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

Prayer attunes us for converse with God and, through long practice, leads us to friendship with Him.

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.

Go, sell all that belongs to you and give it to the poor and taking up the cross, deny yourself; in this way you will be able to pray without distraction.

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

What is self-justification? - Self-justification is when a man denies his sin, as we see in the case of Adam, Eve, Cain and others who have sinned but, wishing to justify themselves, denied their sin.

Pray firstly to be purified of passions, secondly to be freed from ignorance and forgetfulness, and thirdly to be delivered from all temptation and forsaking.

Do not be always wanting everything to turn out as you think it should, but rather as God pleases; then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer.

When you pray fervently, watch, for there will be temptations. This happens to everyone.

Do not attempt to assess the quality of your prayer. God alone can judge its value. To us, our own prayer must always appear so poor an effort, so inadequate an achievement, that the cry of the publican spontaneously rises from our lips.

It is natural for the poor man to beg, and it is natural for man made poor by the fall into sin to pray.

A servant of the Lord is he who in body stands before men, but in mind knocks at Heaven with prayer.

If someone is judged worthy to receive the gift of knowledge but allows his heart to be full of bitterness or rancor or aversion to another, it is as if he had been struck in the eye by a thornbush. That is why knowledge is no good without charity.

Before the war begins, seek out your ally; before you fall ill, seek out your physician; and before grievous things come upon you, pray, and in the time of your tribulations you will find Him, and He will listen to you.

Prayer is the seed of gentleness and the absence of anger.

To pray with self-constraint is in our power, whereas to pray with compunction depends upon God. We must pray with what prayer we can, and for our self-constraint God will give us compunction also in due time, when this is pleasing to Him.

We must always pray, so that the Lord will tell us what we must do, and the Lord will not leave us in confusion.

Let us then not lose heart, nor be slothful or timid in prayer. Even if we have been brought down to the depths of evil, prayer can speedily draw us back.

Fire makes iron impossible to touch, and likewise frequent prayer renders the intellect more forceful in its warfare with the enemy. That is why the demons strive with all their strength to make us slothful in attentiveness to prayer, for they know that prayer is the intellect's invincible weapon against them.

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5025 E. Mill Rd
Broadview Heights, Ohio 44147

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