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

The best medicine for pride, man’s greatest sickness of soul, is humility. Words cannot describe or explain it, but the Fathers say that he who strives hard to live according to the precepts of our Lord, and is fully aware of his own sins, acquires it steadily. Therefore be very careful never to think yourself good, or the least bit better than others.

We ought to learn the virtues through practicing them, not merely through talking about them, so that by acquiring the habit of them we do not forget what is of benefit to us.

I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, 'What can get through from such snares?' Then I heard a voice saying to me, 'Humility.'

We see that water gravitates from the mountains to low-lying areas; so too, the grace of God is poured out from the Heavenly Father upon humble hearts.

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

Take remarks without grumbling: be thankful when you are scorned, disregarded, ignored. But do not create humbling situations; they are provided in the course of the day as richly as you need. We notice the person who is for ever bowing and fussily servile, and perhaps say, How humble he is! But the truly humble person escapes notice: the world does not know him (I John 3:I); for the world he is mostly a 'zero.'

Evil is not an actual substance, but absence of good; just as darkness is nothing but absence of light.

Humility never falls, for it lies beneath everything.

As soon as a man becomes humble, mercy is not slow to envelop him. Then the heart is aware of God’s help, and acquires a certain power of assurance (in God) which arises in it. And when a man is aware that God’s help is actually assisting him, his heart becomes filled with faith in very truth.

Be despised and rejected in your own eyes, and you will see the glory of God within yourself. For where humility blossoms, there God’s glory bursts forth.

It seems to me that, in all cases when indignity is offered to us, we should be silent; for it is our moment of profit.

He who seeks glory from men travels by the path of pride, but he who seeks glory from God travels by the path of humility.

A haughty person is not aware of his faults, or a humble person of his good qualities. An evil ignorance blinds the first, an ignorance pleasing to God blinds the second.

The zeal which wishes to destroy great evil without appropriate preparation is a great evil in itself.

In so much as you sincerely compel yourself to do God's commandments, an understanding of the infirmity of your being will be born in you, and in as much as you have this understanding, one of the basic Christian virtues, humility, will in turn be born. God's grace is given only for humility, not for works, although humility is engendered by works. This is the law of true asceticism.

Humility, even without works, can save a man.

Along with an evil thought, a hostile power enters into us, and then the soul is clouded, and evil thoughts harass her.

Behold, this is the true and the Christian humility. In this you will be able to achieve victory over every vice, by attributing to God rather than to yourself the fact that you have won.

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