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Quote by Sophrony Sakharov

“The Father- blessed be His Name world without end- showed me His Son in the Light that never sets, and thus made me so forcefully perceive my sin - I had disdained God - that for long years I wept, prostrate in despair over my wickedness. I recognised my behaviour in departing from God in all its abomination, and felt bitter shame. I become abhorrent to myself, and my self-contempt found a fellow-traveller - self-hatred. I cannot say that I hated my father or my mother, my family or my friends. It was enough for me to detest myself, I somehow did not even think about anyone else. My longing for God caused me intolerable pain - such pain that I lost all awareness of the material world, as I sojourned alone with Him. I do not know whether the Lord altogether forgave me my sin but I could not forgive myself for what I had done. Through my personal tragedy I lived the tragedy of our forefather Adam - the heritage handed down from generation to generation of the inhabitants of the earth. Through this channel prayer came to me for all the world.”

Quote by Sophrony Sakharov

Book:On Prayer
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On Prayer

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Sophrony Sakharov

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Book:On Prayer
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“He had slowed the melody now to a sad, reflective circle of notes. Behind this basic structure, Elta was piling an increasing weight of harmonies, circling again and again to augment them. He thought it was like the weight of the past, the weight of memory, building and building until it seemed almost unbearable, and yet there was always room for more: another repetition, another variation. The clapping had long since died away and the audience was rapt and silent. Suddenly a clutch of despair squeezed his heart. How would he survive the rest of his long life? He was not yet very old, and yet he felt old. Like the Essa with the gray-streaked hair who had been carried raving off the ship at Avanue, and whose limp and pallid shape he’d tended unconscious until the day she woke to say ‘Minh’ to him in the same rich voice he remembered. “I feel so old, she had said to him once. How will I live the rest of my life? Then, he hadn’t really known what she meant, though he had understood. Now, he both understood and knew.”

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Book:Black Wine
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