• 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.

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

Increasing self-criticism is the sign of increasing humility. Indeed, there is no clearer sign.

How much joy, how much peace of soul would a man not have wherever he went... if he was one who habitually accused himself.

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

The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny oneself. To deny oneself means to give up one's bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God.

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.

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.

Sin disfigures a man, while grace brings beauty.

He alone knows himself in the best way who thinks of himself as being nothing.

If you do not learn to deny yourself, you can make no progress in perfection.

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

Sin, to one who loves God, is nothing other than an arrow from the enemy in battle. The true Christian is a warrior fighting his way through the regiments of the unseen enemy to his heavenly homeland.

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.

One must train oneself in self-reproach, that is, always accuse oneself & not others in one’s mind, reproach oneself and not others, and with a severe distrust of oneself accuse oneself of the failings which are covered up by our self-love, accuse ourself of our inclinations to sin. He who has self-reproach has peace, writes Abba Dorotheos, & will never be disturbed. If to such a one there should occur an illness, a wrong, a vexation, or some similar misfortune, he ascribes everything to his own sins & thanks God. If such a one is punished or reprimanded by the superior, he accepts all this as good & accepts every severe word against himself without murmuring or talking back, as the judgment of God.

The more a man struggles to do good, the more fear grows in him, until it shows him his slightest faults, those which he thought of as nothing while he was still in the darkness of ignorance.

Just as desire and rage multiply our sins, so self-control and humility erase them.

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

He who smells the smell of one's own foul odor doesn't smell the foul odor of anyone else.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)