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

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

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

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

A man who falls into sin is different from the way he was created. He is different, because he changes by his own actions the way he was meant to be. Man renounces himself when he becomes a different person through repentance. He leaves a corrupted man, which he had become through sin, and becomes such as he once was created, through mercy.

Love giving hospitality, my child, for it opens the gates of Paradise. In this you also offer hospitality to angels. 'Entertain strangers so that you won't be a stranger to God.'

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

We are sons of God or of Satan according to whether we conform to goodness or to evil.

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

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

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

The study of divine principles teaches knowledge of God to the person who lives in truth, longing and reverence.

Repentance is real when afterwards you keep trying strenuously to live now as you ought; but without this it is not very effectual, if you repent just to say your sins & to keep on living as before.

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

Concern for one's soul means hardship and humility, for through these God forgives us all our sins.

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

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

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

I think it best that a man should have a little bit of all the virtues. Therefore, get up early every day and acquire the beginning of every virtue and every commandment of God. Use great patience, with fear and long-suffering, in the love of God, with all the fervor of your soul and body. Exercise great humility, bear with interior distress; be vigilant and pray often with reverence and groaning, with purity of speech and control of your eyes. When you are despised do not get angry; be at peace, and do not render evil for evil. Do not pay attention to the faults of others, and do not try to compare yourself with others, knowing you are less than every created thing. Renounce everything material and that which is of the flesh. Live by the cross, in warfare, in poverty of spirit, in voluntary spiritual asceticism, in fasting, penitence and tears, in discernment, in purity of soul, taking hold of that which is good. Do your work in peace. Persevere in keeping vigil, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, and in sufferings. Shut yourself in a tomb as though you were already dead, so that at all times you will think death is near.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)