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Quotes

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

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

Lack of self-control is actually an evil both ancient and modern, though it did not precede its antidote, fasting. By means of our Forefathers' self-indulgence in paradise and their contempt for the fast already in existance there, death entered the world. Sin reigned and brought in the condemnation of our nature from Adam until Christ.

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.

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

Christ told His friends, that is, His disciples, to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and scribes, meaning by leaven their false pretence. For hypocrisy is a thing hateful to God, and abominated by man, bringing no reward, and utterly useless for the salvation of the soul, or rather the cause of its perdition. Though sometimes it may escape detection for a little, yet before long it is sure to be laid bare and bring disgrace upon them, like ill-featured women, when they are stripped of that external embellishment which they had produced by artificial means. Hypocrisy, therefore, is a thing foreign to the character of the saints. That it is impossible for those things that are done and said by us to escape the eye of the Deity, He showed by saying: “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known.” For all our words and deeds shall be revealed at the day of judgment.

St. Paul says: 'The person engaged in spiritual warfare exercises self control in all things' (I Cor. 9:25). Aware of all that is said in divine Scripture, let us lead our life with self-control, especially in regard to food.

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

The desire for possessions is dangerous and terrible, knowing no satiety; it drives the soul which it controls to the heights of evil. Therefore, let us drive it away vigorously from the beginning. For once it has become master it cannot be overcome.

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.

As earth thrown over it extinguishes a fire burning in a stove, so worldly cares and every kind of attachment to something, however small and insignificant, destroys the warmth of the heart which was there at first.

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.

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.

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.

Rivalry over material possessions has made us forget the counsel of the Lord, who urged us to take no thought for earthly things, but to seek only the kingdom of heaven (cf. Matt. 6:33).

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

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.

Self-control and strenuous effort curb desire; stillness and intense longing for God wither it.

He who has tasted the things on high easily despises what is below. But he who has not tasted the things above finds joy in possessions.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)