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

Concern for one's soul means hardship and humility, for through these God forgives us all our sins.

Just as desire and rage multiply our sins, so self-control and humility erase them.

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

Struggle until death to fulfill the commandments: purified through them, you will enter into life.

Worldly virtues promote human glory, spiritual virtues the glory of God.

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

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

Self-control and strenuous effort curb desire; stillness and intense longing for God wither it.

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

Obedience with abstinence gives men control over wild beasts.

Patient endurance is the soul's struggle for virtue; where there is struggle for virtue, self-indulgence is banished.

Self-control and strenuous effort curb desire; stillness and intense longing for God wither it.

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

The Church is the personhood of the God-human Christ, a God-human organism and not a human organization. The Church is indivisible, as is the person of the God-human, as is the body of the God-human. For this reason it is a fundamental error to have the God-human organism of the Church divided into little national organizations. In the course of their procession down through history many local Churches have limited themselves to nationalism, to national methods and aspirations, ours being among them. The Church has adapted herself to the people when it should properly be just the reverse: the people adapting themselves to the Church. This mistake has many a time been made by our Church here. But we very well know that these were the 'tares' of our Church life, tares which the Lord will not uproot, leaving them rather to grow with the wheat until the time of harvest (Matth. 13, 29-30). We also well know (the Lord so taught us) that these tares have their origin in our primeval enemy and enemy of Christ: the devil (Matth. 13, 25-28). But we wield this knowledge in vain if it is not transformed into prayer, the prayer that in time to come Christ will safeguard us from becoming the sowers and cultivators of such tares ourselves.

Long-suffering and readiness to forgive curb anger; love and compassion wither it.

Love and self-control purify the soul.

Chastise your soul with the thought of death, and through remembrance of Jesus Christ concentrate your scattered intellect.

In Christianity truth is not a philosophical concept nor is it a theory, a teaching, or a system, but rather, it is the living theanthropic hypostasis - the historical Jesus Christ (John 14:6). Before Christ men could only conjecture about the Truth since they did not possess it. With Christ as the incarnate divine Logos the eternally complete divine Truth enters into the world. For this reason the Gospel says: 'Truth came by Jesus Christ' (John 1:17).

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

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[email protected]
440-526-5192 (Phone)