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

If, wishing to correct another, you are moved to anger, you gratify your own passion. Do not lose yourself in order to save another.

Silence of lips is better and more wonderful than any edifying conversation. Strive to acquire humility and submissiveness. Never insist that anything should be according to your will, for this gives birth to anger. Do not judge or humiliate anyone, for this gives birth to anger. Do not judge or humiliate anyone, for this exhausts the heart and blinds the mind, and thereon leads to negligence and makes the heart unfeeling.

Reading the scriptures is a great safeguard against sin.

A humble and spiritually active man, when he reads the Holy Scripture, will refer everything to himself and not to another.

A truly intelligent man has only one care -- wholeheartedly to obey Almighty God and to please Him. The one and only thing he teaches his soul is how best to do things agreeable to God, thanking Him for His merciful Providence in whatever may happen in his life. For just as it would be unseemly not to thank physicians for curing our body, even when they give us bitter and unpleasant remedies, so too would it be to remain ungrateful to God for things that appear to us painful, failing to understand that everything happens through His Providence for our good. In this understanding and this faith in God lie salvation and peace of soul.

Do not befoul your intellect by clinging to thoughts filled with anger and sensual desire. Otherwise you will lose your capacity for pure prayer and fall victim to the demon of listlessness.

Long-suffering and readiness to forgive curb anger; love and compassion wither it.

Compunction comes when you consider how much you have grieved God Who is so good, so sweet, so merciful, so kind, and entirely full of love; Who was crucified and suffered everything for us. When you meditate on these things and other things the Lord has suffered, they bring compunction.

We have become so inattentive to the work of our salvation that we misinterpret many other words in Holy Scripture as well, all because we do not seek the grace of God and in the pride of our minds do not allow it to dwell in our souls. That is why we are without true enlightenment from the Lord, which He sends into the hearts of men who hunger and thirst wholeheartedly for God’s righteousness or holiness.

Paissy the Great, having lost his temper, begged the Lord to deliver him from irritability. The Lord appeared to him and said, ‘Paissy, if thou dost not wish to get angry, desire nothing, neither criticize nor hate any man, and thou wilt have no anger.’

As it is not possible to walk without feet or fly without wings, so it is impossible to attain the Kingdom of Heaven without the fulfillment of the commandments.

He who is not indifferent to fame and pleasure, as well as to love of riches that exists because of them and increases them, cannot cut off occasions for anger. And he who does not cut these off cannot attain perfect love.

When one gets angry, he is deprived of God's protection.

Therefore silence, prayer, obedience; when you practice these virtues with the help of God, then you will know the light of Christ is within your soul.

He who is obedient, is an imitator of Christ, and he who is proud and talks back is an imitator of the devil. So let us be careful, whom we are imitating, Christ or the devil…The so-called Christians must be true, in word and deed and not false, only in name.

Whoever is experienced in the spiritual interpretation of Scripture knows that the simplest passage is of a significance equal to that of the most abstruse passage, and that both are directed to the salvation of man.

Truly great is the mystery of obedience. Since our sweet Jesus first marked out this path and became a model for us, aren’t we obliged to follow Him?

Holy Scripture is presented to the mind’s eye like a mirror in which the appearance of our inner being can be seen.

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

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