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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.

I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, 'What can get through from such snares?' Then I heard a voice saying to me, 'Humility.'

Love and humility form a holy pair; what the first builds, the second binds, thus preventing the building from falling asunder.

Do you see the humility of the saints? How their hearts were moved? Even when God sent them to help other people, they did not agree to this easily out of humility and to avoid glory. Like a man wearing an all-silk garment, if someone throws a dirty rag at him he leaves so as not to ruin his expensive clothes, it is with the saints, who are dressed in virtues, and avoid human glory in order not to be defiled.

Let us have recourse to humility on all occasions; for the humble lie prone on the ground, and how can a man fall if he lies on the ground? But a man who stands on a height can easily fall.

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As with the appearance of light, darkness retreats; so, at the fragrance of humility, all anger and bitterness vanishes.

Our achievements must never loom large in our eyes; only our failures. But this must never lead us to despondency - the constant temptation - only to humility.

Humility, even without works, can save a man.

When it is needful that a person be humbled, then not only the Superior, the sisters, strangers and near ones, but even all creation, according to the words of St. Isaac the Syrian, will rise up against that person.

How can one say that a man has attained purity? - When he sees all men as being good, and when none appears to him to be unclean and defiled - then he is indeed pure in heart.

Flee from discussions of dogma as from an unruly lion; and never embark upon them yourself, either with those raised in the Church, or with strangers.

Compassion and humility are like the soul’s wings by which it flies up to heaven (Ps. 104:7). Without them prayer cannot rise off the ground...

Many people have the virtue of humility in some circumstances. They then succumb to a supposed demand of their social stature or profession and, under the guise of ‘social necessity’ or ‘professionalism,’ become arrogant in other circumstances. This is much like mixing soil and water in a container. When the container is untouched and at rest, the soil will settle and the water will remain sweet. But if the container is agitated, then the water and the soil are mixed and become mud. The mud then dries, the water evaporates, and only soil is left. Thus only a person of true peace, incapable of agitation, can actually maintain humble virtue, meanwhile tolerating in himself any ostensibly worldly behavior.

In so much as you sincerely compel yourself to do God's commandments, an understanding of the infirmity of your being will be born in you, and in as much as you have this understanding, one of the basic Christian virtues, humility, will in turn be born. God's grace is given only for humility, not for works, although humility is engendered by works. This is the law of true asceticism.

There are certain kinds of trees which never bear any fruit as long as their branches stay up straight, but if stones are hung on the branches to bend them down they begin to bear fruit. So it is with the soul. When it is humbled it begins to bear fruit, and the more fruit it bears the lowlier it becomes. So also the saints; the nearer they get to God, the more they see themselves as sinners.

The way to knowledge is detachment and humility, without which no one will see the Lord.

Acquire humility, which scorches the demons, obedience, which opens the door for the Son of God to enter a man, faith which saves a man, hope which makes him unashamed; and love which lets not a man fall away from God.

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What joy is ours that the Lord not only forgives our sins but allows the soul to know Him, as soon as she humbles herself.

The humility which in due time and by God's grace, after many struggles and tears, is given by heaven to those who seek it is something incompararably stronger and higher than the sense of abasement felt by those who have lapsed from holiness. This higher humility is granted only to those who have attained true perfection and are no longer under the sway of sin.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)