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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.

Prayer is a remedy against grief and depression.

'If our prayer is not in harmony with our deeds, we labor in vain,' Abba Moses often told the young monks. 'How are we to accomplish such harmony?' they asked him one day. 'When we make that which we seek fitting to our prayer,' explained the saint. 'Only then can the soul be reconciled with its Creator and its prayer be acceptable, when it sets aside all of its own evil intentions.'

The joint prayer of husband and wife is a great force.

Pray humbly. If you should proudly think your prayer agreeable to the Lord and worthy of being answered, take it from me that it won't be heard.

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

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

Pray and sigh, pleading with God Himself to grant you zeal and inclination: for without Him we are good for no task whatsoever.

The one who prays ought never to halt his movement of sublime ascent toward God. For just as we should understand the ascent 'from strength to strength' as the progress in the practice of the virtues, 'from glory to glory' (2 Cor. 3:18) as the advance in the spiritual knowledge of contemplation, and the transfer from the letter of sacred writing to its spirit, so in the same way the one who is settled in the place of prayer should lift his mind from human matters and the attention of the soul to more divine realities.

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.

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.

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

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

When praying, endeavor by every means to feel in your heart the truth and the power of the words of the prayer; feed yourself upon them as upon an imperishable food; water your heart with them as with a dew; and warm yourself by them as by means of a beneficial fire.

Prayers at home are an introduction, a preparation for prayers in Church. Thus he who is not accustomed to pray at home can seldom pray diligently in Church. Experience bears witness to this: anyone can observe it for himself.

Until we have acquired true prayer, we are like those who introduce children to walking. Make the effort to raise up, or rather, to enclose your mind within the words of your prayer; and if, like a child, it gets tired and falters, raise it up again. The mind, after all, is naturally unstable, but the God Who can do everything can also give it firm endurance. Persevere in this, therefore, and do not grow weary...

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).

If someone should ask: how am I to pray?, the answer is very simple: fear God. Experience of the fear of God arouses attention and consciousness in the heart and forces it to stand with devotion before God.

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...

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Mailing Address

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

Email, Phone, and Fax

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