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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.

Not every man is wakened to wonder by what is said spiritually and has great power concealed in it. A word concerning virtue has need of a heart unbusied with the earth and its converse.

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

In general, loquacity opens the doors of the soul, and the devout warmth of the heart at once escapes. Empty talk does the same, but even more so… Empty talk is the door to criticism and slander, the spreader of false rumors and opinions, the sower of discord and strife. It stifles the taste for mental work and almost always serves as a cover for the absence of sound knowledge…

He who guards his lips preserves his soul; but he who is bold with his lips dishonors himself.

How destructive to the heart is even momentary attachment for anything earthly.

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

The more a man's tongue flees verbosity, the more his intellect is illumined so as to be able to discern deep thoughts; for the rational intellect is befuddled by verbosity.

According to the teaching of the Fathers, any impression which, touching the heart, fills it with a great irritation, must come from the region of passions. Therefore impulses which spring from the heart should not be followed at once, but only after careful examination and fervent prayer. God preserve us from a blind heart! It is well known that passions do blind the heart and screen the shining sun of the mind that we should all strive to gaze at.

You have a mouth sealed by the Spirit? When you are speaking, think first of what you are saying, of what words are fitting for a mouth such as yours.

When a valve of the heart closes to the receptivity of worldly enjoyments, another valve opens for the reception of spiritual joys.

A single word made the thief pure and holy, despite all his previous crimes, and brought him into paradise (cf. Luke 23:42-43). A single ill-advised word prevented Moses from entering the promised land (cf. Num. 20:12). We should not suppose, then, that garrulity is only a minor disease. Lovers of slander and gossip shut themselves out of the kingdom of heaven.

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.

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

Intemperance and attachment to things cause torrents of passions to flood the soil of the heart and deposit there all the mud and filth of thoughts, thus confusing the mind, darkening the heart and weighing down the body. In the heart and the soul they produce negligence, darkness and death and deprive them of the feeling and disposition natural to them.

Nothing is more unsettling than talkativeness and more pernicious than an unbridled tongue, disruptive as it is of the soul’s proper state. For the soul’s chatter destroys what we build each day and scatters what we have laboriously gathered together.

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

If you have a heart, you can be saved.

The heart is the home of the Father, the altar of the Son and the workshop of the Holy Spirit.

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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)