Words of Gerontissa Gavrilia

2. As for sleep, keeping vigil is enough.

3. There are people who are vigilant about some things, and there are people who are vigilant about all things.

4. Not a knowledge that you learn, but a knowledge that you suffer. That is Orthodox spirituality.

5. Do not desire many things--more than you have, that which is far away. Rather, seek to take care of what you have so as to sanctify it.

6. One thing is education: that we learn how to love God.

7. Nothing is cheaper than money.

8. Better hell here than in the other world.

9. It is not that which we say, but that which we live. It is not what we do, but what we are.

10. I put on the raso (the monastic habit), and I don’t say anything unless asked. The raso speaks.

11. If you have love for the whole world the whole world is beautiful.

12. Someone said that the Christian is one who purifies love and sanctifies activity.

13. We desire our freedom. Why? In order to be slaves to our passions.

14. Conference: When good-for-nothing people gather and decide that nothing can be done.

15. The aim is that even when we have the parasite in the head . . . we have the Paraclete in the heart.

16. We become a replication of heaven with "May Your will be done on earth as in heaven."

17. One who loves does not notice, just as one does not notice that he breathes.

18. When the doors of Heaven are open, so the doors on earth are also open.

19. When the mind (nous) is not scattered in worldly things and is united to God, then the "Good day" that we say becomes a blessing.

20. Every rejection and negativity destroys our work.

21. We must not exist before every image and likeness of the Other.

22. In the beginning of our life we have need of the presence of another to love or befriend. As we progress, the One--God--fills us with such love and His joy that nobody at all is needed. All of this longing for another the soul does in the beginning because it still doesn’t know Whom it loves and therefore thinks it needs a certain person.

23. God often does not desire the act but the intention. It is enough that He sees you are willing to do His command.

24. Jesus Christ gave the golden rule: alone and with the other.

25. When God created us, He gave us life and breathed His Spirit into us. That Spirit is Love. When we lack love, we become corpses and are altogether dead.

26. The Christian must respect the mystery of the existence of everyone and everything.

27. To reach nonexistence, love, love, and love—and so identify completely with the Other, with every other. Then at the end of the day you ask yourself, "Do I want anything? No. Do I need anything? No. Do I lack anything? No." That’s it!