John of Kronstadt

John of Kronstadt

John of Kronstadt (born Ivan Ilyich Sergiev; November 19, 1829, Sura, Arkhangelsk Governorate — January 2, 1908) is a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church, a priest, an ascetic, a wonderworker, and a Russian ultranationalist.

A

• Adam and Eve ruined themselves through gluttony.

— My Life in Christ, 1:809

• Arius, the heretic, reduced the Creator to the rank of creatures and did not recognize Him as consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, a single Being with Him and the Holy Spirit.

— The Living Ear of Grain

• Avarice is from the devil, generosity is from God.

— My Life in Christ, 1:691

• All Israel shall be saved (Rom. 11:26), all Israel, that is, the true Israelites, like Nathanael, of whom the Lord said: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (John 1:47). These are the Israelites who will be saved. The majority of Jews, because of their cunning and countless unrepented evil deeds, will perish. Change quickly with a good change, every Christian, as long as the doors of God’s mercy are not closed to you. Do works of mercy, while it is day; the night is coming, when no one can work (John 9:4).

• All the saints will be witnesses to the salvific nature of the Christian faith against all our learned secular ignoramuses who pride themselves on their false education, against all non-Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans, and especially against those who are only called Orthodox Christians but have long since changed their faith in practice. That is why martyrs are called “witnesses” in Greek. Remember, Christian, how many witnesses will be against you at the judgment of Christ.

• Always consider it a great blessing to converse in prayer with the Lord, or with the Most Pure Lady, the Mother of God, or with Angels, or with holy people, and pray to Them always with joy and with a tremble of reverence, remembering with Whom you, an unclean and insignificant worm, are speaking.

B

• The body is only the material shell of the soul, its house.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1305

• Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

C

• The character of people in the second half of the 19th century is self-worship, self-legislation (autonomy), materialism in life, and spiritual skepticism (unbelief).

— My Life in Christ, 2:1710

• The character of the present, temporary life is delusion.

— My Life in Christ, 1:689

• Churches are spiritual schools, clinics, places of enlightenment, rest stops for travelers to heaven, houses of charity where we are shown the greatest benefits and divine assistance to prepare us for settling in heaven.

— The Living Ear of Grain, part 3

• The Church is eternal truth, because it is united with Truth—Christ—and is animated by the Spirit of Truth.

— My Life in Christ, 1:565

• The Church is truly an earthly paradise.

— My Life in Christ, 2:851

• Caprice is the germ of heart decay, the rust of the heart, the moth of love, the seed of malice, an abomination to the Lord.

— MY LIFE IN CHRIST

• Conscience in people is nothing other than the voice of the omnipresent God walking in the hearts of men.

— My Life in Christ, 1:230

• Consider all sweetness as sweepings and filth; do not love anything earthly, do not pity anything earthly for a person, and do not hold enmity against him for anything. Love seeks to please the beloved and to value nothing for his sake.

D

• Democracy is in hell, and in heaven, it is the Kingdom.

• The day is a symbol of the transience of earthly life.

— My Life in Christ, 2:829

• The devil is such an evil needle that at all times and everywhere it climbs into your heart's eyes, clouding and suppressing them; it is such a poisonous dust that constantly floats in our mental atmosphere and settles caustically on the heart, eating away at it and drilling it.

— My Life in Christ, 1:491

• Demon-possessed individuals are peaceful until they are brought close to a sacred object. When they are, an extraordinary force, a repulsion from the sacred, blasphemy, spitting on the sacred, and a piercing scream emerge from them.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1286

• The death of a true Christian is no more than a sleep until the day of resurrection.

— My Life in Christ, 2:852

• Doubt and scorn for the word, like the poison of the spirit of falsehood, must be cut off.

— My Life in Christ, 1:698

E

• The enemy sometimes acts through evil people.

— My Life in Christ, 1:409

• Envy in a Christian is madness.

