November 23, 2013

Holy Fathers on the Name of God: St. Nicephorus of Constantinople

“In truth, just as churches receive the name of their holy patron saints, so also images of those saints have their names written on them, for it is what is written on them [the name] that makes them holy.”

(Discours contre les iconoclastes, Nicéphore de Constantinople, Marie-José Mondzain-Baudinet, trad., Paris, Éditions Klincksieck, III, 54, 1989, pp. 259-260.)

November 17, 2013

Holy Fathers on the Name of God: St. Peter of Kiev


"Let us glorify the Unoriginate Father and His Only-begotten Son, Christ our God, and the All-pure, All-good, Life-creating Spirit. For this is how the faithful glorify the All-holy Name of God and with that Divine Power we are delivered from the visible and invisible enemies in this age and in the age to come."
First Epistle of St. Peter, Metropolitan of Kiev Lives of the Russian Saints, Optina 1993, p. 568

November 5, 2013

Holy Fathers on the Name of God: St. Hesychius the Presbyter


Truly blessed is the man whose mind and heart are as closely attached to the Jesus Prayer and to the ceaseless invocation of His Name as air to the body or flame to the wax. The sun rising over the earth creates daylight; and the venerable and holy Name of the Lord Jesus, shining continually  in the mind, gives birth to countless intellections radiant as the sun.


St. Hesychius  the Presbyter, On Watchfulness and Holiness, 196.
(The Philokalia, Vol. I, trans. Palmer, et al)