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

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 virtue opposed to pride is humility. But as far as pride is loathsome and abominable, so welcome and lovely is humility to God and men. God Who is great and exalted looks on nothing so lovely as on an humble and compunctionate heart. Whence even the Most Holy Theotokos says of herself, For He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden. (Luke 1:48).

Reading the scriptures is a great safeguard against sin.

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.

If the humbling of oneself before men is needful that one might be exalted before God, and temporal toil is the prerequisite of immortal life, what does it matter if some shake their heads and laugh at your self-abasement?

The Holy Fathers teach us how to become familiar with the Gospel, how to read it and how to understand it, what helps and what opposes its understanding. Therefore, at first you must devote more time to reading the Holy Fathers...

Strive to walk worthily of the vocation to which you were called.

Put aside bodily considerations when you stand in prayer, lest the bite of a flea, a gnat or a fly deprive you of the greatest gain afforded by prayer.

Behold, this is the true and the Christian humility. In this you will be able to achieve victory over every vice, by attributing to God rather than to yourself the fact that you have won.

Acquire humility, which scorches the demons, obedience, which opens the door for the Son of God to enter a man, faith which saves a man, hope which makes him unashamed; and love which lets not a man fall away from God.

We ought to learn the virtues through practicing them, not merely through talking about them, so that by acquiring the habit of them we do not forget what is of benefit to us.

The best medicine for pride, man’s greatest sickness of soul, is humility. Words cannot describe or explain it, but the Fathers say that he who strives hard to live according to the precepts of our Lord, and is fully aware of his own sins, acquires it steadily. Therefore be very careful never to think yourself good, or the least bit better than others.

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

Whoever is experienced in the spiritual interpretation of Scripture knows that the simplest passage is of a significance equal to that of the most abstruse passage, and that both are directed to the salvation of man.

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

Holy Scripture is presented to the mind’s eye like a mirror in which the appearance of our inner being can be seen.

Reading the Scriptures is a great means of security against sinning.

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.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)