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

Self-love -- that is, friendship for the body -- is the source of evil in the soul.

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

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

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

The Lord said, 'When you have done all that is commanded you, say: We are useless servants: we have only done what was our duty' (Luke 17:10). Thus the kingdom of heaven is not a reward for works, but a gift of grace prepared by the Master for His faithful servants.

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

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

Whenever we are filled with evil thoughts, we should throw the invocation of our Lord Jesus Christ in their midst. Then, as experience has taught us, we shall see them instantly dispersed like smoke in air. Once the intellect is left to itself again, we can renew our constant attentiveness and our invocation. Whenever we are distracted, we should act in this way.

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

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).

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

Fear God and keep His commandments both in your feelings and in your intellect. If you force yourself to keep them in your intellect, bit by bit you will attain to fulfilling them in your feelings.

Continuity of attention produces inner stability; inner stability produces a natural intensification of watchfulness; and this intensification gradually and in due measure gives contemplative insight into spiritual warfare. This in its turn is succeeded by persistence in the Jesus Prayer and by the state that Jesus confers, in which the intellect, free from all images, enjoys complete quietude.

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

Our Lord and God made flesh has offered us the image of all virtue, as an example to the human race; and to recall us from the ancient fall, has set before us, as in a picture, His all-virtuous life in the flesh. Among many other good examples, He has shown us how, after His baptism, when He went out into the wilderness, it was with fasting that He began His mental wrestling with the devil, who came against Him as an ordinary man. And through this manner of His victory, our Lord has taught us, His unprofitable servants, how we must practice our wrestling against the spirits of evil, that is with humility and fasting and prayer and sobriety: which He observed though He Himself had no need of such things, being God...

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

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

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

Filters
Search By Keyword
Filter By
See more See less
Topics (Love, Anger, Confession, etc.)
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)