Revere Him with all your soul so that He will deem you worthy of a Saint’s esteem. To the question: "How do you acquire His benevolence?" — I will answer: Bring Him gold and silver through the needy. If you have nothing to give, bring Him faith, love, temperance, patience, magnanimity, humility...
Restrain yourself from judging, protect your eyes so as not to observe vanity, constrain your hands from doing wrong deeds, avert your feet from the wrong path; comfort the faint hearted, be compassionate to the infirm, provide a cup of water to the thirsty, feed the hungry. In other words, everything that you have and were endowed with by God, bring it to Him because Christ did not scorn the widow’s two coins.
Saint Ephraim the Syrian
