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

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.

Ease and idleness are the destruction of the soul and they can injure her more than the demons.

But if you give a strong body rest and ease and idleness, all the passions dwelling in the soul are intensified. Then, even if the soul has a great desire for good, even the very thought of the good that is desired will be taken from you.

Knowing the exact nature of everything, God permits each person to be tested according to his strength. As St. Paul puts it: 'God is to be trusted not to let you be tried beyond your strength, but with the trial He will provide a way out, so that you are able to bear it' (1 Cor. 10:13).

It is a sin to spend time idly.

One who lives in idleness sins continually.

In all our actions God looks at the intention, whether we do them for Him or from some other motive.

When tested by some trial you should try to find out not why or through whom it came, but only how to endure it gratefully, without distress or rancor.

Grace always precedes temptation, as if to notify you saying, 'Prepare yourself and lock your doors.'

In everything we do, God looks as the aim, whether it is for Him or for some other purpose we act. So, when we wish to do something good, let us have as our aim not to please men but to please God, so as to have our eyes always fixed on Him, doing everything for Him, lest we bear the labor but lose the reward.

As work according to God is called virtue, so unexpected affliction is called a test.

If we want to do something but cannot, then before God, Who knows our hearts, it is as if we have done it. This is true whether the intended action is good or bad.

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.

Those who yield themselves to idleness and apathy, even though they may be spiritual and holy, hurl themselves into unnatural subjection to passions.

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