— My Life in Christ, 1:450

• Every person on Earth is sick with the fever of sin, with the blindness of sin, possessed by the rage of sin; and since sin consists primarily of malice and pride, every person, as one suffering from the illness of sin, must be treated with gentle love—an important truth that we often forget; we often, very often, act contrary to it: to malice, we add malice with our own bitterness; to pride, we oppose with pride. This is how evil grows, rather than diminishes; it is not cured, but becomes more infected. Lord, have mercy on us, have mercy on humanity!

F

• The flesh flourishes, but the soul withers.

— My Life in Christ, 1:804

• Faith is the key to God's treasury.

— My Life in Christ, 1:461

• Food and drink should be used only to strengthen one's forces, and not for gluttony.

— My Life in Christ, 2:886

• The fiery catastrophe of the Earth expected at the end of the world could occur from the collision of the Earth with one of the wandering fragments or comets.

— Natural Good News about the Creator of the World in the Light of Revelation, 1

• Forced prayer develops sanctimony.

— My Life in Christ, 1:160

G

• God is good and all-good, and you, His image, should be good.

— My Life in Christ, 1:663

• God is the creative, living, and life-giving Thought.

— My Life in Christ, 1:5

• God is Spirit, a simple Being.

— My Life in Christ, 1:252

• God is good and all-good, and you, His image, should be good.

• Gluttony is the seed of decay and destruction of the soul.

H

• Heed: for the purification of your heart from sins, you will receive an infinite reward—you will see God, your all-good Creator, your Provider. The struggle to cleanse the heart is difficult because it is accompanied by great deprivations and sorrows, but the reward is great.

• A human who is embittered against us is a sick person.

— My Life in Christ, 1:324

• Humility is a great virtue, the mother of all virtues, the mother of all blessings.

• Humility is the foundation of all virtues.

I

• It has been calculated astronomically that the distance from the Earth to the Sun is one hundred and fifty million versts (approximately 160 million km).

— Natural Good News about the Creator of the World in the Light of Revelation, 1B

• Icons are the Church's response to the crying need of our nature.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1304

• Intellectuals have abandoned heavenly wisdom and grasped at earthly vanity, falsehood, mirage, and impenetrable darkness.

— The Living Ear of Grain, ch. 4

J

• The Jesuits, to please the Pope and their selfish base views and goals, distorted the law of conscience and the law of the Gospel, asserting that to achieve selfish or religious goals, Catholics can use any illegal means.

— The Living Colossus

L

• The Lord is the perfect Possessor and Master of all creation.

— My Life in Christ, 1:625

• The Liturgy is a supper, a meal of God's love for the human race.

— My Life in Christ, 1:563

• Love without thinking: love is simple. Love will never make a mistake.

— My Life in Christ, 1:790

• The Lutherans say: “Why should we ask for the prayers of the saints for ourselves? We ask God Himself”—and they contradict themselves: for why do they ask the pastor to pray for them? They would pray without a pastor if everyone had the same access to God and there was no need for sanctified intercessors for us. — What blindness! — They say: by praying to the saints, we are idolaters. That is not true. We do not honor a single saint as God, we do not pray to a single saint as God, but only ask for his prayers for us; is there even a shadow of idolatry here? — Just as we ask living ministers and intercessors for us before God to pray for us, so we also ask the heavenly intercessors, who have great boldness before Him due to their love for God; moreover, many of them were intercessors and advocates for the world before God even here on Earth; there, in heaven, their activity only continues, has larger dimensions, and is especially strong, because it is not hindered by heavy and sluggish flesh. — All the saints, although they have finished their earthly course, are alive: “For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him” (Luke 20:38).

• Leo Tolstoy and writers like him, whose number is countless, have appeared and live on Earth to cloud and corrupt with their godlessness, faithlessness, and anarchy the multitude of people who follow them and read their blasphemous writings. Lord, destroy them from the Earth or turn them to faith, humble their demonic pride!

— The Living Ear of Grain, part 3

• Leo Tolstoy and writers like him, whose number is countless, have appeared and live on Earth to cloud and corrupt with their godlessness, faithlessness, and anarchy the multitude of people who follow them and read their blasphemous writings. Lord, destroy them from the Earth or turn them to faith, humble their demonic pride!

