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

Have great care of your children. We live at a time when much freedom is given to the expression of thought, but little care is taken that thoughts should be founded on truth. Teach them to love truth.

There is nothing more burdensome and grievous then when conscience accuses us in anything, and there is nothing dearer then calmness and approval of the conscience.

Parents and teachers! Beware and be most careful not to let your children be capricious; otherwise they will soon forget to value your love: their hearts will be corrupted with wickedness; they will soon lose holy, true, glowing love from their hearts, and, on reaching maturity, they will complain bitterly that in their youth you spoilt them too much and encouraged them in their caprices. Capriciousness is the germ of the corruption of the heart, the rust of the heart, the moth of love, the seed of evil, and an abomination to the Lord.

Ignorance of the scriptures is a precipice and a deep abyss.

Grace always precedes temptation, as if to notify you saying, 'Prepare yourself and lock your doors.'

First give your children virtue as an inheritance and then distribute your estate also.

The conscience is nature's book. He who applies what he reads there experiences God's help.

Having children is a matter of nature; but raising them and educating them in the virtues is a matter of mind and will.

As a general rule, decide whether a thing is permissible by the effect it produces within. Permit yourself what is constructive, but never what is destructive.

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.

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.

Conscience in men is nothing else but the voice of the omnipresent God moving in the hearts of men, as He Who alone Is and has created everything, the Lord knows all as Himself - all the thoughts, desires, intentions, words, and works of men, present, past, and future. However far in front I may let my thoughts, my imagination, run He is there before me and I ever inevitably finish my course in Him, ever having Him as the witness of my ways. 'His eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men' (Jer 32:19). 'Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?' (Ps 139:7).

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

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.

Do not disregard your conscience, which always counsels you of the best. It puts before you divine and angelic advice; it frees you from the hidden stains of your heart, and will make you the gift of free speech with God at the time of your departure.

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

The spirit of faith and piety of the parents should be regarded as the most powerful means for the preservation, upbringing and strengthening of the life of grace in children.

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

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)