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

Compassion and humility are like the soul’s wings by which it flies up to heaven (Ps. 104:7). Without them prayer cannot rise off the ground...

The Holy Fathers teach us how to become familiar with the Gospel, how to read it and how to understand it, what helps and what opposes its understanding. Therefore, at first you must devote more time to reading the Holy Fathers...

The garment of your soul must shine with the whiteness of simplicity.

The man who follows Christ in solitary mourning is greater than he who praises Christ amid the congregation of men.

What air is for the life of the body, the Holy Spirit is for the life of the soul. By means of prayer, the soul breathes this holy, mysterious air.

Stand at prayer before the invisible God as if you saw Him, and with the conviction that He sees you and is looking at you attentively.

Denial of the world precedes following Christ. The second has no place in the soul, if the first is not accomplished beforehand.

Your faith in the holy sacrament of confession will save you; the grace of God present in the sacrament of confession will heal you.

The Holy Fathers teach us how to become familiar with the Gospel, how to read it and how to understand it, what helps and what opposes its understanding. Therefore, at first you must devote more time to reading the Holy Fathers. When you have learned from them how to read the Gospels, then give your preference to them.

He who knows himself pays no heed to the sins of others, but looks at his own and is always repenting over them; he reflects concerning himself, and condemns himself, and does not interfere in anything apart from his own position.

Repentance not only cleanses a person from sins, but also sharpens his sight so that he sees himself more clearly.

As the earth, long awaiting moistening and at last receiving it in abundance, suddenly is covered by tender and bright greenery, so also the heart, exhausted by dryness, and afterwards revived by tears, emits from itself a multitude of spiritual thoughts and feelings, adorned by the common flower of humility. The labor of weeping, being inseparable from the labor of prayer, requires the same conditions for success as prayer requires. Prayer needs patient, constant dwelling in itself; weeping requires the same. Prayer needs wearying of the body, and brings about exhaustion of the body; this exhaustion produces weeping, which must be born in the troubling and wearying of the body.

When you receive from Heaven the gift of patience, be attentive and vigilant over yourself, so as to hold and keep within yourself the grace of God, lest sin should creep unnoticed into your soul or body and drive away this grace.

Love your neighbor according to the dictates of the commandments of the Gospel, not at all according to the dictates and impulses of your heart.

The fruit of prayer consists in illumination of mind and compunction of heart, in the quickening of the soul with the life of the Spirit.

When walking in the way of righteousness, it is impossible not to meet with trouble, or that the body should not suffer pain and weakness and should remain immutable, if we want to live in virtue.

A sorrowless earthly life is a true sign that the Lord has turned his face from a man, and that he is displeasing to God, even though outwardly he may seem reverent and virtuous.

In the evening, on going to sleep (an image of death for the life of that day); examine your actions during the day that has passed. Such an examination is not difficult for one who leads an attentive life, because attention destroys that forgetfulness which is so characteristic of a distracted person. And thus, recalling all your sins in deed, word, thought and feeling, offer repentance over them to God with the disposition and heartfelt promise of correction.

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5025 E. Mill Rd
Broadview Heights, Ohio 44147

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