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

The Holy Fathers teach us how to become familiar with the Gospel, how to read it and how to understand it, what helps and what opposes its understanding. Therefore, at first you must devote more time to reading the Holy Fathers...

He who esteems life in this world and judges its values as worth protecting does not know how to discern what is his own from what is alien to himself. Nothing transitory belongs to us.

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.

Worldly thoughts and the cares of life have the same effect on the understanding as a veil draped over the eyes, for the understanding is the eye of the soul. So long as we leave them there, we cannot see. But when they fall away as we remember that we are to die, then we shall clearly see the true light which illumines every man as it comes into the world from on high.

The world is much stormier than the surging waves, and sin agitates it more than wind does the sea. There are times when the waters of the sea are calm, when the winds are concealed in their hiding places; but in the world waves of desire are ceaselessly whipped up, and the wind of deceit blows against the doors of the world’s vessels. Yet the day when it will abate is at hand.... Blessed is he who has completed his path in the world without falling into its snares.

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's difficult to be saved in the world amidst the seductions and the customs of this world that go counter to the Holy Church. Evil communications corrupt good manners (I Cor. 15:33). It's difficult to be saved in the midst of dissolute society. In the Holy Scriptures it is said, With the holy man wilt thou be holy, and with the innocent man wilt thou be innocent. And with the elect man wilt thou be elect, and with the perverse wilt thou be perverse (Ps. 17:25-6).

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

The images of worldly vanity, upon which we have looked with entire pleasure and hearty sympathy, effeminate, weaken, and disturb the soul; they deprive us of purity of heart and of boldness before God.

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

As a man whose head is under water cannot inhale pure air, so a man whose thoughts are plunged into the cares of this world cannot absorb the sensations of that new world.

Our flesh is an unfaithful friend.

Living in the world, benefiting by the worldly society of men, it is a sin to evade responsibilities and to thrust them on others.

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

The world is everything that holds us and satisfies us sensuously: that within us which has not known God (John 17:25).

Let us not wallow in pleasures, that we might behold His glory in the day of His coming.

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.

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

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)