• 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.

As for uprooting your passions, begin with self-reproach and with awareness of your own weaknesses; and consider yourself to be deserving of afflictions.

If we want to do something but cannot, then before God, Who knows our hearts, it is as if we have done it. This is true whether the intended action is good or bad.

A prayer offered while one has any cause to reproach a fellow man is an impure prayer. There is only one whom the praying person may and must reproach, and that is himself. Without self-reproach, your prayer is as worthless as it is while you are reproaching someone else in your heart. Perhaps you ask: How can one learn this? The answer is: One learns it through prayer.

If a man accuses himself, he is protected on all sides.

If you do not learn to deny yourself, you can make no progress in perfection.

He alone knows himself in the best way who thinks of himself as being nothing.

There is yet another reason that may cause our prayer to go unanswered: namely, that though we pray we yet continue in sin.

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

Increasing self-criticism is the sign of increasing humility. Indeed, there is no clearer sign.

How much joy, how much peace of soul would a man not have wherever he went... if he was one who habitually accused himself.

The more a man struggles to do good, the more fear grows in him, until it shows him his slightest faults, those which he thought of as nothing while he was still in the darkness of ignorance.

Who has conquered the body? He who has made the heart contrite. Who then has made the heart contrite? He who has denied himself.

One must train oneself in self-reproach, that is, always accuse oneself & not others in one’s mind, reproach oneself and not others, and with a severe distrust of oneself accuse oneself of the failings which are covered up by our self-love, accuse ourself of our inclinations to sin. He who has self-reproach has peace, writes Abba Dorotheos, & will never be disturbed. If to such a one there should occur an illness, a wrong, a vexation, or some similar misfortune, he ascribes everything to his own sins & thanks God. If such a one is punished or reprimanded by the superior, he accepts all this as good & accepts every severe word against himself without murmuring or talking back, as the judgment of God.

The adversary of our life, the devil, employs many devices to make our sins seem small to us. Often he cloaks them with forgetfulness, so that, after suffering a little on their account, we no longer trouble to lament over them. But, my brethren, let us not forget our offences, even if we wrongly think that they have been forgiven through repentance; let us always remember our sinful acts and never cease to mourn over them, so that we may acquire humility as our constant companion, and thus escape the snares of self-esteem and pride.

In everything we do, God looks as the aim, whether it is for Him or for some other purpose we act. So, when we wish to do something good, let us have as our aim not to please men but to please God, so as to have our eyes always fixed on Him, doing everything for Him, lest we bear the labor but lose the reward.

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

Humble yourself, reproach yourself, consider yourself the very last and the very worst of all, condemn no one - and you will receive God's mercy.

Self-condemnation always brings peace and rest to the heart.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)