The Power of Faith
Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. 19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.
20 When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?” they asked.
21 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. 22 If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
Faith brings knowledge
Saint Maximus the Confessor, Epistles, First Part, Ep. 25, in Church Fathers and Writers (1990), vol. 81, p. 165
`I beg you to make prayers for me to the Lord to acquire a vivid and working faith in Him, not killed by passions, but having the power of His Cross, death, burial and Resurrection. Of the Cross by not committing sin, of death by the complete renunciation at malice, of the tomb by drawing away the delusions produced in our soul by the things which influence our senses, of His Resurrection by the richness of the virtues and the abundance of the knowledge of His Truth and by rising our thought from the perishable to the heights, to become one flesh and soul with Him (Colossians 1,13) and simply speaking according to His promise to become in everything like Him, except for the identity after nature, so that I won`t kill the life He gave me by what was said and receive according to justice by the shameful deeds the damnation of the ones who killed their life given by our Lord Jesus Christ. As it is a terrible thing and beyond any other damnation to kill by our own will the life given to us by God by the grace of the Holy Spirit, by the love for the perishable things. This fear is known by those who took care to value more the truth than the love for their own self.`
Clement of Alexandria, Stromates, Stromata a V-a, Cap. I, 12.1-3; 13.1-2, in Church Fathers and Writers (1982), vol. 5, p. 318
`Therefore to search about God not for causing discord but for revealing, it is a salvatory thing. For it is written in the psalms of David:
The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the Lord will praise him—
may your hearts live forever! (Psalms 21, 26). Those who search according to the true search, «praising the Lord», «will be satisfied» of the gift from God, meaning by knowledge; and their soul will be alive – for the soul which brings life is called allegorically heart – as through the Son is known the Father (Matthew 11, 27; Luke 10, 22). (…) God is Love (I John 4, 16); He may be known by those who love him. And God is faithful (I Corinthians 1, 9), and gives Himself for knowledge to the faithful by teaching. And we must befriend Him with divine love to contemplate through the alike His equal, listening to the Word of Truth.`
Source: http://ziarullumina.ro
