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.

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

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

Go and have pity on all, for through pity, one finds freedom of speech before God.

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

Blessed stillness gives birth to blessed children: self-control, love and pure prayer.

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

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

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).

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

In Christianity truth is not a philosophical concept nor is it a theory, a teaching, or a system, but rather, it is the living theanthropic hypostasis - the historical Jesus Christ (John 14:6). Before Christ men could only conjecture about the Truth since they did not possess it. With Christ as the incarnate divine Logos the eternally complete divine Truth enters into the world. For this reason the Gospel says: 'Truth came by Jesus Christ' (John 1:17).

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Church is the personhood of the God-human Christ, a God-human organism and not a human organization. The Church is indivisible, as is the person of the God-human, as is the body of the God-human. For this reason it is a fundamental error to have the God-human organism of the Church divided into little national organizations. In the course of their procession down through history many local Churches have limited themselves to nationalism, to national methods and aspirations, ours being among them. The Church has adapted herself to the people when it should properly be just the reverse: the people adapting themselves to the Church. This mistake has many a time been made by our Church here. But we very well know that these were the 'tares' of our Church life, tares which the Lord will not uproot, leaving them rather to grow with the wheat until the time of harvest (Matth. 13, 29-30). We also well know (the Lord so taught us) that these tares have their origin in our primeval enemy and enemy of Christ: the devil (Matth. 13, 25-28). But we wield this knowledge in vain if it is not transformed into prayer, the prayer that in time to come Christ will safeguard us from becoming the sowers and cultivators of such tares ourselves.

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Mailing Address

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

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