• 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.

When the door of steam baths is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul in its desire to say many things, dissipates the remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good. Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.

Beware of reading the doctrines of heretics for they, more than anything else, can equip the spirit of blasphemy against you.

He who has become aware of his sins has controlled his tongue, but a talkative person has not yet come to know himself as he should.

Teach your mouth to say what is in your heart.

Think also of this: the person who is bound to earthly things may rejoice but may also be upset or disturbed or grieved over earthly things: his mind is exposed to continual changes. But the joy of your master (Matthew 25:21) is enduring, for God is unchangeable. Thus control your tongue at the same time as you discipline your body with fasting and strictness. Talkativeness is a great enemy of prayer. A spate of fluttering words stands in the way of the words of prayer. This is the reason that we shall render account for every careless word we utter (Matthew 12:36). One does not bring the dust of the road into a room that one wishes to keep clean; thus keep your heart free from gossip and chatter about the events of the day that is past.

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.

You have a mouth sealed by the Spirit? When you are speaking, think first of what you are saying, of what words are fitting for a mouth such as yours.

If we want to do something but cannot, then before God, Who knows our hearts, it is as if we have done it. This is true whether the intended action is good or bad.

Nothing is more unsettling than talkativeness and more pernicious than an unbridled tongue, disruptive as it is of the soul’s proper state. For the soul’s chatter destroys what we build each day and scatters what we have laboriously gathered together.

A holy man told us one day, that the source of all heresies and schisms in the church was, loving God too little, and ourselves too much.

In everything we do, God looks as the aim, whether it is for Him or for some other purpose we act. So, when we wish to do something good, let us have as our aim not to please men but to please God, so as to have our eyes always fixed on Him, doing everything for Him, lest we bear the labor but lose the reward.

As work according to God is called virtue, so unexpected affliction is called a test.

In all our actions God looks at the intention, whether we do them for Him or from some other motive.

Only with the greatest struggle and sacrifice is the chaff of heresy separated from the wheat of Orthodox truth.

Guard yourselves from soul-destroying heresy, communion with which is alienation from Christ.

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

If Moses, who was a god to Pharaoh, was shut out from the Land of Promise because of one word, how much more will not the evil speech of our tongue, by which we offend and hurt both God and man, shut us out from heaven?

But let us speak that which is good, to the edification of faith. That is, to speak only what will help to build up our neighbor in virtue; nothing more than that.

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

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