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

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.

Do not stir up a memory that will cover your prayer with mud, do not root around in the soil of your old sins.

Do not hate the sinner. Become a proclaimer of God's grace, seeing that God provides for you even though you are unworthy.

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

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

As a man cannot remain unscathed who spares his enemy on the field of battle, so a man engaged in spiritual warfare cannot save his soul if he spares his body.

It is vain that some unenlightened people seek the greatest evil for man somewhere else, rather than in sin. Some consider disease to be the greatest evil, others - poverty, and others - death. But neither disease, nor poverty, nor death, nor any other earthly disaster can be such a great evil for us as sin is. These earthly misfortunes do not separate us from God if we are seeking Him sincerely, but, on the contrary, they bring us closer to Him.

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

It is an insult to the intelligence to be subject to what lacks intelligence and to concern itself with shameful desires.

Sin, to one who loves God, is nothing other than an arrow from the enemy in battle. The true Christian is a warrior fighting his way through the regiments of the unseen enemy to his heavenly homeland.

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

Our flesh is an unfaithful friend.

Greater therefore is the rejoicing of heaven over the sinner converted than upon the soul that remained just. A captain in battle will feel a warmer regard for the soldier who at first faltered and ran, and then had bravely fought back, than over the one who had never yielded yet had never thrust bravely forward. So will the farmer love more the fields that cleaned of their weeds now bear a fruitful yield, than the land which had never known thorns, yet had never yielded a bountiful crop.

You were commanded to keep the body as a servant, not to be unnaturally enslaved to its pleasures.

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.

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

Struggle until death to fulfill the commandments: purified through them, you will enter into life.

A thick rope is composed of thin strands of hemp. One thin strand cannot hold you bound nor strangle you, for you will easily, with the lightest touch, break it and free yourself. But if a thick rope binds you, you will stay bound, and it will strangle you. You cannot easily break it and free yourself of it. As a thick rope is made from thin, weak strands, so men's passions are made up of smaller initial sins. The small, initial sins a man can still break and free himself of. But sin on sin, repeated, the weave becomes thicker and thicker until it becomes a passion, which masters a man as only it can do. You can neither cut it out easily nor cast it away from you nor be divorced from it. Oh, when will men guard themselves from these first sins? Then they would not have so much difficulty in freeing themselves from the passions.

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

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