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

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.

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

Our enemies (demons) fell because of their pride, and call us to follow them, and bring us feelings of praise. And if your soul accepts that praise, then grace will depart, until the soul becomes humble again. And so all your life you must learn the humility of Christ.

Wrath is a reminder of hidden hatred, that is to say, remembrance of wrongs. Wrath is a desire for the injury of the one who has provoked you. Irascibility is the untimely blazing up of the heart. Bitterness is a movement of displeasure seated in the soul. Anger is an easily changeable movement of one’s disposition and disfiguration of soul.

The conscience is nature's book. He who applies what he reads there experiences God's help.

Through anger the brightness of the Holy Spirit is shut out from the soul.

If they will praise you, you must remain silent—do not say anything.

A treasure that is known is quickly spent: and even so any virtue that is commented on and made a public show of is destroyed. Even as wax is melted before the face of fire, so is the soul enfeebled by praise, and loses the toughness of its virtue.

It is not possible for a man to control his anger when abused, or to overcome trials with patience when afflicted, if he is not willing to take the last and lowest place among other men.

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 a general rule, decide whether a thing is permissible by the effect it produces within. Permit yourself what is constructive, but never what is destructive.

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

A true monk does no reproach and does not praise.

Pay no attention to praise and fear it; remember what one of the holy fathers says: 'If someone praises you, expect reproaches from him too.'

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.

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

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

Of the Only Case in Which Anger is Good... But we have a use for anger most properly planted within us, and for this use alone it is profitable and healthful for us to entertain it, namely, when we burn with wrathful indignation against the lustful motions of our own hearts, and are enraged to find that those things which we should be ashamed to do or to speak of before men have found admittance into the secret places of our minds. We may then well dread and fear exceedingly the presence of the Angels and the Omnipresence of God Himself, and His all-seeing Eye from which no secrets of our hearts can lie hid.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)