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

We must resist and avoid like deadly poison the desire to possess earthly goods.

A man who has embraced poverty offers up prayer that is pure, while a man who loves possessions prays to material images.

Do not the angels differ from us in this respect, that they do not want so many things as we do? Therefore the less we need, the more we are on our way to them; the more we need, the more we sink down to this perishable life.

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

How destructive to the heart is even momentary attachment for anything earthly.

All sin is due to sensual pleasure, all forgiveness to hardship and distress.

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

The more you love money, the more securely you close the Kingdom of God.

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

Believe me, brethren, the more we are now in earnest to keep ourselves free from sin, the more confident shall we then be in His Presence.

It is vain that some unenlightened people seek the greatest evil for man somewhere else, rather than in sin. Some consider disease to be the greatest evil, others - poverty, and others - death. But neither disease, nor poverty, nor death, nor any other earthly disaster can be such a great evil for us as sin is. These earthly misfortunes do not separate us from God if we are seeking Him sincerely, but, on the contrary, they bring us closer to Him.

The fathers say that a man who sets store by the gold and silver he can amass does not believe that there is a God who provides for him.

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

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

Do not hate the sinner. Become a proclaimer of God's grace, seeing that God provides for you even though you are unworthy.

A lover of riches is never satisfied, no matter how many possessions he accumulates, but the more he acquires daily, the more his appetite increases; and a person forcibly pulled away from a stream of pure water before he has quenched his thirst feels even more thirsty. In a similar way, once one has experienced the taste of God, one can never be satisfied or have enough of it, but however much one is enriched by this wealth one still feels oneself to be poor. Christians do not set great store by their own lives, but regard themselves rather as rightly set at nought by God and as everyone’s servants.

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

Go, sell all that belongs to you and give it to the poor and taking up the cross, deny yourself; in this way you will be able to pray without distraction.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)