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

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

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

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

The flow of history confirms the reality of the Gospel: the Church is filled to overflowing with sinners. Does their presence in the Church reduce, violate, or destroy her sanctity? Not in the least! For her Head—the Lord Christ, and her Soul—the Holy Spirit, and her divine teaching, her mysteries, and her virtues, are indissolubly and immutably holy. The Church tolerates sinners, shelters them, and instructs them, that they may be awakened and roused to repentance and spiritual recovery and transfiguration; but they do not hinder the Church from being holy. Only unrepentant sinners, persistent in evil and godless malice, are cut off from the Church either by the visible action of the theanthropic authority of the Church or by the invisible action of divine judgment, so that thus also the holiness of the Church may be preserved.

Keep the commandments, and you will find peace; love God, and you will attain spiritual knowledge.

Break the bonds of your friendship for the body and give it only what is absolutely necessary.

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

It is an insult to the intelligence to be subject to what lacks intelligence and to concern itself with shameful desires.

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

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

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

Spiritual freedom is release from the passions; without Christ’s mercy you cannot attain it.

The more one reads and studies the Bible, the more he finds reasons to study it as often and as frequently as he can. According to St. John Chrysostom, it is like an aromatic root, which produces more and more aroma the more it is rubbed.

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

The mission of the Church is to bring about in her members the conviction that the proper state of human personhood is composed of immortality and eternity and not of the realm of time and mortality... and the conviction that man is a wayfarer who is wending his way in the sway of time and mortality towards immortality and all eternity.

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

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.

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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)