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

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.

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

Love and self-control purify the soul.

Fear of the Lord conquers desire, and distress that accords with God's will repulses sensual pleasure.

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

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

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

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

A dog is better than I am, for he has love and he does not judge.

He who really keeps account of his actions considers as lost every day in which he does not mourn, whatever good he may have done in it.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The man of Christ embarks upon the path of divine perfection by overcoming, with the aid of evangelical virtues, the sin and evil within him and in the world around him. He constantly marches on from one good to another, from smaller to greater, from greater to greatest. In this progress he never pauses, for any delay would bring spiritual stagnation, numbness, death. Through every pure thought, every holy sentiment, every good desire and kindly word, he progresses toward resurrection, immortality, eternal life.

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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)