St.Ambrose of Optina
Commemoration
October 10/23
Aleksander Mikhaylovich Grenkov
(December 5, 1812 – October 23, 1891) was a starets and a hieroschemamonk in Optina Monastery, canonized in the 1988 convention of the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In the history of Russia, as in world history, there are saints who serve as “milestones,’ as it were, on the road to the Most High. One such righteous one was St. Ambrose of Optina.
So let us rejoice today in the memory of St. Ambrose of Optina, one of the last staretzs of the XIX and XX century. To him came for advice Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and Rosanov, and many of those intellectuals who were seeking for the fullness of life and who expressed it at times in a way so accessible and so powerful. It is to him, a simple man with good education but no literary or other genius but who had one genius — the knowledge of God, and another — he was given by God the grace to see the hearts of men, to see the minds of men and to respond to their need.
We can’t become dispassionate right this second, you know, but each time that you feel your sinfulness, say, “Lord, forgive me!” The Lord alone is able to put love into a person’s heart.
Don’t think that you can suddenly correct your bad habits, but only gradually, with God’s help.
In order for a person to correct himself, he shouldn’t apply himself suddenly all at once, but like they drag a barge: ‘Pull-pull-pull, slack off, slack off!’ Not everything all at once, but a little at a time.
Do you know the rozhon on a ship? It is the pole to which all the ship’s ropes are tied; and if you pull on it gently, little by little everything is drawn; but if you grab it all at once, then you spoil everything from the shock.
Original quote
Quotes from Russian saints
