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

Serving the sick is one of the most powerful weapons for guarding one's purity.

Each Christian, especially a priest, should follow in example the goodness of the Lord, that everyone should be invited to partake of the Lord's food at your table. The miser is an enemy of the Lord.

If you speak of pagan abuses, these abuses do not make our veneration of images loathsome. Blame the pagans, who made images into gods! Just because the pagans used them in a foul way, that is no reason to object to our pious practice. Sorcerers and magicians use incantations and the Church prays over catechumens; the former conjure up demons while the Church calls upon God to exorcise the demons. Pagans make images of demons which they address as gods, but we make images of God incarnate, and of His servants and friends, and with them we drive away the demonic hosts... If the Scripture says, The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands (Ps. 135:15), it is not forbidden to bow before inanimate things, or the handiwork of men, but only before those images which are the devil's work.

How can one say that a man has attained purity? - When he sees all men as being good, and when none appears to him to be unclean and defiled - then he is indeed pure in heart.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Everything we do, our every objective, must be undertaken for the sake of this purity of heart. This is why we take on loneliness, fasting, vigils, work, nakedness. For this we must practice the reading of the Scripture, together with all the other virtuous activities, and we do so to trap and to hold our hearts free of the harm of every dangerous passion and in order to rise step by step to the high point of love.

It is not always possible to fulfill the usual rules; one must take circumstances into account and try to fulfill what they make possible, as far as one can. The demons themselves are not unmindful of this law. So, being in constant enmity with us, they prevent us from doing what is possible and urge us to do what is impossible.

An icon is a symbol of the invisible. It depicts not only the outward, visible countenance of the Lord and His saints, but also their inner likeness, their sanctity.

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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)