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

If you feel no pang in committing minor offences you will through them fall into major transgressions.

The man who has come to loathe sin has mounted the first rung of the heavenly ladder.

As work according to God is called virtue, so unexpected affliction is called a test.

When tested by some trial you should try to find out not why or through whom it came, but only how to endure it gratefully, without distress or rancor.

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

Every man who has committed sin, has stopped up the senses of his soul with the mud of pleasure.

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

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

Keep the commandments, and you will find peace; love God, and you will attain spiritual knowledge.

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

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.

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.

Let us not put off from day to day, without observing how sin is injuring us.

Sin disfigures a man, while grace brings beauty.

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

For never is a man forced into sin by another’s fault, unless he have, stowed away in his heart, matter for evil deeds. Nor is a man to be held a victim of sudden deception if at the sight of a woman’s beauty he fall into an abyss of vile lust. Rather is it that diseases of soul, deeply hidden away and lost to view, come then to the surface on the occasion of the sight.

Greater therefore is the rejoicing of heaven over the sinner converted than upon the soul that remained just. A captain in battle will feel a warmer regard for the soldier who at first faltered and ran, and then had bravely fought back, than over the one who had never yielded yet had never thrust bravely forward. So will the farmer love more the fields that cleaned of their weeds now bear a fruitful yield, than the land which had never known thorns, yet had never yielded a bountiful crop.

Knowing the exact nature of everything, God permits each person to be tested according to his strength. As St. Paul puts it: 'God is to be trusted not to let you be tried beyond your strength, but with the trial He will provide a way out, so that you are able to bear it' (1 Cor. 10:13).

Filters
Search By Keyword
Topics (Love, Anger, Confession, etc.)
See more See less
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)