Intentions
“….the Lord honors our intentions and desires. He blesses our good intentions and desires and multiplies them for us. He waits to see a little effort, and He overwhelms us with spiritual riches that we can’t comprehend. We make a bit of effort to pray, and the Lord begins to help us pray. We make a bit of effort to study and learn about Jesus Christ and He himself grants us true wisdom. We make an effort to obey the commandments and the teaching of the Lord, and we find grace assisting us to do so more perfectly and completely.” (Fr. James Guirguis)
“Once we have put our intentions in God’s hands, we need not concern ourselves with the result of our plans. There is neither success nor failure when it comes to those actions and activities that we devote to God. Whether we win or lose, whether we accomplish our aims or miss our target, whether we realize our hopes or fall short of reaching them, it is all the same in God’s eyes. God is glorified as much by our losses in this world as He is by our gains.” (Fr. Basil)
“A person may act with the best intentions—and yet unwittingly cause harm to another. An example is overprotection of a child. The mother is sure that she is doing everything for his benefit, but as a result, the child does not learn to make decisions on his own and doesn’t get used to being responsible for his actions. There is a very vivid example in the Gospel. Out of love for Christ, the Apostle Peter tried to dissuade Him from the suffering that lay ahead, but in response he heard very harsh words: Get thee behind me, satan (Matthew 16:23). Peter wanted what was good, but he viewed the situation only from a human perspective and failed to see the full depth of what was happening. Therefore, good intentions alone are not enough. It matters what means we use, what the person’s real needs are, and what consequences our assistance leads to. Assistance should help a person become more free, responsible, and capable of consciously choosing good.” (Priest Ioann Bakushkin)
“ You see, in order to preach his Gospel, in order to reveal God’s will, in order to call people to believe in his Gospel, to believe in him, Christ himself prepared the way, prepared for the task. He did so through Saint John the Baptist- whom we also call the Forerunner- the great prophet who was sent from God before Christ to prepare the ground. It appears that what has to be done can’t be done without preparation; that preparation is needed is true of everything, as it is here also in the work of Christ…every day that there are Christians who have good intentions, and certainly make some effort and attempt to live spiritually, to believe in Christ, to accept his Gospel, to be saved, but in the end, because they don’t prepare, come up short and don’t find what they’re looking for. What they try to do is performed carelessly, in a slapdash manner which can’t last: it collapses, falls and disappears.” (Archimandrite Symeon Krayiopoulos)
“The secularized notions of modernity proclaim that there is nothing wrong with the world that the good intentions of educated people cannot fix. A mark of education is accepting that this is so. What marks the “elite” in America is not the positions they hold within the government or the culture. It is the position they hold in their own estimation as knowing what is best and most needed by others and the world in general.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
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