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

Compunction comes when you consider how much you have grieved God Who is so good, so sweet, so merciful, so kind, and entirely full of love; Who was crucified and suffered everything for us. When you meditate on these things and other things the Lord has suffered, they bring compunction.

The man who follows Christ in solitary mourning is greater than he who praises Christ amid the congregation of men.

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

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

We have become so inattentive to the work of our salvation that we misinterpret many other words in Holy Scripture as well, all because we do not seek the grace of God and in the pride of our minds do not allow it to dwell in our souls. That is why we are without true enlightenment from the Lord, which He sends into the hearts of men who hunger and thirst wholeheartedly for God’s righteousness or holiness.

If you are enclosed within yourself through prayer, humility, and mourning, you will find a spiritual treasure -- only let pride and criticism be far from you.

Let work humble the body, and when the body is humbled the soul will be humble with it, so that it is truly said that bodily labors lead to humility.

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

Self-love -- that is, friendship for the body -- is the source of evil in the soul.

Mourning has a twofold action: like water tears extinguish all the fire of passions and wash the soul clean of their foulness; and, again, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, it is like fire bringing life, warming the heart, and inciting it to love and desire God.

Go to the tombs and see that the assurance of men is nothing. Why then does man who is dust indulge in vainglory? Why does he who is all stench exalt himself? Let us therefore weep for ourselves while we have time, lest, at the hour of our departure, we be found asking God for extra time to repent.

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

The way to attain compunction is an attentive life. ‘The beginning of repentance comes from the fear of God and attention,’ as the holy martyr Boniface says.

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.

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.

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

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.

Whoever is experienced in the spiritual interpretation of Scripture knows that the simplest passage is of a significance equal to that of the most abstruse passage, and that both are directed to the salvation of man.

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