“Everything is changing, and there is a good reason why in the ancient world the new year was seen as the greatest holiday; and it has basically remained the greatest and most important holiday to this day. When we recall this secular holiday, for us it must be a recollection of the creation of the world. We must remember how God created the world and remember Who the ruler of time is. Often people expect something unusual from the new year, some sort of change for the better; there is a lot of superstition and fortune-telling in connection with this. The new year is also thought to be a breach in time that can allegedly lead a person out into a new life, even though, when we wake up on the morning of January first, nothing really changes.

A threshold in time really is possible — we are not being deceived by this sensation of ours — only not by means of something external but by means of a change of heart, a change of soul. But whether it will change or not depends on us and on God, the ruler of time. God is ready to help us, ready to support us, and the coming year must be a year of God's mercy. What does this mean? We must look at how God governs the world. What task will He assign us? How is His will accomplished today? Too often we concentrate on the dark side of the world; we see too much evil.

Christians often see in everything the nefarious plots of sorcerers, enchanters, fortune-tellers, and witches, but it is not they who govern the world. The world is governed by the Lord God. As we read today in the book of the prophet Daniel, when Nebuchadnezzar began to raise his hand against God, everything ended sadly for him: he began to think he was a bull and started feeding on grass. After he came to himself, he realized that the Most High has dominion over all times and all kingdoms, and that He both dethrones kings and sets up kings. We must retain this awareness that God has authority over the world. God is guiding the coming year. God is the great ruler of all, and we must render Him glory for the year that has passed; we must render Him glory for our having lived through the year, and we must look at what good things have happened for us.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
Homily on the New Year

“Despondency is not pleasing to God, nor is despair. The Holy Spirit is a spirit of peace, and each time God speaks He speaks so as to bring peace upon a person. When a person 'hears' the Lord he invariably experiences a sense of reverence before God and a sense of unworthiness, of fear of the Lord, but not of irritation or agitation of mind. And when God personally addresses a person there is absolutely no mistaking it. We can count on personal communion with God, because we are God's children, but on the other hand we may not forcibly demand that the Lord commune with us. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness (Gal. 5:22-23). When God speaks with a person it produces the above-mentioned qualities in his soul. However, if after talking with 'god' the person begins to praise himself or falls into a hysterical fit, this means that he has been speaking not with God, but with the spirits of darkness.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
How Can I Learn God’s Will?

“How often may one commune? Not more than once a day, and not less than once in three weeks (if one lives in a city where there is a church). Communing at every liturgy is the standard, but this should not be a mechanistic requirement; rather, it should be the result of a lively desire to follow Christ and to strive for holiness. Frequent communion should produce the fruits of good works, and each communion must engender in the heart a desire to strive for the heights of Heaven.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
How Often Should One Commune?

“Sometimes a person struggles sincerely and yet sees no visible progress. This happens because the Lord is using weakness to heal a greater sin: pride. Pride is the most difficult sin to cure. At times, God allows a person to fall—not blessing the sin, but using it—so that the person recognizes their weakness, recklessness, and inability to cope without Him. Through this painful realization, a person is led to turn to the Creator for help, not only from sin, but from the pride hidden behind it.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
Homily for the Commemoration of our Venerable Father Savvas the Sanctified

“Whoever loves God and his neighbors, whoever is courageous and desires to receive the imperishable crown in the Kingdom of the Heavenly Father—we call such a person to enter upon the noble path of the herald of the Gospel: the Orthodox missionary! God forgives many sins to the one who fights for the souls of people, freeing them from the clutches of the enemy.

Come, you who not only desire to cleanse yourselves from the filth of sin, but who also strive to make the radiance of holiness accessible to those who still languish under the shadow of death. … For the best defense is offense, and the best victory over sectarianism is the joining of sectarians to the Orthodox Church. Victory will be ours, for the Risen God is with us!”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
Diary of a Missionary, September 30, 2008

“Not for nothing does the Shepherd of Hermas say that a rich man is like a dead tree around which a grape vine is entwined: the rich man is the dead tree, and the grape vine is the poor man. And so they are the saving of each other: the rich man must be saved by compassion, and the poor man is saved by patience in poverty and by prayer for the rich man. They support each other, and in this way they are saved.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
A Sobering Book

“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most miserable (1 Cor. 15:19). This approach has now been completely forgotten. For some reason, it is considered improper to speak on behalf of God, although this is precisely what people expect from a priest: For the lips of a priest should keep knowledge, and people should seek the law from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts (Mal. 2:7). Yet nowadays it is customary to say that this ‘leads to delusion,’ that it ‘is not humility,’ and so on. This is truly an antichrist approach, for according to the Apostle John, the spirit of antichrist does not necessarily blaspheme Christ, but simply ignores Him politely.

Joseph Ratzinger once said that ‘the Church is too busy with itself to speak about Christ,’ and unfortunately this is true not only for Catholics but also for the Orthodox. How often, in Orthodox journalism, do people speak about God’s point of view on this or that event? Recently I was rereading Chrysostom, that fourth-century publicist, and he spoke only about God. But today it is sometimes difficult to distinguish an Orthodox publication from that of a secular political analyst.

