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

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...

The ignorance of Scripture is a great cliff and a deep abyss; to know nothing of the divine laws is a great betrayal of salvation.

All sin is due to sensual pleasure, all forgiveness to hardship and distress.

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

Sin disfigures a man, while grace brings beauty.

Do not hate the sinner. Become a proclaimer of God's grace, seeing that God provides for you even though you are unworthy.

Do not approach the words of the mysteries contained in the divine Scriptures without prayer and beseeching God for help, but say: 'Lord, grant me to perceive the power in them!' Reckon prayer to be the key to the true understanding of the divine Scriptures.

Greater therefore is the rejoicing of heaven over the sinner converted than upon the soul that remained just. A captain in battle will feel a warmer regard for the soldier who at first faltered and ran, and then had bravely fought back, than over the one who had never yielded yet had never thrust bravely forward. So will the farmer love more the fields that cleaned of their weeds now bear a fruitful yield, than the land which had never known thorns, yet had never yielded a bountiful crop.

Do not stir up a memory that will cover your prayer with mud, do not root around in the soil of your old sins.

Believe me, brethren, the more we are now in earnest to keep ourselves free from sin, the more confident shall we then be in His Presence.

Whoever is experienced in the spiritual interpretation of Scripture knows that the simplest passage is of a significance equal to that of the most abstruse passage, and that both are directed to the salvation of man.

The man who has come to loathe sin has mounted the first rung of the heavenly ladder.

The more one reads and studies the Bible, the more he finds reasons to study it as often and as frequently as he can. According to St. John Chrysostom, it is like an aromatic root, which produces more and more aroma the more it is rubbed.

'And forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors.' For we have many sins. For we offend both in word and in thought, and very many things we do worthy of condemnation; and 'if we say that we have no sin' (I Jn. 1:8), we lie, as John says...The offenses committed against us are slight and trivial, and easily settled; but those which we have committed against God are great, and need such mercy as His only is. Take heed, therefore, lest for the slight and trivial sins against you, you shut out for yourself forgiveness from God for your very grievous sins.

When despondency seizes us, let us not give in to it. Rather, fortified and protected by the light of faith, let us with great courage say to the spirit of evil: 'What are you to us, you who are cut off from God, a fugitive for Heaven, and a slave of evil? You dare not do anything to us: Christ, the Son of God, has dominion over us and over all. Leave us, you thing of bane. We are made steadfast by the uprightness of His Cross. Serpent, we trample on your head.'

Reading the scriptures is a great safeguard against sin.

Sin, to one who loves God, is nothing other than an arrow from the enemy in battle. The true Christian is a warrior fighting his way through the regiments of the unseen enemy to his heavenly homeland.

The only thing God requires of us is that we do not sin. But this is achieved, not by acting according to the law, but by carefully guarding the divine image in us and our supernal dignity. When we thus live in our natural state, wearing the resplendent robe of the Spirit, we dwell in God and God dwells in us. Then we are called gods by adoption and sons of God, sealed by the light of the knowledge of 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)