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

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.

Apt silence bridles anger.

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

To those who do not long for it, wisdom is fear, because of the loss which they suffer through their flight from it; but in those who cleave to it, wisdom is loving desire, promoting an inner state of joyous activity. For wisdom creates fear, delivering a person from the passions by making him apprehensive of punishment; and it also produces loving desire, accustoming the intellect through the acquisition of the virtues to behold the blessings held in store for us.

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.

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

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.

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

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

True wisdom is gazing at God. Gazing at God is silence of the thoughts. Stillness of mind is tranquility which comes from discernment.

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.

The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. For where there is fear, there the commandments are kept; where the commandments are kept, there is the flesh purified—that cloud which envelops the soul and prevents it from seeing clearly the Divine ray; where the flesh is purified, there light springs forth, and the shining of the light fulfils desire above all desires.

The more one reads and studies the Bible, the more he finds reasons to study it as often and as frequently as he can. According to St. John Chrysostom, it is like an aromatic root, which produces more and more aroma the more it is rubbed.

Put aside bodily considerations when you stand in prayer, lest the bite of a flea, a gnat or a fly deprive you of the greatest gain afforded by prayer.

Prove your love and zeal for wisdom in actual deeds.

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 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.

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

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Broadview Heights, Ohio 44147

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