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  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
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Quotes

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

He who smells the smell of one's own foul odor doesn't smell the foul odor of anyone else.

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

I wish I could persuade spiritual persons that the way of perfection does not consist in many devices, nor in much cogitation, but in denying themselves completely and yielding themselves to suffer everything for the love of Christ. And if there is failure in this exercise, all other methods of walking in the spiritual way are merely a beating about the bush, and profitless trifling, although a person should have very high contemplation and communication with God.

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

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.

A sign of deliverance from our falls is the continual reckoning of ourselves as debtors.

The martyrs will show their torments, the ascetics their good works; but what will I have to show but my apathy and my incessant indulgence?

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.

You write that after Communion you felt well. Glory be to God, Who comforts our unworthiness. And as regards the fact that this soon passed, here also is seen His fatherly providence for us. For continual consolation enfeebles the soul and makes it slothful, or leads to even greater harm. That is why the Lord takes it away quickly and again makes us feel our weakness, our helplessness, and our sinfulness. We must humble ourselves more, reproach ourselves, offer repentance for our sins, and not desire consolations, but patiently endure what God allows. Dryness and cooling of fervor are also permitted on account of vainglory.

But, say the saints, now that you recognize the darkness in your own heart and the weakness of your flesh, you lose all desire to pass judgment on your neighbor. Out of your own darkness you see the heavenly light that shines in all created things reflected the clearer: you cannot detect the sins of others while your own are so great. For it is in your eager striving for perfection that you first perceive your own imperfection. And only when you have seen your imperfection, can you be perfected. Thus perfection proceeds out of weakness.

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

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.

One who is capable of seeing himself is better than one who has been made worthy to see angels.

Self-accusation before God is something that is very necessary for us; and humility of heart is extremely advantageous in our lives, above all at the time of prayer. For prayer requires great attention and needs a proper awareness, otherwise it will turn out to be unacceptable and rejected, and `it will be turned back empty' to our bosom.

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.

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

Strive to walk worthily of the vocation to which you were called.

Be despised and rejected in your own eyes, and you will see the glory of God within yourself. For where humility blossoms, there God’s glory bursts forth.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)