined constantly as pure glass is by the sun. Then the intellect, having reached the term of its desires, will in Him cease from all other contemplation.”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 88
“He who relies on theoretical knowledge alone is not yet a faithful servant; a faithful servant is one who expresses his faith in Christ through obedience to His commandments.”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 80
“Humility and ascetic hardship free a man from all sin, for the one cuts out the passions of the soul, the other those of the body. It is for this reason that the Lord says: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ They shall see God and the riches that are in Him when they have purified themselves through love and self-control; and the greater their purity, the more they will see.”
St Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 75
