• 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.

Our achievements must never loom large in our eyes; only our failures. But this must never lead us to despondency - the constant temptation - only to humility.

Not one of us can boast of having acquired humility: our actions, the whole of our life, prove the contrary. And where there is a lack of humility, pride is always present. Where light is wanting, darkness reigns.

There is nothing more powerful than lowliness.

For, just as it is good to recall ones sins, so it is also good to forget ones good deeds. Why is this? Because remembrance of our good deeds puffs us up with arrogance, whereas remembrance of our sins curbs and humbles our mind; the former makes us more sluggish, but the latter makes us more diligent. Indeed, those who do not think that they have anything good become more eager to acquire what is good, whereas those who reckon that they have stored up a great deal of merchandise, confident they have an abundance of this, do not display much zeal for obtaining more of it.

The humility which in due time and by God's grace, after many struggles and tears, is given by heaven to those who seek it is something incompararably stronger and higher than the sense of abasement felt by those who have lapsed from holiness. This higher humility is granted only to those who have attained true perfection and are no longer under the sway of sin.

All that the Lord has done, we shall find, is intended to instruct us in humility.

Be despised and rejected in your own eyes, and you will see the glory of God within yourself. For where humility blossoms, there God’s glory bursts forth.

When I wish to open my mouth and to speak on the exalted theme of humility, I am filled with dread, like someone who is aware that he is about to discourse with his own imperfect words concerning God.

What else is so dear to God and welcome as a contrite and humble heart, and pride laid low in a spirit of humility? It is in such a condition of soul that God Himself comes to dwell and make His rest, and that every machination of the devil remains ineffective.

What joy is ours that the Lord not only forgives our sins but allows the soul to know Him, as soon as she humbles herself.

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.

Compassion and humility are like the soul’s wings by which it flies up to heaven (Ps. 104:7). Without them prayer cannot rise off the ground...

If therefore holy men, even when they do mighty things, think themselves worthless, what must be said of those who, without fruit of virtue, are yet swollen with pride? But any works, although they be good, are as nothing unless seasoned with humility. A great deed done boastfully, lowers rather than uplifts a man. He who would gather virtue without humility, carries dust in the wind; and where he seems to possess something, from the same is he blinded and made worse.

No virtue makes flesh-bound man so like a spiritual angel as does self-restraint, for it enables those still living on earth to become, as the Apostle says, 'citizens of heaven' (cf. Phil. 3:20).

When it is needful that a person be humbled, then not only the Superior, the sisters, strangers and near ones, but even all creation, according to the words of St. Isaac the Syrian, will rise up against that person.

Without humility no other virtue is possible, for if man does not fulfill virtue in a spirit of humility, he will inevitably fall into God-opposing pride, and will fall away from God’s mercy.

Self-control and strenuous effort curb desire; stillness and intense longing for God wither it.

A haughty person is not aware of his faults, or a humble person of his good qualities. An evil ignorance blinds the first, an ignorance pleasing to God blinds the second.

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Parish

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)