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

Fasting needn't be limited to abstinence from food alone, because true fasting is departure from evil deeds. Forgive your neighbor any insult, abstain from causing your neighbor offence, abstain from irritation, from senseless sorrows, from fear, wrath, and so on. ‘True fasting is alienation from evil, temperance of the tongue, setting aside of wrath, casting out of lust, idle talk, lies, and oath-breaking’…This is a true and pleasing fast for the Lord. Departing from these vices and from a corrupt state is what comprises a true fast.

He who fears God will pay careful attention to his soul and will free himself from communion with evil.

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

He who fears God will pay careful attention to his soul and will free himself from communion with evil.

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

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

Keep the body properly slim so that you reduce the burden of the heart's warfare, with full benefit to yourself.

The person who listens to Christ fills himself with light; and if he imitates Christ, he reclaims himself.

All sin is due to sensual pleasure, all forgiveness to hardship and distress.

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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