A collection of scriptural meditations from Saints and Fathers of the Church.

Half an hour of the Jesus Prayer is worth as much as three hours of deep sleep. The prolonged Jesus Prayer rests and calms us.

The Antichrist must be understood as spiritual phenomenon..., why will everyone in the world want to bow down to him, obviously it is because there is something in him that responds to something in us, that something being lack of Christ in us, if we will bow down to him (God forbid that we do so) it will be because we feel an attraction to some kind of external thing which might even look like Christianity since Antichrist means the one that is in place of Christ or looks like Christ.

The soul's health consists in dispassion and spiritual knowledge; no slave to sensual pleasure can attain it.

Love and self-control purify the soul.

Make the body serve the commandments, keeping it so far as possible free from sickness and sensual pleasure.

Break the bonds of your friendship for the body and give it only what is absolutely necessary.

Ascetic exertion, at the personal, family, and parish level, particularly of prayer and fasting, is the characteristic of Orthodoxy.

The intellect becomes a stranger to the things of this world when its attachment to the senses has been completely sundered.

Because the nous can get tired by the reciting of all the words of the Jesus Prayer, it is necessary to make it shorter: 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.' Or, 'Lord have mercy on me.' Or, 'Lord Jesus.' As the Christian progresses in the work of the Jesus Prayer, he can decrease the words. He can even sometimes insist on the word 'Jesus,' which he says repeatedly (Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, my Jesus)--a wave of calmness and joy rises in him. He should remain in this sweetness which appears and not stop the prayer, even if his usual rule of prayer is finished. He should seize and keep this warmth of his heart and take advantage of this gift of God! For it is a great gift which God sends from on high. The warmth of the heart helps the nous effectively to be fixed on the words of the Jesus Prayer ... If one wants to spend all day in prayer, he should follow the recommendation of the Holy Fathers. He should pray for an hour, read for an hour and then again spend an hour in prayer. When he is engaged in manual work too, he should try to say the Jesus Prayer.

Spiritual reading and prayer purify the intellect, while love and self-control purify the soul's passionate aspect.

If you abandon God and are a slave to the passions, you cannot reap God's mercy.

Keep the commandments, and you will find peace; love God, and you will attain spiritual knowledge.

The study of divine principles teaches knowledge of God to the person who lives in truth, longing and reverence.

You were commanded to keep the body as a servant, not to be unnaturally enslaved to its pleasures.

Let not us who would be Christians expect anything else than to be crucified...for to be Christian is to be crucified in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example and warning to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection, if we would rise with Christ, we must be humbled with him even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world...we must be crucified outwardly in the eyes of the world, for Christ’s kingdom is not of this world and the world cannot bear it, even a single representative, even for the single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist now or at any time.

Strive to love every man equally, and you will simultaneously expel all the passions.

Do not neglect the practice of the virtues; if you do, your spiritual knowledge will decrease, and when famine occurs you will go down into Egypt (Genesis 41:57, 46:6).

Self-love -- that is, friendship for the body -- is the source of evil in the soul.

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Archangel Michael Orthodox Church
5025 E. Mill Rd
Broadview Heights, Ohio 44147

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440-526-5192 (Phone)