• Vespers: Saturdays 5PM
  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
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Quotes

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

One who is capable of seeing himself is better than one who has been made worthy to see angels.

If you do not learn to deny yourself, you can make no progress in perfection.

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.

The more a man struggles to do good, the more fear grows in him, until it shows him his slightest faults, those which he thought of as nothing while he was still in the darkness of ignorance.

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.

There is yet another reason that may cause our prayer to go unanswered: namely, that though we pray we yet continue in sin.

Self-condemnation always brings peace and rest to the heart.

If someone is judged worthy to receive the gift of knowledge but allows his heart to be full of bitterness or rancor or aversion to another, it is as if he had been struck in the eye by a thornbush. That is why knowledge is no good without charity.

If a man accuses himself, he is protected on all sides.

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

It is not always possible to fulfill the usual rules; one must take circumstances into account and try to fulfill what they make possible, as far as one can. The demons themselves are not unmindful of this law. So, being in constant enmity with us, they prevent us from doing what is possible and urge us to do what is impossible.

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.

He who believes in Christ is not judged, for he judges himself, and sets his feet aright to follow the light that goes before him. As a man in deep darkness adapts his step to the candle in his hand, so also he who believes in Christ; that is, he who is set to follow after Christ as the light in the darkness of life.

Should you accuse and condemn yourself before God for the sins on your conscience, you will be justified for doing so.

The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny oneself. To deny oneself means to give up one's bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God.

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 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.

Humble yourself, reproach yourself, consider yourself the very last and the very worst of all, condemn no one - and you will receive God's mercy.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)