• 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.

Whether you pray with brethren or alone, try to pray not simply as a routine, but with conscious awareness of your prayer. Conscious awareness of prayer is concentration accompanied by reverence, compunction and distress of soul as it confesses its sin with inward sorrow.

Until we have acquired true prayer, we are like those who introduce children to walking. Make the effort to raise up, or rather, to enclose your mind within the words of your prayer; and if, like a child, it gets tired and falters, raise it up again. The mind, after all, is naturally unstable, but the God Who can do everything can also give it firm endurance. Persevere in this, therefore, and do not grow weary...

If someone should ask: how am I to pray?, the answer is very simple: fear God. Experience of the fear of God arouses attention and consciousness in the heart and forces it to stand with devotion before God.

Undistracted prayer is the highest doing of the mind.

'If you do not feel like praying, you have to force yourself,' the Elder said. 'The Holy Fathers say that prayer with force is higher than prayer unforced. You do not want to, but force yourself. The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force.'

Bear in mind that prayer alone, unaccompanied by moral improvement, is useless.

Do you wish God to hear your prayer immediately, brother? When you lift your hands up to heaven, pray first of all, with your heart, for your enemies and God will grant you speedily whatever else you request.

Many do good actions, but neglect the mind; they know nothing of the spiritual contests, the victories and defeats. They neglect the mind which is the eye of the soul.

To bear a grudge and pray, means to sow seed on the sea and expect a harvest.

Ask the angels and the saints to intercede for you, just as you'd ask people who are alive. Stand face to face with them, in the belief that they are also standing face to face with you.

We must always pray, so that the Lord will tell us what we must do, and the Lord will not leave us in confusion.

Mind is not soul, but a gift from God which saves the soul. A mind pleasing to God flows ahead of the soul and counsels it to scorn the temporal, material and corruptible, and to love blessings that are eternal, incorruptible and immaterial, so that, while living in the body, man should, with his mind, apprehend and contemplate the heavenly and the divine. In this way a God-loving mind is a benefactor and savior of the human soul.

Pray and sigh, pleading with God Himself to grant you zeal and inclination: for without Him we are good for no task whatsoever.

A servant of the Lord is he who in body stands before men, but in mind knocks at Heaven with prayer.

The joint prayer of husband and wife is a great force.

Make the body serve the commandments, keeping it so far as possible free from sickness and sensual pleasure.

As a bird without wings, as a soldier without arms, so is a Christian without prayer.

Tedium is the granddaughter of despondency, and the daughter of slothfulness. In order to drive it away, labor at your work, and do not be slothful in prayer. The tedium will pass, and zeal will come. And if to this you add patience and humility, then you will be rid of all misfortunes and evils.

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Parish

Mailing Address

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

Email, Phone, and Fax

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