☦️ Prayer must be imageless ☦️
"Hence we ought to abandon all other things and as intelligent beings cleave to the intelligence, offering with the intelligence intelligible worship to the divine Intelligence. Then we will be found worthy to receive from Him in this present age, in return for human words, the divine words of the Holy Spirit. For it is said of God that He 'gives prayer to him who prays' (1 Sam. 2:9. LXX); and indeed to one who truly prays the prayer of the body God gives the prayer of the intellect; and to one who diligently cultivates the prayer of the intellect, God gives the imageless and formless prayer that comes from the pure fear of Him.
St Peter of Damascus

☦️🕯️“The Church, through the temple and Divine service, acts upon the entire man, educates him wholly; acts upon his sight, hearing, smelling, feeling, taste, imagination, mind, and will, by the splendour of the icons and of the whole temple, by the ringing of bells, by the singing of the choir, by the fragrance of the incense, the kissing of the Gospel, of the cross and the holy icons, by the prosphoras, the singing, and sweet sound of the readings of the Scriptures.”🕯️☦️

♰ St. John of Kronstadt ♰

☦️🕯In ancient times, tax collectors would sit along the roads and extract from travelers the money they believed was due to them. They acted with such savage cruelty that the church fathers saw in this a metaphor of the demonic encounters the soul will have after death, which is why even St. John Chrysostom referred to these demons as “persecutors, publicans, and tax-collectors.”🕯☦️

“Your Lord is Love: love Him and in Him all men, as His children in Christ.
Your Lord is a fire: do not let your heart be cold, but burn with faith and love.
Your Lord is light: do not walk in darkness of mind, without reasoning or understanding, or without faith.
Your Lord is a God of mercy and bountifulness: be also a source of mercy and bountifulness to your neighbours.
If you will be such, you will find Salvation yourself with everlasting glory.”
- Saint John of Kronstadt

☦️ For someone who desires spiritual rebirth, the first step towards the light is to curtail the passions, that is to say, to guard the heart; for it is impossible otherwise to curtail the passions. The next stage is to devote oneself to psalmody; for when the passions have been curtailed and laid to rest through the heart's resistance against them, longing for intimate union with God inflames the intellect.
St Symeon the New Theologian

saw Her spread Her Omophorion and pray to Her Son that the Lord Jesus Christ would receive every person who prays to him and calls upon Her, the Mother of Jesus Christ, for help. It was a wondrous vision, but the question arises: aren't there many miraculous visions in life? Should we make a holiday out of every miraculous vision? There have been thousands of miraculous visions in the life of the Church, and there will be thousands more. Should we turn every vision into a holiday? No. So why did they turn this vision into a holiday? Because in this vision, the Church discerned a certain general principle of life.
It turns out that this isolated incident revealed a general principle of heavenly life and our earthly existence. That is, the prayers of the Mother of God are a constant protection and unceasing defense, an intercession for the human race before God. And on this feast, we unite all the instances when the Mother of God saves either an individual or entire nations. How many cities, how many individuals have received salvation, enlightenment, raising from sickbeds, rescue in war, deliverance from prison through the prayers of the Mother of God! All this is the Feast of the Protection. These millions of instances, past and future, are contained Here, on this Feast of the Protection, when the Mother of God prays to Her Son for all people, especially for those who believe in the One She bore.
Archpriest Andrew Tkachev

🌟🙏 When God in His love condemned Adam to death after his transgression, he first experienced this death in his soul (Gen 3:19): his spiritual and deathless organs of perception, deprived of their celestial and spiritual enjoyment, were quenched and became as though dead. Later, after 930 years (Gen 5:5), came the death of the body. Similarly, now that God has reconciled mankind through the Cross and death of the Savior, He restores to the truly believing soul its enjoyment of spiritual light and mystery while it is still in the flesh, and once more enlightens its spiritual organs of perception with the divine light of grace. Later He will invest the body also with deathless and incorruptible glory.
St Makarios the Great

🌟 Archangels and angels with John the Forerunner, John the Divine and the choir of all the saints, were present with Thee, their Queen, in the Church of the Blachernae and hearing Thy moving supplication for all the world, they cried out with wonder as follows:
Rejoice, O pre-eternal good will of God the Father Who has no beginning of days.
Rejoice, timeless and most pure who contained God the Son.
Rejoice, Thou chosen dwelling-place of God the all-holy Spirit.
Rejoice, Thou never-ceasing wonder of the angelic hosts on high.
Rejoice, Thou all-threatening terror of the dark forces of hell.
Rejoice, Thou whom the many-eyed cherubim meet in the air.
Rejoice, Thou to whom the six-winged Seraphim ascribe praises.
Rejoice, Thou whose most precious veil we born on earth thankfully venerate.
Rejoice, our Joy, protect us from every ill by Thy precious Veil.