Elder St Porphrios on the Easy Path to Sanctity…
We can attain to the worship of God easily and blood- lessly. There are two paths that lead to God: the hard and debilitating path with fierce assaults against evil and the easy path with love. There are many who chose the hard path and ‘shed blood in order to receive Spirit’ until they attained great virtue. I find that the shorter and safer route is the path with love. This is the path that you, too, should follow.
That is, you can make a different kind of effort: to study and pray and have as your aim to advance in the love of God and of the Church. Do not fight to expel the darkness from the chamber of your soul. Open a tiny aperture for light to enter, and the darkness will disappear. The
same holds for our passions and our weaknesses. Do not fight them,but transform them into strengths by showing disdain for evil. Occupy yourself with hymns of praise, with the poetic canons, with the worship of God and with divine eros.
– Wounded by Love