• Vespers: Saturdays 5PM
  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
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Quotes

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

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

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

A holy man told us one day, that the source of all heresies and schisms in the church was, loving God too little, and ourselves too much.

It is impossible for the mind to escape disturbing thoughts, but it is possible, for any who take sufficient care, either to admit them or reject them.

Self-love -- that is, friendship for the body -- is the source of evil in the soul.

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.

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

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

Just as desire and rage multiply our sins, so self-control and humility erase them.

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

Love and self-control purify the soul.

How great the evil of pride is, that it deserves to have as its adversary not an angel or other virtues contrary to it but rather God Himself! For it must be noted that it is never said of those who are caught up in the other vices that the Lord resists them, or that the Lord is set against the gluttonous, or fornicators, or the angry, or the avaricious; this is true of the proud alone. For those vices only turn back upon wrongdoers or seem to be committed against those who have a part in them -- that is, against other human beings. This one, however, of its very nature touches God, and therefore it is specially worthy of having God opposed to it.

Of the Only Case in Which Anger is Good... But we have a use for anger most properly planted within us, and for this use alone it is profitable and healthful for us to entertain it, namely, when we burn with wrathful indignation against the lustful motions of our own hearts, and are enraged to find that those things which we should be ashamed to do or to speak of before men have found admittance into the secret places of our minds. We may then well dread and fear exceedingly the presence of the Angels and the Omnipresence of God Himself, and His all-seeing Eye from which no secrets of our hearts can lie hid.

Patient endurance is the soul's struggle for virtue; where there is struggle for virtue, self-indulgence is banished.

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

Long-suffering and readiness to forgive curb anger; love and compassion wither it.

Fasts and vigils, the study of Scripture, renouncing possessions and everything worldly are not in themselves perfection, as we have said; they are its tools. For perfection is not to be found in them; it is acquired through them. It is useless, therefore, to boast of our fasting, vigils, poverty, and reading of Scripture when we have not achieved the love of God and our fellow men. Whoever has achieved love has God within himself and his intellect is always with God.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of our salvation, and its constant guardian. This it is which secures both the beginning of conversion, and the purging away of vices, and the safe retention of virtues...

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Parish

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

Email, Phone, and Fax

[email protected]
440-526-5192 (Phone)