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

Words are truly images of the soul...

If a person swallows too much food, he is inviting impure thoughts. If he mortifies the stomach, he is creating pure thoughts. Often a lion if it is caressed becomes domesticated, whereas the more you coddle the body, the more it goes wild.

Those who mourn and those who are insensitive are not subject to fear, but the cowardly often have become deranged. And this is natural. For the Lord rightly forsakes the proud that the rest of us may learn not to be puffed up.

Those who live in obedience are strangers to love of money. For where even the body has been given up, what is left to be one's own? Only in one way can they be harmed, namely by being ready and quick to go from place to place. I have seen material possessions make monks patient to remain in one place. But I praise those who are pilgrims for the Lord.

Obedience is to give up one's own judgment but to do it with wise consultation.

And when you pray, see that you ask not for what is alien to your life, and provoke the Lord. Ask not for money, not for human glory, nor power, nor for any of the things that pass away. But seek for the kingdom of God, and all that is needed for your body will be provided; as the Lord Himself has said: Seek ye the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things will be added unto you (Matthew 6:33).

A little fire softens a large piece of wax. So, too, a small indignity often softens, sweetens and wipes away suddenly all the fierceness, insensibility and hardness of our heart.

The fathers have laid down that psalmody is a weapon, and prayer is a wall, and honest tears are a bath; but blessed obedience in their judgment is confession of faith, without which no one subject to the passions will see the Lord.

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).

True fasting lies is rejecting evil, holding one’s tongue, suppressing one’s hatred, and banishing one’s lust, evil words, lying, and betrayal of vows.

As too many sticks often choke a fire and put it out, while making a lot of smoke, so excessive sorrow often makes the soul smoky and dark, and dries the stream of tears.

I wish I could persuade spiritual persons that the way of perfection does not consist in many devices, nor in much cogitation, but in denying themselves completely and yielding themselves to suffer everything for the love of Christ. And if there is failure in this exercise, all other methods of walking in the spiritual way are merely a beating about the bush, and profitless trifling, although a person should have very high contemplation and communication with God.

Do you consider you have done some good action? Give thanks to God, and do not set yourself above your neighbor.

All that the Lord has done, we shall find, is intended to instruct us in humility.

A sign of deliverance from our falls is the continual reckoning of ourselves as debtors.

I consider those fallen mourners more blessed than those who have not fallen and are not mourning over themselves; because as a result of their fall, they have risen by a sure resurrection.

Love and humility form a holy pair; what the first builds, the second binds, thus preventing the building from falling asunder.

A servant of the Lord is he who in body stands before men, but in mind knocks at Heaven with prayer.

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5025 E. Mill Rd
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