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

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

The greatest weapons of someone striving to lead a life of inward stillness are self-control, love, prayer, and spiritual reading.

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

The person who is unaffected by the things of this world loves stillness; and he who loves no human thing loves all men.

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

Control your stomach, sleep, anger, and tongue, and you will not 'dash your foot against a stone.'

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.

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

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

You should not make long prayer, for it is better to pray little but often. Superfluous words are idle talk.

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

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

A wise man is one who pays attention to himself and is quick to separate himself from all defilement.

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

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

If you are not willing to repent through freely choosing to suffer, unsought sufferings will providentially be imposed on you.

If you lay down rules for yourself, do not disobey yourself; for he who cheats himself is self-deluded.

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

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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)