— The Living Ear of Grain, part 3

• Our life is a child's game, but not an innocent one, but a sinful one, because with a strong mind and knowledge of the purpose of our life, we neglect this purpose and engage in empty, aimless affairs.

— My Life in Christ, 1:527

• The lusts and desires of the flesh, or the old man, are countless, but they are a dream, a vanity, a phantom, nothing.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1284

• The life of the heart is love; its death is malice and enmity against a brother.

— My Life in Christ, 1:737

• The Lord is the perfect Possessor and Master of all creation.

M

• Mercy is to love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, to those who assault you, to those who persecute you, to protect the persecuted, and so on.

— My Life in Christ, 1:557

N

• The name of the Savior, invoked with faith, works miracles, casts out demons, extinguishes passions, and heals diseases.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1558

• A neighbor is a being equal to me, the same human as I, the very image of God.

— My Life in Christ, 1:329

• At night, our soul is free from worldly vanity, and therefore the spiritual world can freely act upon it, and it can freely accept its impressions.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1654

O

• One of the most powerful deceits of the devil is the weakening of the heart with laziness, and with it, all spiritual and physical forces; faith, hope, and love dry up in the heart, and you become faithless, despondent, and insensible to God and to people—like salt that has lost its savor.

• Orthodox Christians are like a family, the children of Yessou Christ, and in a good family, the mother is always highly respected (the Mother of God), just as older brothers are respected and honored by the younger ones, and these latter imitate the former.

— My Life in Christ, 2:924

• Often, prayer is called something that is not prayer at all: a person went to church, stood there, looked at the icons, or first at the people, at their faces, their outfits, and says: I prayed to God; stood at home in front of an icon, nodded his head, said memorized words without understanding or sympathy, and says: I prayed to God.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1299

• The Orthodox Church with its divine service educates us to be citizens of heaven by teaching us every virtue, which is exemplified by the life of the Mother of God and all the saints, and by cleansing, sanctifying, and deifying us in the sacraments.

P

• Pride is a demon; malice is the same demon; envy is the same demon; lewd filth is the same demon; forced blasphemy is the same demon; forced doubt in the truth is a demon; despondency is a demon; there are various passions, but in all of them one Satan acts; various passions, but together they are the barking of Satan in various ways, and a person becomes one, one spirit with Satan.

— My Life in Christ, 2:826

• A person subject to passions, what do you need? Life, you say. Why are you striving? For life. But are you living a true life? Reason and experience compel me to say no. So, what constitutes your life? Faith, hope, and love—reason and experience tell me. The life of our soul is God, a living faith in Him, and love for Him, love for people like me—they are the peace and breadth of my heart, without them I am a martyr of sin, a slave, a captive of passions; my life passes in sorrow and distress.

• A priest, as a physician of souls, must himself be free from soul ailments, i.e., from passions, in order to heal others.

— My Life in Christ, 2:839

• Prayer is often called something that is not prayer at all: a person went to church, stood there, looked at the icons, or first at the people, at their faces, their outfits, and says: I prayed to God; stood at home in front of an icon, nodded his head, said memorized words without understanding or sympathy, and says: I prayed to God.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1299

• Praying without sincere feeling is hypocrisy.

R

• The rays from our Sun reach the Earth in eight minutes.

— Natural Good News about the Creator of the World in the Light of Revelation, 1

• The ringing of bells is a call to a conversation with God, a call of children to the Father, a call to appear before Him.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1610

• Respect yourself as the image of God.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1648

• To repent means to feel in your heart the falsehood, madness, and guilt of your sins—it means to realize that you have offended your Creator, Lord, Father, and Benefactor, who is infinitely holy and infinitely disgusted by sin—it means to desire with all your soul to correct and atone for them.

— My Life in Christ, 1:762

• Reason is the servant of the heart.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1125

S

• Sins are secret snakes gnawing at the heart of a person and his entire being; they give him no peace, incessantly sucking his heart; sins are sharp thorns constantly piercing the soul; sins are spiritual darkness.

— My Life in Christ, 2:845

• To sin is a great disadvantage and madness.

