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

If you love to enjoy true and complete delight from the Scriptures, seek to read them not merely with simple understanding, but with deeds and practical realities. Moreover, seek to read them not merely for the mere love of learning but also for the sake of ascetic endeavors & discipline, as St. Mark wrote: 'Read the words of Holy Scripture with an eye to practical applications and not merely to be puffed up by any fine thought that you may receive from it.' Another Father said: 'This is why the lover of knowledge must also be a lover of discipline. For knowledge alone does not give light to a lamp.'

You are accustomed to look upon your body as upon your own inalienable property, but that is quite wrong, because your body is God's edifice.

The Scriptures were not given merely that we might have them in books, but that we might engrave them on our hearts.

Keep the body properly slim so that you reduce the burden of the heart's warfare, with full benefit to yourself.

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

Our flesh is an unfaithful friend.

Charity, temperance, contemplation, and prayer please God; gluttony, licentiousness, and what multiplies them, please the flesh. Therefore they who are in the flesh cannot please God. And they that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with the passions and concupiscences.

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

One should nourish the soul with the word of God: for the word of God, as St. Gregory the Theologian says, is angelic bread, by which are nourished souls who hunger for God. Most of all, one should occupy oneself with reading the New Testament and the Psalter, which one should do standing up. From this there occurs an enlightenment in the mind, which is in the mind, which is changed by a Divine change.

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.

When the flesh flourishes, the soul fades; when the flesh has full liberty, the soul is straitened; when the flesh is satiated, the soul hungers; when the flesh is adorned, the soul is deformed; when the flesh overflows with laughter, the soul is surrounded by misfortune; when the flesh is in the light, the soul is in darkness...

Reading the Scriptures is a great means of security against sinning.

Do not approach the words of the mysteries contained in the divine Scriptures without prayer and beseeching God for help, but say: 'Lord, grant me to perceive the power in them!' Reckon prayer to be the key to the true understanding of the divine Scriptures.

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.

A righteous person who is wise resembles God: he never disciplines anyone in order to take vengeance upon a wrongdoing, but only so that the person may be set aright, or that others may be deterred.

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

Compassion and humility are like the soul’s wings by which it flies up to heaven (Ps. 104:7). Without them prayer cannot rise off the ground...

The ignorance of Scripture is a great cliff and a deep abyss; to know nothing of the divine laws is a great betrayal of salvation.

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