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Quotes

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

Increasing self-criticism is the sign of increasing humility. Indeed, there is no clearer sign.

The martyrs will show their torments, the ascetics their good works; but what will I have to show but my apathy and my incessant indulgence?

Who has conquered the body? He who has made the heart contrite. Who then has made the heart contrite? He who has denied himself.

A prayer offered while one has any cause to reproach a fellow man is an impure prayer. There is only one whom the praying person may and must reproach, and that is himself. Without self-reproach, your prayer is as worthless as it is while you are reproaching someone else in your heart. Perhaps you ask: How can one learn this? The answer is: One learns it through prayer.

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

Constant prayer is the strength, and the armor, and the wall of the soul.

As for uprooting your passions, begin with self-reproach and with awareness of your own weaknesses; and consider yourself to be deserving of afflictions.

Be despised and rejected in your own eyes, and you will see the glory of God within yourself. For where humility blossoms, there God’s glory bursts forth.

But, say the saints, now that you recognize the darkness in your own heart and the weakness of your flesh, you lose all desire to pass judgment on your neighbor. Out of your own darkness you see the heavenly light that shines in all created things reflected the clearer: you cannot detect the sins of others while your own are so great. For it is in your eager striving for perfection that you first perceive your own imperfection. And only when you have seen your imperfection, can you be perfected. Thus perfection proceeds out of weakness.

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.

He alone knows himself in the best way who thinks of himself as being nothing.

If you have received from God the gift of knowledge, however limited, beware of neglecting charity and temperance. They are virtues which radically purify the soul from passions and so open the way of knowledge continually.

If you love to enjoy true and complete delight from the Scriptures, seek to read them not merely with simple understanding, but with deeds and practical realities. Moreover, seek to read them not merely for the mere love of learning but also for the sake of ascetic endeavors & discipline, as St. Mark wrote: 'Read the words of Holy Scripture with an eye to practical applications and not merely to be puffed up by any fine thought that you may receive from it.' Another Father said: 'This is why the lover of knowledge must also be a lover of discipline. For knowledge alone does not give light to a lamp.'

He who smells the smell of one's own foul odor doesn't smell the foul odor of anyone else.

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A sign of deliverance from our falls is the continual reckoning of ourselves as debtors.

I wish I could persuade spiritual persons that the way of perfection does not consist in many devices, nor in much cogitation, but in denying themselves completely and yielding themselves to suffer everything for the love of Christ. And if there is failure in this exercise, all other methods of walking in the spiritual way are merely a beating about the bush, and profitless trifling, although a person should have very high contemplation and communication with God.

And pray ye without ceasing in behalf of other men. For there is in them hope of repentance that they may attain to God. See, then, that they be instructed by your works, if in no other way. Be ye meek in response to their wrath, humble in opposition to their boasting: to their blasphemies return your prayers; in contrast to their error, be ye steadfast in the faith; and for their cruelty, manifest your gentleness. While we take care not to imitate their conduct, let us be found their brethren in all true kindness; and let us seek to be followers of the Lord (who ever more unjustly treated, more destitute, more condemned? ), that so no plant of the devil may be found in you, but ye may remainin all holiness and sobriety in Jesus Christ, both with respect to the flesh and spirit.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)