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

Let us not put off from day to day, without observing how sin is injuring us.

If you feel no pang in committing minor offences you will through them fall into major transgressions.

If we are humble, God helps us to fight our sinfulness; if we are proud, He does not.

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.

Many people have the virtue of humility in some circumstances. They then succumb to a supposed demand of their social stature or profession and, under the guise of ‘social necessity’ or ‘professionalism,’ become arrogant in other circumstances. This is much like mixing soil and water in a container. When the container is untouched and at rest, the soil will settle and the water will remain sweet. But if the container is agitated, then the water and the soil are mixed and become mud. The mud then dries, the water evaporates, and only soil is left. Thus only a person of true peace, incapable of agitation, can actually maintain humble virtue, meanwhile tolerating in himself any ostensibly worldly behavior.

The Christian needs two wings in order to soar upward and attain Paradise: humility and love.

'And forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors.' For we have many sins. For we offend both in word and in thought, and very many things we do worthy of condemnation; and 'if we say that we have no sin' (I Jn. 1:8), we lie, as John says...The offenses committed against us are slight and trivial, and easily settled; but those which we have committed against God are great, and need such mercy as His only is. Take heed, therefore, lest for the slight and trivial sins against you, you shut out for yourself forgiveness from God for your very grievous sins.

There is nothing more powerful than lowliness.

Sin disfigures a man, while grace brings beauty.

When you humble yourself, everyone will seem saintly to you; when you are proud, everyone will seem bothersome and bad.

It seems to me that, in all cases when indignity is offered to us, we should be silent; for it is our moment of profit.

Believe me, brethren, the more we are now in earnest to keep ourselves free from sin, the more confident shall we then be in His Presence.

For never is a man forced into sin by another’s fault, unless he have, stowed away in his heart, matter for evil deeds. Nor is a man to be held a victim of sudden deception if at the sight of a woman’s beauty he fall into an abyss of vile lust. Rather is it that diseases of soul, deeply hidden away and lost to view, come then to the surface on the occasion of the sight.

Do not stir up a memory that will cover your prayer with mud, do not root around in the soil of your old sins.

As with the appearance of light, darkness retreats; so, at the fragrance of humility, all anger and bitterness vanishes.

Let work humble the body, and when the body is humbled the soul will be humble with it, so that it is truly said that bodily labors lead to humility.

Let us therefore show honor and respect, not alone to those that are older than us, but also our equals. For it is no humility to do what you ought to do, or are compelled to do: that is not humility, but duty. It is true humility to give way to those who are seen to be less than us. And if we are truly wise, we shall consider no one as less than ourselves, but all men as our superiors.

The way to knowledge is detachment and humility, without which no one will see the Lord.

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