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

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

He who does not consciously choose to distance himself from a cause for sin, will be drawn to sin, even against his will.

Just as desire and rage multiply our sins, so self-control and humility erase them.

The roof of any house stands upon the foundations and the rest of the structure. The foundations themselves are laid in order to carry the roof. This is both useful and necessary, for the roof cannot stand without the foundations and the foundations are absolutely useless without the roof-- no help to any living creature. In the same way the grace of God is preserved by the practice of the commandments, and the observance of these commandments is laid down like foundations through the gift of God. The grace of the Spirit cannot remain with us without the practice of the commandments, but the practice of the commandments is of no help or advantage to us without the grace of God.

Being delivered from bodily sins is not enough, we must also cleanse the inner energy which dwells in our souls.

Those who have sinned must not despair. Let that never be. For we are condemned not for the multitude of evils, but because we do not want to repent...

Sacred Tradition is the very Church; without the Sacred Tradition the Church does not exist. Those who deny the Sacred Tradition deny the Church and the preaching of the Apostles. Before the writing of the Holy Scriptures, that is, of the sacred texts of the Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles of the Apostles, and before they were spread to the churches of the world, the Church was based on Sacred Tradition... The holy texts are in relation to Sacred Tradition what the part is to the whole.

God seeks nothing else from us men except that we do not sin; this alone. But this is not a work of law; it is rather a careful guarding of the image and dignity from above. In these things, affirmed in our nature and bearing the radiant garment of the Spirit, we shall abide in God and He in us. We shall be called good, and sons of God by adoption, marked in the light of our knowledge of God.

They (namely the Apostles) have not handed down everything in writing, but have also delivered many things in unwritten form. The former and the latter are equally trustworthy, and so we also consider the [unwritten] Tradition of the Church to be trustworthy. Is it Tradition? Seek no further.

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.

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

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

Sin disfigures a man, while grace brings beauty.

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.

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.

Do not stir up a memory that will cover your prayer with mud, do not root around in the soil of your old sins.

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.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)