• Vespers: Saturdays 5PM
  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
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Quotes

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

Reading the Scriptures is a great means of security against sinning.

My child, do you want to crush the head of the serpent? Openly reveal your thoughts in confession. The strength of the devil lies in cunning thoughts. Do you hold on to them? He remains hidden. Do you bring them to the light? He disappears. And then Christ rejoices, the prayer progresses, and the light of grace heals and brings peace to your nous and heart.

Holy Scripture is presented to the mind’s eye like a mirror in which the appearance of our inner being can be seen.

Let us not wait to be convicted by others, let us be our own examiners. An important medicine for evil is confession, and care to avoid stumbling.

The Scriptures were not given merely that we might have them in books, but that we might engrave them on our hearts.

Do not be ashamed to reveal your scabs to your spiritual director. Be prepared as well to accept from him disgrace for your sins, so that by being disgraced, you might avoid eternal shame.

When we go to Confession, we enter Christ’s infirmary. Here God Himself is the Doctor, because only He can give and take away life, judge and acquit, punish and forgive. The priest is only a witness and a representative of God. That is why, standing visibly before the priest, and invisibly before Christ Himself, we must approach the great mystery of spiritual cleansing with great trembling! The priest hears our confession, but God accepts it. The priest examines our soul, but God will heal it. The priest will prescribe the remedies, but God will do the miracle of spiritual renewal.

Do not approach the words of the mysteries contained in the divine Scriptures without prayer and beseeching God for help, but say: 'Lord, grant me to perceive the power in them!' Reckon prayer to be the key to the true understanding of the divine Scriptures.

Put aside bodily considerations when you stand in prayer, lest the bite of a flea, a gnat or a fly deprive you of the greatest gain afforded by prayer.

The Holy Fathers teach us how to become familiar with the Gospel, how to read it and how to understand it, what helps and what opposes its understanding. Therefore, at first you must devote more time to reading the Holy Fathers...

Do not go into detail in confessing carnal acts, lest you become a traitor to yourself.

A humble and spiritually active man, when he reads the Holy Scripture, will refer everything to himself and not to another.

Reading the scriptures is a great safeguard against sin.

If you wish to make a blameless confession to God do not go over your failings in detail, but firmly resist their renewed attacks.

Whoever is experienced in the spiritual interpretation of Scripture knows that the simplest passage is of a significance equal to that of the most abstruse passage, and that both are directed to the salvation of man.

By confession of sins friendship with sins is dissolved. Hate for sins is the true sign of repentance, of determination to lead a virtuous life.

Ignorance of the scriptures is a precipice and a deep abyss.

Let us then not be ashamed to confess our sins unto the Lord. Shame indeed there is when each makes known his sins, but that shame, as it were, ploughs his land, removes the ever-recurring brambles, prunes and thorns, and gives life to the fruits which he believed were dead. Follow him who, by diligently ploughing his field, sought for eternal fruit: 'Being reviled we bless, being persecuted we endure, being defamed we entreat, we are made as the offscouring of the world' (Luke 13:7). If you plough after this fashion you will sow spiritual seed. Plough that you may get rid of sin and gain fruit. He ploughed so as to destroy in himself the last tendency to persecution. What more could Christ give to lead us on to the pursuit of perfection, than to convert and then give us for a teacher one who was a persecutor?

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

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[email protected]
440-526-5192 (Phone)