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

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

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...

Do not dare to raise your weak hand to stop the elemental tide of apostasy. Avoid it, protect yourself from it, and that is enough for you. Get to know the spirit of the times, study it so you can avoid its influence whenever possible.

By confession of sins friendship with sins is dissolved. Hate for sins is the true sign of repentance, of determination to lead a virtuous life.

If, wishing to correct another, you are moved to anger, you gratify your own passion. Do not lose yourself in order to save another.

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.

The way to attain compunction is an attentive life. ‘The beginning of repentance comes from the fear of God and attention,’ as the holy martyr Boniface says.

The reason that fasting has an effect on the spirits of evil rests in its powerful effect on our own spirit. A body subdued by fasting brings the human spirit freedom, strength, sobriety, purity, and keen discernment.

All men, led by the light of fallen nature alienated from guidance of God's light, will be enticed into submission to the seducer (Antichrist).

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 man’s soul takes on qualities according to its activity.

A man is neither saved nor lost by the place he is in, but is saved or lost by his deeds. Neither a holy place nor a holy state is of use to him who does not fulfill the commandments of the Lord.

The soul of all practices in the Lord is vigilance. Without vigilance, all these practices are fruitless. He who is desirous of saving himself must so establish himself that he might remain continuously vigilant toward himself, not only in solitude, but also under conditions of distraction, into which he is sometimes unwillingly drawn by circumstances.

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...

He who has not received within himself the kingdom of God cannot recognize the Antichrist. He is absolutely sure to become in a way incomprehensible to himself his follower.

Praise God continually with spiritual hymns and always remain in meditation and in this way you will be able to bear the burden of the temptations that come upon you. A traveler who is carrying a heavy load pauses from time to time and draws in deep breaths; it makes the journey easier and the burden lighter.

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.

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

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