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.

As water standing behind an earth dam, and finding an aperture, washes it wider and wider and filters through it, if we do not strengthen the dam, or strengthen it insufficiently, at last, with growing weakness on our part and with repeated efforts, the water gets through with greater and greater force, so that at last it becomes very difficult, and even impossible to stop it; so also with malice hidden in the heart of man: if we let it pierce through once, twice, and thrice, it will pour out more and more powerfully, & may at last break through and overflow your dam.

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

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

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.

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).

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.

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