• 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.

What salt is for any food, humility is for every virtue. To acquire it, a man must always think of himself with contrition, self-belittlement and painful salf-judgment. But if we acquire it, it will make us sons of God.

You know that evil entered into us through the transgression of the commandments. Hence it is obvious that by keeping them, evil departs from us. But without the doing of the commandments we should not even aspire or hope for purity of soul, because at the very outset we do not walk on the path that leads us to purity of soul. Do not say that God can give us the grace of purity of soul even without our keeping the commandments.

He who is deprived of repentance is deprived of the delight to come. He who is close to all things is far from repentance.

Virtue is not accounted virtue if it is not accompanied by difficulty and labors.

Sweet to the laborer is bread earned by his own sweat. Until a man has sweated, the bread of truth will not satisfy him.

Prayer offered up at night possesses a great power, more so than the prayer of the day-time. Therefore all the righteous prayed during the night, while combating the heaviness of the body and the sweetness of sleep and repelling bodily nature.

How can one say that a man has attained purity? - When he sees all men as being good, and when none appears to him to be unclean and defiled - then he is indeed pure in heart.

The heart of a man who oversees his soul at all times is made joyous by revelations.

Self-love precedes all passions, and the scorn of ease precedes all the virtues.

As a man whose head is under water cannot inhale pure air, so a man whose thoughts are plunged into the cares of this world cannot absorb the sensations of that new world.

The fear of God is the beginning of virtue, and it is said to be the offspring of faith. It is sown in the heart when a man withdraws his mind from the world’s distraction so as to confine its wandering thoughts within the ruminations of reflection upon the restitution to come.

Be despised and rejected in your own eyes, and you will see the glory of God within yourself. For where humility blossoms, there God’s glory bursts forth.

Walk before God in simplicity, and not in subtleties of the mind. Simplicity brings faith; but subtle and intricate speculations bring conceit; and conceit brings withdrawal from God.

If you pile up on one side of the scales all the works demanded by ascetic life, and on the other side-silence, you will find that the latter outweighs the former. Many good counsels have been given us, but if a man embraces silence, to follow them will become superfluous.

Love of God proceeds from conversing with him; this conversation of prayer comes about through stillness, and stillness comes with the stripping away of the self.

As it is not possible to cross over the great ocean without a ship, so no one can attain to love without fear. This filthy sea, which lies between us and the paradise of the heart, we may cross by the boat of repentance, whose oarsmen are those of fear. But if fear's oarsmen do not pilot the boat of repentance whereby we cross over the sea of this world to God, we shall be drowned in the sordid abyss.

Ever let mercy outweigh all else in you. Let our compassion be a mirror where we may see in ourselves that likeness and that true image which belong to the Divine nature and Divine essence. A heart hard and unmerciful will never be pure.

Ascetical endeavor is the mother of sanctification. From sanctification the first taste of the perception of Christ’s mysteries is born...

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Parish

Mailing Address

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

Email, Phone, and Fax

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