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

If you want cure your soul, you need four things. The first is to forgive your enemies. The second is to confess thoroughly. The third is to blame yourself. The fourth is to resolve to sin no more. If we wish to be saved, we must always blame ourselves and not attribute our wrong acts to others. And God, Who is most compassionate, will forgive us.

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

If you want to cure your soul, you need four things. The first is to forgive your enemies. The second is to confess thoroughly. The third is to blame yourself. The fourth is to resolve to sin no more. If we wish to be saved, we must always blame ourselves and not attribute our wrong acts to others. And God, Who is most compassionate, will forgive us.

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

Listlessness is an apathy of soul; and a soul becomes apathetic when sick with self-indulgence.

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.

All the treasures of the world are nothing to me if love is absent, all the honors of the world are lowly and dead without love. Love is for me life, light and joy. This sad world does not know this love and calls darkness light.

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

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

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

He who chooses maltreatment and dishonor for the sake of truth is walking on the apostolic path; he has taken up the cross and is bound in chains (cf. Mt 16:24). But when he tries to concentrate his attention on the heart without accepting these two, his intellect wanders from the path and he falls into the temptations and snares of the devil.

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

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

When you see someone suffering great dishonor, you may be sure that he was carried away by thoughts of self-esteem and is now reaping, much to his disgust, the harvest from the seeds which he sowed in his heart.

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).

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

Some people when praised for their virtue are delighted, and attribute this pleasurable feeling of self-esteem to grace. Others when reproved for their sins are pained, and they mistake this beneficial pain for the action of sin.

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

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