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

The greatest weapons of someone striving to lead a life of inward stillness are self-control, love, prayer, and spiritual reading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to the degree to which the intellect is stripped of the passions, the Holy Spirit initiates the intellect into the mysteries of the age to be.

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

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

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

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).

Abba Or used to say this, 'Do not speak in your heart against your brother like this: 'I am a man of more sober and austere life than he is,' but put yourself in subjection to the grace of Christ, in the spirit of poverty and genuine charity, or you will be overcome by the spirit of vainglory and lose all you have gained. For it is written in the Scriptures: 'Let him who stands take heed lest he fall.' (I Corinthians 10:12) Let your salvation be founded in the Lord.'

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)