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

The soul that really loves God and Christ, though it may do ten thousand righteousnesses, esteems itself as having wrought nothing, by reason of its insatiable aspiration after God. Though it should exhaust the body with fastings, with watchings, its attitude towards the virtues is as if it had not even begun to labor for them.

Those who yield themselves to idleness and apathy, even though they may be spiritual and holy, hurl themselves into unnatural subjection to passions.

But if you give a strong body rest and ease and idleness, all the passions dwelling in the soul are intensified. Then, even if the soul has a great desire for good, even the very thought of the good that is desired will be taken from you.

Ease and idleness are the destruction of the soul and they can injure her more than the demons.

One who lives in idleness sins continually.

Love of God proceeds from conversing with him; this conversation of prayer comes about through stillness, and stillness comes with the stripping away of the self.

The love of God is not something we learn from another. Neither did we learn from another how to love the sunshine or how to defend our life. Nor has anyone taught us how to love our parents, or those who have reared us. And so, indeed much more, learning how to love God does not come to us from outside. But in the very commencement of the life of man, there is placed within us a certain seminal conception, having, from itself, the beginnings of a natural propensity towards this love.

It is a sin to spend time idly.

Stop pleasing yourself and you will not hate your brother; stop loving yourself and you will love God.

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5025 E. Mill Rd
Broadview Heights, Ohio 44147

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