— My Life in Christ, 1:141

• A state or any society is a body.

— My Life in Christ, 1:183

• The science of sciences is to conquer the sin that lives in us.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1189

• Superficial prayer is hypocrisy, blasphemy, vain prayer.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1206

• Send your petition to God or the saints by the telegraph of faith, and you will immediately receive an answer.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1402

• The soul is a house, passions are fire.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1227

• The soul of the first person is from God, and from Him are all the souls of subsequent people; all are the breath of His Divine Spirit.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1514

• The soul of animals, upon separation from the body, evaporates like vapor, for it is not fastened with the higher, powerful cement of the spirit, which animals do not have.

— The Beginning and End of Our Earthly World

• Sorrows are a great teacher.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1279

• Sweets, money—are worse than ordinary dust, sweepings, because they clutter the soul, while ordinary sweepings only clutter the body, clothing, or a room.

— My Life in Christ, 1:648

• Word is the expression of truth, the very truth, being, action.

— My Life in Christ, 1:497

• Superficial prayer is hypocrisy, blasphemy, vain prayer.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1206

• Sins are secret snakes gnawing at the heart of a person and his entire being; they give him no peace, incessantly sucking his heart; sins are sharp thorns constantly piercing the soul; sins are spiritual darkness.

• The science of sciences is to conquer the sin that lives in us.

T

• Thought in God corresponds to the Father, words to the Son, and deeds to the Holy Spirit, who completes everything.

— My Life in Christ, 1:208

• Theater and church are opposites. The former is a temple of the world, and the latter is a temple of God; the former is a shrine of the devil, and the latter is a temple of the Lord.

— My Life in Christ, 1:503

• Theater puts Christian life to sleep, destroys it, giving Christian life the character of pagan life.

— My Life in Christ, 2:997

• Theater is the adversary of Christian life; it is the offspring of the spirit of this world, and not of the Spirit of God. True children of the Church do not attend it.

— My Life in Christ, 2:1177

• To spend the entire day in a perfectly holy, peaceful, and sinless manner, the only means is the most sincere, fervent prayer in the morning after waking from sleep. It will bring Yessou with the Father and the Holy Spirit into our heart and thus give strength and fortitude to the soul against the attacks of evil; one just needs to guard one's heart.

U

• The uneducated are infants in Christ, to whom the Lord sometimes reveals His secrets.

— My Life in Christ, 2:984

W

• What is our life? The burning of a candle: it is only necessary for the One who gave it to blow—and it is extinguished. What is our life? The journey of a traveler: he has reached a certain limit—the gates are opened for him, he abandons his traveler's clothing (the body) and staff and enters his house. What is our life? A long, bloody war for the possession of a true homeland and for true freedom. The war is over—you are a victor or a vanquished, you are recalled from the place of struggle to the place of recompense, and you receive from the Rewarder either eternal reward, eternal glory, or eternal punishment, eternal shame.

• The world is in a state of slumber, a sinful sleep. God awakens it with wars, plagues, fires, destructive storms, earthquakes, floods, and crop failures.

• Whatever passions the enemies fight you with, endure without despondency, without bitterness, with meekness and humility, and do not let the movements of impatience, malice, murmuring, and blasphemy into your heart.

• The world is a mirror of God’s goodness, reason, wisdom, and power.

• Word is the expression of truth, the very truth, being, action.
• The world is a mirror of God’s goodness, reason, wisdom, and power.

— My Life in Christ, 2:979

• The world is in a state of slumber, a sinful sleep. God awakens it with wars, plagues, fires, destructive storms, earthquakes, floods, and crop failures.

— My Life in Christ, 1:438

Y

• The youth of the 19th century, in its second half, is characterized by self-worship, self-legislation (autonomy), materialism in life, and spiritual skepticism (unbelief).

Sources

• My Life in Christ: The Spiritual Journals of St John of Kronstadt. translated by E.E. Goulaev, revised by Nicholas Kotar. Holy Trinity Publications, 2018. ISBN 9780884654650
• My Life in Christ at archive.org