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.

The only thing God requires of us is that we do not sin. But this is achieved, not by acting according to the law, but by carefully guarding the divine image in us and our supernal dignity. When we thus live in our natural state, wearing the resplendent robe of the Spirit, we dwell in God and God dwells in us. Then we are called gods by adoption and sons of God, sealed by the light of the knowledge of God.

Being delivered from bodily sins is not enough, we must also cleanse the inner energy which dwells in our souls.

Every man who has committed sin, has stopped up the senses of his soul with the mud of pleasure.

Greater therefore is the rejoicing of heaven over the sinner converted than upon the soul that remained just. A captain in battle will feel a warmer regard for the soldier who at first faltered and ran, and then had bravely fought back, than over the one who had never yielded yet had never thrust bravely forward. So will the farmer love more the fields that cleaned of their weeds now bear a fruitful yield, than the land which had never known thorns, yet had never yielded a bountiful crop.

For never is a man forced into sin by another’s fault, unless he have, stowed away in his heart, matter for evil deeds. Nor is a man to be held a victim of sudden deception if at the sight of a woman’s beauty he fall into an abyss of vile lust. Rather is it that diseases of soul, deeply hidden away and lost to view, come then to the surface on the occasion of the sight.

God seeks nothing else from us men except that we do not sin; this alone. But this is not a work of law; it is rather a careful guarding of the image and dignity from above. In these things, affirmed in our nature and bearing the radiant garment of the Spirit, we shall abide in God and He in us. We shall be called good, and sons of God by adoption, marked in the light of our knowledge of God.

The man who has come to loathe sin has mounted the first rung of the heavenly ladder.

Those who have sinned must not despair. Let that never be. For we are condemned not for the multitude of evils, but because we do not want to repent...

Vanity is eliminated by acting secretly, and pride by ascribing to God all that is well done.

Sin disfigures a man, while grace brings beauty.

A man standing on the seashore sees the immense expanse of water, but his eye can embrace only a small part and cannot reach its limit. In the same way, a man who, through contemplation, is given to see the limitless ocean of Divine glory and to see God Himself with the eyes of his mind, sees God and the infinite vastness of His glory, though not the whole as it really is, but only as much as is possible for him.

Sin, to one who loves God, is nothing other than an arrow from the enemy in battle. The true Christian is a warrior fighting his way through the regiments of the unseen enemy to his heavenly homeland.

Believe me, brethren, the more we are now in earnest to keep ourselves free from sin, the more confident shall we then be in His Presence.

If however any one thinks that he is not being burned when sinning, to him the Scripture saith, Shall a man wrap up fire in his bosom, and not burn his clothes? For sin burns the sinews of the soul, and breaks the spiritual bones of the mind, and darkens the light of the heart.

Woe is he who knowingly chooses to sin with the intention to repent when morning comes, for he knows not what the coming day or the night that precedes it will bring.

Let us not put off from day to day, without observing how sin is injuring us.

All sin is due to sensual pleasure, all forgiveness to hardship and distress.

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

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