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

If you feel no pang in committing minor offences you will through them fall into major transgressions.

Anger is by nature designed for waging war with the demons and for struggling with every kind of sinful pleasure. Therefore angels, arousing spiritual pleasure in us and giving us to taste its blessedness, incline us to direct our anger against the demons. But the demons, enticing us towards worldly lusts, make us use anger to fight with men, which is against nature, so that the mind, thus stupefied and darkened, should become a traitor to virtues.

If you want to pray properly, do not let yourself be upset or you will run in vain.

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

Woe is he who knowingly chooses to sin with the intention to repent when morning comes, for he knows not what the coming day or the night that precedes it will bring.

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.

All sin is due to sensual pleasure, all forgiveness to hardship and distress.

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.

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.

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.

A brother asked Abba Isidore the priest, 'Why are the demons so frightened of you?' The old man said to him, 'Because, ever since the day I began practicing ascesis, I have striven to prevent anger from reaching my lips.'

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

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

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

The only thing God requires of us is that we do not sin. But this is achieved, not by acting according to the law, but by carefully guarding the divine image in us and our supernal dignity. When we thus live in our natural state, wearing the resplendent robe of the Spirit, we dwell in God and God dwells in us. Then we are called gods by adoption and sons of God, sealed by the light of the knowledge of God.

There is a sin which is always 'unto death' [1 Jn 5:16]; the sin which we have not repented. Even a saint's prayers will not be heard for the unrepented sin. The person who repents correctly does not imagine that his sins are cancelled through his own effort; but knows that through this effort he makes peace with God.

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.

The man who has come to loathe sin has mounted the first rung of the heavenly ladder.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)