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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.

You must set about rooting out the very desire to have things pleasant, to get on well, to be contented. You must learn to like sadness, poverty, pain, hardship. You must learn to follow privately the Lord's bidding: not to speak empty words, not to adorn yourself, always to obey authority, not to look at a woman with desire, not to be angry and much else. For all these biddings are given us not in order for us to act as if they did not exist, but for us to follow: otherwise the Lord of mercy would not have burdened us with them. If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, He said (Matthew 16:24), thereby leaving it to each person's own will-if any man will-and to each person's endeavor: let him deny himself.

As earth thrown over it extinguishes a fire burning in a stove, so worldly cares and every kind of attachment to something, however small and insignificant, destroy the warmth of the heart which was there at first.

We truly love God and keep His commandments if we restrain ourselves from our pleasures. For he who still abandons himself to unlawful desires certainly does not love God, since he contradicts Him in his own intentions. . . Therefore, he loves God truly, whose mind is not conquered by consent to evil delight. For the more one takes pleasure in lower things, the more he is separated from heavenly love.

Strive as well as you can to enter deeply with the heart into the church reading and singing and to imprint these on the tablets of the heart.

Let us not wallow in pleasures, that we might behold His glory in the day of His coming.

In the heart is the will; in the heart is love; in the heart is the mind--in the heart is the image of the divine Trinity. The heart is the home of the Father, the altar of the Son and the workshop of the Holy Spirit. God wants our hearts: Son, give Me thy heart. Oh, my brother, above and beyond all else that you keep safe, guard your heart. Let the mountains be overthrown and the seas dried up; let friends forsake you and riches betray you; let your body be eaten by worms; let the world pour on you all the scorn of which it is capable--and do not fear. Only guard your heart; guard it and make it cleave to the Lord; give it into His keeping. Life flows from the heart; but whence comes this life in the heart, unless it is the abode of the breath of the Lord and Source of life-God? Oh, my brother, the Spirit of God Himself can, when He so desires, dwell in the human heart. He not only can, but wills to do so. Only, He waits for you to prepare your heart for Him; to make it into a temple, for God the Holy Spirit only lives in a temple. As a snake protects its head, so, my son, guard your heart. For the life that comes from the living God enters into it and flows forth from it.

The soul's health consists in dispassion and spiritual knowledge; no slave to sensual pleasure can attain it.

Not every man is wakened to wonder by what is said spiritually and has great power concealed in it. A word concerning virtue has need of a heart unbusied with the earth and its converse.

The heart is the home of the Father, the altar of the Son and the workshop of the Holy Spirit.

Almost every sin is committed for the sake of sensual pleasure; and sensual pleasure is overcome by hardship and distress arising either voluntarily from repentance, or else involuntarily as a result of some salutary and providential reversal.

According to the teaching of the Fathers, any impression which, touching the heart, fills it with a great irritation, must come from the region of passions. Therefore impulses which spring from the heart should not be followed at once, but only after careful examination and fervent prayer. God preserve us from a blind heart! It is well known that passions do blind the heart and screen the shining sun of the mind that we should all strive to gaze at.

How destructive to the heart is even momentary attachment for anything earthly.

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.

Each Christian, especially a priest, should follow in example the goodness of the Lord, that everyone should be invited to partake of the Lord's food at your table. The miser is an enemy of the Lord.

If you have a heart, you can be saved.

Intemperance and attachment to things cause torrents of passions to flood the soil of the heart and deposit there all the mud and filth of thoughts, thus confusing the mind, darkening the heart and weighing down the body. In the heart and the soul they produce negligence, darkness and death and deprive them of the feeling and disposition natural to them.

When a valve of the heart closes to the receptivity of worldly enjoyments, another valve opens for the reception of spiritual joys.

If you have received from God the gift of knowledge, however limited, beware of neglecting charity and temperance. They are virtues which radically purify the soul from passions and so open the way of knowledge continually.

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Parish

Mailing Address

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

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[email protected]
440-526-5192 (Phone)