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John Cassian Quotes

John Cassian , also known as John the Ascetic and John Cassian the Roman , was a Christian monk and theologian celebrated in both the Western and Eastern churches for his mystical writings. Cassian is noted for his role in bringing the ideas and practices of Christian monasticism to the early medieval West. Wikipedia  

✵ 360 – 435
John Cassian photo
John Cassian: 7 quotes12 likes

Famous John Cassian Quotes

“when we gaze in unbounded admiration on that ineffable mercy of His, which with unwearied patience endures countless sins which are every moment being committed under His very eyes, or the call with which from no antecedent merits of ours, but by the free grace of His pity He receives us;”

John Cassian

Source: Conferences of John Cassian

“It is inevitable that the mind which does not have a place to turn to or any stable base will undergo change from hour to hour and from minute to minute due to the variety of its distractions, and by the things that come to it from outside it will be continually transformed into whatever occurs to it at any given moment.”

John Cassian

The Conferences V.2 ( online http://books.google.com/books?id=k3CrvJJZkqEC&pg=PA44)

“The bond between friends cannot be broken by chance; no interval of time or space can destroy it. Not even death itself can part true friends.”

John Cassian

“Wherefore a monk's whole attention should thus be fixed on one point, and the rise and circle of all his thoughts be vigorously restricted to it; viz., to the recollection of God, as when a man, who is anxious to raise on high a vault of a round arch, must constantly draw a line round from its exact centre, and in accordance with the sure standard it gives discover by the laws of building all the evenness and roundness required….”

John Cassian

Conferences VI

“It is not without reason that this verse [Ps 70:1] has been chosen from the whole of Scripture as a device. It carries within it all the feelings of which human nature is capable…. 'Come to my help, O God; Lord, hurry to my rescue'…. The thought of this verse should be turning unceasingly in your heart. Never cease to recite it in whatever task or service or journey you find yourself. Think upon it as you sleep, as you eat, as you submit to the most basic demands of nature. This heartfelt thought will prove to be a formula of salvation for you. Not only will it protect you against all devilish attack, but it will purify you from the stain of all earthly sin, and will lead you on to the contemplation of the unseen and the heavenly and to that fiery urgency of prayer which is indescribable and which is experienced by very few. Sleep should come upon you as you meditate on this verse until as a result of your habit of resorting to its words you get in the habit of repeating them even in your slumbers.”

John Cassian

Conferences X

“How will he see to cast out the mote from his brother's eye, who has the beam of anger in his own eye?”

John Cassian

Book VIII, Chapter V
Institutes of the Coenobia (c. 420 AD)

“With the increase of wealth the mania of covetousness increases.”

John Cassian

Book VII Chapter VII
Institutes of the Coenobia (c. 420 AD)

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