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  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
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Quotes

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

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.

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.

I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, 'What can get through from such snares?' Then I heard a voice saying to me, 'Humility.'

There is nothing more powerful than lowliness.

Only to the humble does the Lord reveal Himself in the Holy Spirit, but if we do not humble ourselves we shall not see God. Humility is the light in which we may behold the Light which is God, as the Psalmist sang: 'In Thy light we shall see light.'

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

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

Love and humility form a holy pair; what the first builds, the second binds, thus preventing the building from falling asunder.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

A certain elder was asked when one attains humility. 'When he remembers his sins continuously,' he replied.

The Scriptures were not given merely that we might have them in books, but that we might engrave them on our hearts.

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.

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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)