• Vespers: Saturdays 5PM
  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
Archangel Michael Logo

Quotes

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

A lover of riches is never satisfied, no matter how many possessions he accumulates, but the more he acquires daily, the more his appetite increases; and a person forcibly pulled away from a stream of pure water before he has quenched his thirst feels even more thirsty. In a similar way, once one has experienced the taste of God, one can never be satisfied or have enough of it, but however much one is enriched by this wealth one still feels oneself to be poor. Christians do not set great store by their own lives, but regard themselves rather as rightly set at nought by God and as everyone’s servants.

Do not the angels differ from us in this respect, that they do not want so many things as we do? Therefore the less we need, the more we are on our way to them; the more we need, the more we sink down to this perishable life.

Woe is he who knowingly chooses to sin with the intention to repent when morning comes, for he knows not what the coming day or the night that precedes it will bring.

Sin disfigures a man, while grace brings beauty.

The man who has come to loathe sin has mounted the first rung of the heavenly ladder.

We must resist and avoid like deadly poison the desire to possess earthly goods.

A man who has embraced poverty offers up prayer that is pure, while a man who loves possessions prays to material images.

There is a sin which is always 'unto death' [1 Jn 5:16]; the sin which we have not repented. Even a saint's prayers will not be heard for the unrepented sin. The person who repents correctly does not imagine that his sins are cancelled through his own effort; but knows that through this effort he makes peace with God.

It is impossible for the soul to be liberated from turbulent thoughts without the virtue of non-possessiveness. And without peace of the bodily senses it is impossible for the soul to have a peaceful intellect. And if it does not come into temptations it will not acquire wisdom of the Holy Spirit. And without laborious and persistence in reading, it will not come to the discernment of thoughts. And without the stillness of thoughts, the intellect cannot move to seek the hidden mysteries of God.

A thick rope is composed of thin strands of hemp. One thin strand cannot hold you bound nor strangle you, for you will easily, with the lightest touch, break it and free yourself. But if a thick rope binds you, you will stay bound, and it will strangle you. You cannot easily break it and free yourself of it. As a thick rope is made from thin, weak strands, so men's passions are made up of smaller initial sins. The small, initial sins a man can still break and free himself of. But sin on sin, repeated, the weave becomes thicker and thicker until it becomes a passion, which masters a man as only it can do. You can neither cut it out easily nor cast it away from you nor be divorced from it. Oh, when will men guard themselves from these first sins? Then they would not have so much difficulty in freeing themselves from the passions.

Christ told His friends, that is, His disciples, to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and scribes, meaning by leaven their false pretence. For hypocrisy is a thing hateful to God, and abominated by man, bringing no reward, and utterly useless for the salvation of the soul, or rather the cause of its perdition. Though sometimes it may escape detection for a little, yet before long it is sure to be laid bare and bring disgrace upon them, like ill-featured women, when they are stripped of that external embellishment which they had produced by artificial means. Hypocrisy, therefore, is a thing foreign to the character of the saints. That it is impossible for those things that are done and said by us to escape the eye of the Deity, He showed by saying: “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known.” For all our words and deeds shall be revealed at the day of judgment.

All sin is due to sensual pleasure, all forgiveness to hardship and distress.

Do not hate the sinner. Become a proclaimer of God's grace, seeing that God provides for you even though you are unworthy.

'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.

Every man who has committed sin, has stopped up the senses of his soul with the mud of pleasure.

Being delivered from bodily sins is not enough, we must also cleanse the inner energy which dwells in our souls.

God seeks nothing else from us men except that we do not sin; this alone. But this is not a work of law; it is rather a careful guarding of the image and dignity from above. In these things, affirmed in our nature and bearing the radiant garment of the Spirit, we shall abide in God and He in us. We shall be called good, and sons of God by adoption, marked in the light of our knowledge of God.

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

Filtered (40)
Filters
Search By Keyword
Filter By
See more See less
Topics (Love, Anger, Confession, etc.)
See more See less
Show (40)
Cancel
Parish

Mailing Address

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

Email, Phone, and Fax

[email protected]
440-526-5192 (Phone)