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

Control your stomach, sleep, anger, and tongue, and you will not 'dash your foot against a stone.'

Reading the scriptures is a great safeguard against sin.

When you pray fervently, watch, for there will be temptations. This happens to everyone.

If you love the Sender, then also love the letter which is sent from Him to you. For the word of God is given by God to me, to you, and to everyone, so that everyone who desires to be saved may receive salvation through it.

Do not seek to find the cause of temptations or whence they come; only pray to suffer them with gratitude.

Self-control and strenuous effort curb desire; stillness and intense longing for God wither it.

In detachment, the spirit finds quiet and repose for coveting nothing. Nothing wearies it by elation, and nothing oppresses it by dejection, because it stands in the center of its own humility.

Temptations are permitted so that we may learn what is in our heart.

Trials are of two kinds. Either affliction will test our souls as gold is tried in a furnace, and make trial of us through patience, or the very prosperity of our lives will oftentimes, for many, be itself an occasion of trial and temptation. For it is equally difficult to keep the soul upright and undefeated in the midst of afflictions, as to keep oneself from insolence and pride in prosperity.

If you lay down rules for yourself, do not disobey yourself; for he who cheats himself is self-deluded.

Reading the Scriptures is a great means of security against sinning.

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

The person who truly comes to serve God must prepare his soul, as it says in the Wisdom of Sirach (2:1), for temptations. Thus, that he will never be surprised or disturbed by what happens, believing that nothing happens without the providence of God and where there is the providence of God certainly what happens is good and for the benefit of the soul. For, everything that God does, He does for our benefit and because He loves us and has pity on us. We must, as the Apostle says, 'In everything give thanks' (1 Thess. 5:18), for His goodness.

Grace always precedes temptation, as if to notify you saying, 'Prepare yourself and lock your doors.'

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.

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

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.

The principle characteristic of this present, temporal life is temptation.

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Broadview Heights, Ohio 44147

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