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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.

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

As for uprooting your passions, begin with self-reproach and with awareness of your own weaknesses; and consider yourself to be deserving of afflictions.

When tested by some trial you should try to find out not why or through whom it came, but only how to endure it gratefully, without distress or rancor.

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

I wonder at our free will: it is strong, and yet it has been overthrown. It is a master, yet it has become a slave. It has the opportunity to conquer, yet it would rather yield and be conquered itself. Although it is free, it gives itself to slavery, like a bondswoman who signs with her own hand the agreement that binds her.

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.

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

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

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

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

A sign of deliverance from our falls is the continual reckoning of ourselves as debtors.

One must train oneself in self-reproach, that is, always accuse oneself & not others in one’s mind, reproach oneself and not others, and with a severe distrust of oneself accuse oneself of the failings which are covered up by our self-love, accuse ourself of our inclinations to sin. He who has self-reproach has peace, writes Abba Dorotheos, & will never be disturbed. If to such a one there should occur an illness, a wrong, a vexation, or some similar misfortune, he ascribes everything to his own sins & thanks God. If such a one is punished or reprimanded by the superior, he accepts all this as good & accepts every severe word against himself without murmuring or talking back, as the judgment of God.

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.

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.

Who has conquered the body? He who has made the heart contrite. Who then has made the heart contrite? He who has denied himself.

He alone knows himself in the best way who thinks of himself as being nothing.

He who smells the smell of one's own foul odor doesn't smell the foul odor of anyone else.

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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.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)