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

Scripture calls the virtues ways; and the best of all ways is charity.

Love is joy; the price of love is sacrifice. Love is life; the price of love is death.

As a general rule, decide whether a thing is permissible by the effect it produces within. Permit yourself what is constructive, but never what is destructive.

The way to attain compunction is an attentive life. ‘The beginning of repentance comes from the fear of God and attention,’ as the holy martyr Boniface says.

As memory of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not produce the light of knowledge in the soul.

Keep your conscience keen and bright, and refrain from hankering after, or expecting, consolation. Leave that to God. He knows when, where, and how to give it to you.

God loves us more than a father, mother, friend, or any else could love, and even more than we are able to love ourselves.

All the treasures of the world are nothing to me if love is absent, all the honors of the world are lowly and dead without love. Love is for me life, light and joy. This sad world does not know this love and calls darkness light.

Compunction comes when you consider how much you have grieved God Who is so good, so sweet, so merciful, so kind, and entirely full of love; Who was crucified and suffered everything for us. When you meditate on these things and other things the Lord has suffered, they bring compunction.

Know my brethren that love has two characteristics, two gifts. One of them is to strengthen man in what is good and the other is to weaken him in what is evil. I have a loaf of bread to eat; you do not have. Love tells me: Do not eat it alone, give some to your brethren and you eat the rest. I have clothes; love tells me: Give one garment to your brother and you wear the other one. I open my mouth to accuse you, to tell you lies, to deceive you; but at once I remember love and it deadens my mouth, and does not allow me to tell you lies. I stretch out my hands to take what belongs to you, your money, all your possessions. Love does not allow me to take them. Do you see, my brethren, what gifts love has?

He who has been granted the gift of knowledge and yet nurses bitterness, rancor or hatred towards another is like one who pricks his eyes with thorns and thistles. Thus knowledge of necessity has need of love.

Let the love of your fellow man rise above the promptings of self love.

Love is the Kingdom, which the Lord mystically promised His disciples to eat in His Kingdom. For when we hear Him say, 'You shall eat and drink at the table of My Kingdom,' what do we suppose we shall eat, if not love? Love is sufficient to nourish a man instead of food and drink. This is the wine 'which makes glad the heart of man.' Blessed is he who partakes of this wine! Licentious men have drunk this wine and felt shame; sinners have drunk it and have forgotten the pathways of stumbling; drunkards have drunk this wine and became firm in virtue; the rich have drunk it and desired poverty; the poor have drunk it and been enriched with hope; the sick have drunk it and become strong; the unlearned have taken it and been made wise.

There is nothing more burdensome and grievous then when conscience accuses us in anything, and there is nothing dearer then calmness and approval of the conscience.

Do not measure yourself by the standard of weaker men, but strive rather to apply yourself to the commandment of love. In measuring yourself by the former you fall into the pit of presumption, in striving for the latter you advance to the heights of humility.

Strive to love every man equally, and you will simultaneously expel all the passions.

'The ancient Fathers,' a certain elder said, 'when their spiritual work became known to others, saw this not as a virtue, but as a sin.'

Love does not reflect. Love is simple. Love never mistakes. Likewise believe and trust without refection, for faith and trust are also simple; or better: God, in Whom we believe and in Whom we trust, is an incomplex Being, as He is also simply love.

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