• 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.

Do not attempt to assess the quality of your prayer. God alone can judge its value. To us, our own prayer must always appear so poor an effort, so inadequate an achievement, that the cry of the publican spontaneously rises from our lips.

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

When praying, endeavor by every means to feel in your heart the truth and the power of the words of the prayer; feed yourself upon them as upon an imperishable food; water your heart with them as with a dew; and warm yourself by them as by means of a beneficial fire.

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

Prayer is a remedy against grief and depression.

Pray humbly. If you should proudly think your prayer agreeable to the Lord and worthy of being answered, take it from me that it won't be heard.

You have a mouth sealed by the Spirit? When you are speaking, think first of what you are saying, of what words are fitting for a mouth such as yours.

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.

The prayer of one who does not consider himself sinful is not well-pleasing to God.

He who has become aware of his sins has controlled his tongue, but a talkative person has not yet come to know himself as he should.

Do not shun poverty and affliction, the fuel that gives wings to prayer.

He who prays with the lips, but neglects his soul and does not guard his heart, prays to the air and not to God; and he labors in vain, because God attends to the mind and fervor, and not to prolixity. One should pray with all one’s fervor, with one’s soul and mind & heart, with the fear of God, and with all one’s strength.

Unless humility and love, simplicity and goodness regulate our prayer, this prayer - or, rather, this pretence of prayer - cannot profit us at all. And this applies not only to prayer, but to every labor and hardship undertaken for the sake of virtue.

Prayer is a great good if offered up from a thankful soul; if we are steadfast in it, so that whether we receive or do not receive what we pray for we at all times give thanks to God. For since He will sometimes grant what we ask and sometimes will not, in both cases it is to our gain... For oftentimes God will delay, not as denying our prayer, but in His wisdom seeking rather for our perseverance, and desiring to draw us nearer to Himself; as a loving father when asked by his son for something will often do; withholding consent, and not from the will to refuse, but rather to encourage him in steadfastness.

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

Teach your mouth to say what is in your heart.

Stand at prayer before the invisible God as if you saw Him, and with the conviction that He sees you and is looking at you attentively.

The evil spirit tries to scatter prayer as if it were a sand heap, tries to turn the words into dry sand, without coherency or moisture - that is to say, without fervor of heart. Thus prayer may become either a house built on sand or a house built on a rock. Those build on sand who pray without faith, absently, coldly: such prayer is scattered of itself, and does not bring any profit to him who prays; those build on a rock who, during the whole time of their prayer, have their eyes fixed upon God, and pray to Him as to a living person, conversing face to face with them.

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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)