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

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

Do not let the sun go down on the anger of your brother (Eph. 4:26); that is, let no one be angry and enraged against his brother until the setting of the sun.

When an archer desires to shoot his arrows successfully, he first takes great pains over his posture and aligns himself accurately with his mark. It should be the same for you who are about to shoot the head of the wicked devil. Let us be concerned first for the good order of sensations and then for the good posture of inner thoughts.

Unless a man keeps the commandments of God, he cannot progress, even in a single virtue.

When you intend to do something and see that your thought is perturbed, and if after invoking God's Name it remains perturbed even by a hair's breadth, know from this that the action you mean to commit is from the evil one and refrain from commiting it. For nothing done with perturbation is pleasing to God.

My children, desire to purify your hearts from envy and from anger with each other, lest death should overcome you, and you will be counted among the murderers. For whosoever hates his brother, kills a soul.

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.

Almsgiving heals the soul's incensive power; fasting withers sensual desire; prayer purifies the intellect and prepares it for contemplation of created beings. For the Lord has given us commandments which correspond to the powers of the soul.

Through anger wisdom is lost, so that we no longer know what we are to do, or in what manner we should do it.

Prayer is the seed of gentleness and the absence of anger.

When anyone is disturbed or saddened under the pretext of a good and soul-profiting matter, and is angered against his neighbor, it is evident that this is not according to God: for everything that is of God is peaceful and useful and leads a man to humility and to judging himself.

According to the degree to which the intellect is stripped of the passions, the Holy Spirit initiates the intellect into the mysteries of the age to be.

Let us avail ourselves of the example of that holy staretz who used to say: 'Depart, evil one; come, beloved!' Once a brother who overheard his words and supposed that the staretz was speaking to another man asked him 'With whom are you conversing, father?' And the staretz answered: 'I am driving away evil thoughts and calling the good ones to my side.' And so, if we are tempted, let us use the words of that staretz, or others like them.

Empty your mind of these two things: the belief that you are deserving of great things, or the thought that any man is beneath you. If you do this anger will never be permitted to rise up within you.

Leaves, whether of gold or lead, placed over the eyes, obstruct the sight equally, for the value of gold does not affect the blindness it produces. Similarly, anger, whether reasonable or unreasonable, obstructs our spiritual vision.

Truly, arrogance knows that it is guilty; therefore it places anger at the gate, to act as its sentry.

How then shall we escape the disasters that anger brings? By training the force of our feelings not to rush ahead of the power of reason.

He who has put a stop to anger has also destroyed remembrance of wrongs; because childbirth continues only while the father is alive.

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

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