Instead of speaking about salvation and preparation for heaven, all one hears is discussion about whether some worldview corresponds to the interests of the state, society, liberal values, and so forth. One thing alone has been forgotten—Christ, and therefore the dead ends into which we drive ourselves are inevitable. We need a new approach, which I call uranopolitism (heavenly citizenship): we must look at everything from the perspective of eternity, for only there will we find the solution to all our troubles.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
Citizen of Heaven

“The earth is not the Kingdom of God, in the sense that it is not a place where people will live for eternity. Blessed Augustine raises the question of why even righteous peoples are sometimes given evil rulers. After all, we know that rulers are installed not by man, but by God. He installs kings, and He brings them down, as He wills. God does so in order that people not get used to it, that they not think that all their hopes should be tied to the country's earthly successes. That is why he sends evil rulers, so that man might be distracted from earthly vanity and instead might seek after the Heavenly Kingdom, which is incorruptible.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
Instructions for the Immortal

“We often do not understand what God saved the world from, or that the world truly needed salvation. In order to understand this, one must see that monstrous hurricane of destruction which has seized the universe. It has engulfed both the material world and the immaterial. We must get rid of the false notion: ‘Well, when we die, we will all go to Heaven.’ The black hurricane will not release a man unless the Creator Himself tears him out of it. And the Creator comes when He wills. He cannot be forced or compelled.

In the life of Elder Silouan a very similar situation is described. He was praying to God and wanted to bow before an icon of the Mother of God, when suddenly a huge demon appeared between him and the icon and said, ‘You will bow to me.’ The Elder came to the same state, to the same inner despair as Job. He thought, ‘God is unyielding.’ He simply broke down. He remained in this state for an hour and later said that he would not wish anyone to experience such a thing. Afterwards Father Silouan came to the evening service in the church, and there he saw the Living Christ, who by His very coming snatched him out of that despair.

In order to understand and find God, each of us truly must pass through a process of being ‘torn away’ from the world. Usually a person is quite confident in himself; he considers himself generally normal, respectable, kind-hearted, and thinks that he simply needs to perform a few more good deeds. But if a man at the same time thinks, ‘Let God keep out of my life,’ then he will not find God. And God usually destroys the comfort of such a person. It is no accident that God’s chastisement most often falls not on the most hardened sinners, but on average people—those who by ordinary standards are normal and respectable. For they are self-confident and think that everything is fine with them.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
Why Does the Righteous Man Suffer?

“We must become gods by grace. What does this mean? What is the main hope of our calling, spoken of in Scripture and by the Holy Fathers, and sought by all true Christians? The goal is not merely to escape hell or avoid punishment—our task is to become gods. God possesses immeasurable and astonishing qualities: He is everywhere present, all-knowing, all-powerful, loving, merciful, gentle, and humble. He is the infinite fullness of every good, and man is called to partake of this fullness. Man must be united with God so that he becomes a participant in eternal life, so that within him flows the beginningless life of God. As the Lord said, ‘He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water,’ speaking of the Spirit whom believers were to receive (John 7:38–39). This became possible because God became man, and divine life became accessible to humanity.

How could we describe divine reality if God had not become man? We could not. How could we experience divine power if we had not tasted it? And could we have endured it if it came in its full glory, without being veiled in human flesh? We would not have endured it—we would have been consumed by that immeasurable light, before which even the Cherubim tremble and the Seraphim veil their faces. We would not withstand such fire; we would be burned. When Moses saw God in the burning bush, he fell to the ground, afraid to look. God’s glory is so overwhelming that we would be blinded and undone by it. He is invisible not because He is absent, but because He is too radiant for our weak eyes to behold. We cannot even look at the sun for long—how then could we look upon the One who created the sun, who is Light beyond all light? Because of the Incarnation—because God became man and took human nature from the Most Pure Virgin Mary—we are able to see God and partake of divine life through the flesh of Christ the Savior, which He received from the pure blood of the Blessed Lady, the Mother of God.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
Homily for the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos

Very many knew Fr. Daniel Sysoev as a remarkable priest, a talented preacher, and a missionary, but what kind of man was he?

“He had energy beyond measure. I was always amazed: where could a man get so much strength, energy, and longings? Without a doubt, this all came from his sincere, almost childlike love for Christ, for His word. I now understand Christ's words, when He said, 'Be like children' (cf. Matt. 18:3). In this sense Fr. Daniel was a child. I think that in certain instances this can explain his particular zeal and, at times, his political incorrectness. Perhaps there were exaggerations here and there, but his example speaks to us of how a Christian must be principled. …

The second thing that attracted and drew people to him was his totally open soul — open, one might say, in a childlike way. Recently we watched a video of Fr. Daniel's teaching in Sunday school. It is amazing how much he was able to impart Christ's truth to the children. He knew how to be joyful, and to give that joy to people.”

— The Orthodox Word, Sept-Oct 2009, #268

“It is very beneficial to find yourself a priest and spiritual father who can help you draw close to Christ (but not under any circumstances draw you toward himself—beware of false spirituality!). You do not need to rush to the first priest you see. Make confession with different priests, pray, and if you come to a heartfelt understanding with someone, then little by little he can become your spiritual father. Only, first find out whether he lives a pious life, whether he holds to the teachings of the fathers of the Church, and whether or not he is obedient to his bishop. I would also advise you to watch how he performs the divine services. His reverence before God will show you whether he is able to help you draw close to Christ.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
Questions to Priest Daniel Sysoev

“Why is the feast of Pascha the most wondrous feast for us? Even when people who are not very religious come to church on the feast and see Pascha, they too experience joy. Why? Because the might of the Conqueror of death extends even to unbelievers. This might of the Resurrection is so great that at the end of time it will resurrect all men, both believers and unbelievers. Unbelievers, however, will be unable to use it to the good of their souls. But the bodies of all men will be resurrected. This is why Christ is called the First-born of the dead. Naturally, other people died before Him. But the process of resurrection from the dead began with Him. He was the first, and all mankind follows after Him.”

Hieromartyr Daniel Sysoev
Catechetical Talks