Quotes of the Day for February 18, 2026 – Thoughts on opening our hearts to God through purity and beauty
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“The way to a pure heart and the way to see God are actually the same thing. We have to have the eyes to see purity and beauty…We are to look for that which is pure, beautiful, lovely, godly, holy and readily visible in the world. Then we’ll begin to see purity, beauty, love, holiness, and even God Himself.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“In the Biblical and Patristic understanding, the “heart” (Hebrew: leb; Greek: kardia) is the deep center of the human personality, where the spirit, the soul and the body, the mind, the will and the feelings, conscience and duty interact. It is an organ of hearing (conscience), seeing (contemplating) God and of duty (service, love) of Him. It is in the heart that the choice between good and evil is made, our thoughts and desires are formed, and our decisions are made. It is here that God and man meet; it is through the heart that the healing and sanctifying grace of God is given to believers. Depending on what the heart is filled with, it can be impure or pure, sinful or holy. The Lord gives us the opportunity, through the fulfillment of His commandments and the acquisition of grace, to purify our hearts defiled by evil, to make them pure organs of faith, hope and love.” (Priest Tarasiy Borozenets)
“This faculty of the heart that sees beauty is also the faculty that sees the small things and the things that “do not signify.” It is not a practical place nor given to usefulness. The Fathers describe it as the nous, and often simply call it the heart. It is that place through which we have communion with God. It is, interestingly, also the place that recognizes Him in the “least of these my brethren.” It is that place which sees personhood in its proper form, in its utter uniqueness and never as “one of many.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“So many unfortunately keep the doors of their hearts closed to Christ, but wide open to all kinds of filth: anger, greed, hatred, malice, enmity, murder, slander, envy, jealousy, theft, fornication. What is this, if not conscious rebellion against God? Our sinful passions, untreated by repentance, worsened by complete disregard for our inevitable accountability for them, amount to open hostility toward the Creator, a blasphemy against Him. Can anyone say that such a life leads to happiness? A life of reckless abandon never leads to good, and blasphemers have ended poorly. Faith throws open the doors to an infinite, joyous world—a world named Jesus Christ. It is a world of endless Love, divine Beauty, inexpressible Joy, Blessedness, and Happiness. And this is not just an approximate description of paradise in the afterlife. This is the very essence of our faith!” (Artemy Slezkin)
“Our hearts will become contrite and humble when we confront how we have marred the beauty of our souls and refused to fulfill our calling to become like God in holiness…We will experience pain in our hearts when, instead of shutting our eyes to the truth, we honestly and persistently open even our deepest struggles and the darkest crevices of our souls to the healing of Christ. We will then experience in our own hearts the infinite distance between the brilliant holiness to which we are called and the dark corruption we allow to remain in us. Doing so requires embracing the arduous task of daily dying to self and reorienting the desires of our hearts for fulfillment in God. We must pray, fast, serve our neighbors sacrificially, and do all that we have the strength to do in taking up our crosses and following our Lord.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
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