• Vespers: Saturdays 5PM
  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
Archangel Michael Logo

Quotes

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

Virtues are connected with suffering.

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

Blessed are those who, from love of God, have girded their loins with unquestioning simplicity for this sea of suffering, and who do not turn back.

To bear a grudge and pray, means to sow seed on the sea and expect a harvest.

Until we find love, our labor is in the land of tares, and in the midst of tares we both sow and reap, even if our seed is the seed of righteousness.

An unmerciful ascetic is a barren tree.

Just as we must beware of overeating, so too we must beware of excessive temperance or abstinence. Excessive temperance weakens the body, destroys wakefulness, coolness and freshness which are indispensable for vigilance, and which fade and weaken when the physical powers succumb and fail. If you force a weak body to labor beyond its powers, you subject your soul to double darkness, and lead it into confusion (and not relief)...

As soon as a man becomes humble, mercy is not slow to envelop him. Then the heart is aware of God’s help, and acquires a certain power of assurance (in God) which arises in it. And when a man is aware that God’s help is actually assisting him, his heart becomes filled with faith in very truth.

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.

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.

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

Faith is the door to mysteries. What the bodily eyes are to sensory objects, faith is to the eyes of the intellect that gaze at hidden treasures.

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.

As a man cannot remain unscathed who spares his enemy on the field of battle, so a man engaged in spiritual warfare cannot save his soul if he spares his body.

Continual study in the writings of the saints fills the soul with incomprehensible wonder and divine gladness.

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.

The world is everything that holds us and satisfies us sensuously: that within us which has not known God (John 17:25).

'When ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, blessed are ye, seeing that ye are become partakers of the sufferings of Christ' (1 Peter 3:14; 4:13). Therefore, when you are unoppressed do not rejoice; and when tribulations come upon you, do not be sullen, accounting them as foreign to God’s way. For His path has been trodden from the ages and from all generations by the cross and by death. But how is it with you, that the afflictions on the path seem to you to be off the path? Do you not wish to follow the steps of the saints? Or have you plans for devising some way of your own, and of journeying therein without suffering?

Filtered (107)
Filters
Search By Keyword
Filter By
See more See less
Topics (Love, Anger, Confession, etc.)
See more See less
Show (107)
Cancel
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)