Book: The Confessor

In order for a person to desire salvation and saving faith, for this it is necessary first for him to have a bad, very bad time, for him to experience bitterness and despair, to find himself in a hopeless situation.

The Savior's death on the cross was nothing more than a voluntary human sacrifice.

The ascetic and saint, of course, should have looked at his life as a sacrifice.

The devil pays special attention to those who flee the world and repent.

For him, everyone was the same, whether they blamed God or themselves, exaggerated or minimized their sins and sufferings, whether they confessed to murder or only to debauchery, whether they complained about an unfaithful lover or about not saving their soul. Everything that was believed to him seemed not to be thrown to the wind, but transformed, relieved and resolved thanks to the fact that it was said and heard.

A kind of special patience, a kind of absorbing passivity and great silence were his virtues.

A certain gift lay dormant in Josephus, which over the years, when his hair turned white, reached its peak. It was the gift of listening.

He did escape, escape is sudden and rash, but not shameful. He left the post, proved too much for him; he escapes, he confessed to ourselves and to those who could follow him in his failure, refused everyday useless struggle, acknowledged himself beaten and defeated.

Meanwhile, peace too is something alive and like all living things, it grows and wanes, withstand trials, and undergo changes.