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  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
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Quotes

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

Control your stomach, sleep, anger, and tongue, and you will not 'dash your foot against a stone.'

It is up to us now to either bury our conscience under the ground, or to have it shine forth and illuminate us if we obey it. When our conscience says to us, 'Do this,' and we treat it with contempt, or it says it again and we refuse, then we are trampling it down, burying it under ground. Thus, it cannot speak to us clearly because of the weight upon it.

One should not ponder divine matters on a full stomach, say the ascetics. For the well-fed, even the most superficial secrets of the Trinity lie hidden.

Why then is this day called Theophany? Because Christ made Himself known to all -- not then when He was born -- but then when He was baptised. Until this time He was not known to the people. And that the people did not know Him, Who He was...

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.

No virtue makes flesh-bound man so like a spiritual angel as does self-restraint, for it enables those still living on earth to become, as the Apostle says, 'citizens of heaven' (cf. Phil. 3:20).

Love and self-control purify the soul.

Understand what I say: there can be no knowledge of the mysteries of God on a full stomach.

The belly when filled with all kinds of food gives birth to seeds of wantonness, nor can the mind, when choked with the weight of food, keep the guidance and government of the thoughts. For not only is drunkenness with wine wont to intoxicate the mind, but excess of all kinds of food makes it weak and uncertain, and robs it of all its power of pure and clear contemplation. The cause of the overthrow and wantonness of Sodom was not drunkenness through wine, but fullness of bread. Hear the Lord rebuking Jerusalem through the prophet. 'For how did thy sister Sodom sin, except in that she ate her bread in fullness and abundance?' (Ezek. xvi. 49)

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

When God, using our conscience, calls us to righteousness and yet our self-will opposes Him, He respects our freedom and lets our own will be done; but then, alas, our minds grow dull, our will slack, and we commit iniquities without number. On the other hand, the fruits of the spirit are soon granted to them who follow the commandments of Christ our Lord.

There is nothing more burdensome and grievous then when conscience accuses us in anything, and there is nothing dearer then calmness and approval of the conscience.

Conscience in men is nothing else but the voice of the omnipresent God moving in the hearts of men, as He Who alone Is and has created everything, the Lord knows all as Himself - all the thoughts, desires, intentions, words, and works of men, present, past, and future. However far in front I may let my thoughts, my imagination, run He is there before me and I ever inevitably finish my course in Him, ever having Him as the witness of my ways. 'His eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men' (Jer 32:19). 'Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?' (Ps 139:7).

Keep your conscience keen and bright, and refrain from hankering after, or expecting, consolation. Leave that to God. He knows when, where, and how to give it to you.

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 conscience is nature's book. He who applies what he reads there experiences God's help.

If you lay down rules for yourself, do not disobey yourself; for he who cheats himself is self-deluded.

And Jesus, when He was baptised, went up straightway out of the water; and lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him; and lo, a voice from heaven saying: 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' The Spirit did not descend on Christ while He was down in the water, but when He came out of it. By this, the wisdom of God seeks to show us that the Spirit of God does not descend on the old man, who is alive to sin and dead to God, but only on the man spiritually re-born, who has died to sin and come alive to God.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)