• Vespers: Saturdays 5PM
  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
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Quotes

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

Strive to love every man equally, and you will simultaneously expel all the passions.

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

If you abandon God and are a slave to the passions, you cannot reap God's mercy.

When a passion arises, when it is young and feeble, cut it off, lest it stiffen and cause you a great deal of trouble. It is one thing to pluck out a small weed and quite another thing to uproot a great tree.

Free me from my wanton habits before the end overtakes me...

If the main goal of the repentant sinner should be total, light-bearing and blessed communion with God, then the main hindrance to this is the existence of the passions still active and working in him - the virtues being as yet unsealed in him - and the unrighteousness of his powers. Therefore his main work upon conversion and repentance should be the uprooting of the passions and sealing the virtues - in a word, correcting himself.

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.

Do not allow a passion to harden into a habit.

Almsgiving heals the soul's incensive power; fasting withers sensual desire; prayer purifies the intellect and prepares it for contemplation of created beings. For the Lord has given us commandments which correspond to the powers of the soul.

You cannot destroy the passions on your own, but ask God, and He will destroy them, if this is profitable for you.

Spiritual freedom is release from the passions; without Christ’s mercy you cannot attain it.

The intellect becomes a stranger to the things of this world when its attachment to the senses has been completely sundered.

Fear God and keep His commandments both in your feelings and in your intellect. If you force yourself to keep them in your intellect, bit by bit you will attain to fulfilling them in your feelings.

The holy Fathers' counsel is to begin with small things, for, says Ephraim the Syrian, how can you put out a great fire before you have learned to quench a small one? If you wish to set yourself free from a great suffering, crush the small desires, say the holy Fathers. Do not suppose that the one can be separated from the others: they all hang together like a long chain or a net.

It is not safe to swim in one's clothes, nor should a slave of passion touch theology.

According to the degree to which the intellect is stripped of the passions, the Holy Spirit initiates the intellect into the mysteries of the age to be.

Therefore, if you wish to conquer the passions, cut off the love of pleasure; but if you are pursuing food, you will spend a life in passions; the soul will not be humbled if the flesh is not deprived of bread. It is not possible to deliver the soul from perdition while protecting the body from unpleasantness.

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

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

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[email protected]
440-526-5192 (Phone)