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

Nothing so fills the heart with contrition and humbles the soul as solitude embraced with self-awareness, and utter silence.

Do not lend your ear to the tongue of the slanderer, nor your tongue to the ear of him who likes malicious talk, speaking or listening with enjoyment to words against one's neighbor. Cut yourself off from them, lest you fall away from love of God and find yourself exiled from eternal life.

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

It is better to eat meat and drink wine and not to eat the flesh of one's brethren through slander.

If you have spoken evil of your brother, and you are stricken with remorse, go and kneel down before him and say: 'I have spoken badly of you; let this be my surety that I will not spread this slander any further.' For detraction is death to the soul.

A fish swiftly escapes a hook and a sensual soul shuns solitude.

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

The arrows of the enemy cannot touch one who loves quietness; but he who moves about in a crowd will often be wounded.

Every man that loves God loves a quiet life.

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

Nothing is better for rendering the heart penitent and the soul humble than wise solitude and complete silence.

Solitude offers us an excellent opportunity for calming our passions and giving our reason time to remove them thoroughly from our soul. For just as wild animals can be soothed by being stroked, so all our anger, fear and stress, which poison and disrupt our soul, can be soothed by an atmosphere of peace where the freedom from constant disturbance ensures that our soul can be brought more easily under the power of reason.

Do not by any means allow yourself to open both ears to the slanderers and to draw your conclusions and decisions on the basis of what they alone have to say, and thereby judging the case in absentia without the presence of the person slandered to defend himself. Oftentimes many unjust and irrational decisions have followed from such slanderous accusations.

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.

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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)