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

If you have received from God the gift of knowledge, however limited, beware of neglecting charity and temperance. They are virtues which radically purify the soul from passions and so open the way of knowledge continually.

If we want to do something but cannot, then before God, Who knows our hearts, it is as if we have done it. This is true whether the intended action is good or bad.

Fear God and keep His commandments both in your feelings and in your intellect. If you force yourself to keep them in your intellect, bit by bit you will attain to fulfilling them in your feelings.

As work according to God is called virtue, so unexpected affliction is called a test.

According to the degree to which the intellect is stripped of the passions, the Holy Spirit initiates the intellect into the mysteries of the age to be.

In all our actions God looks at the intention, whether we do them for Him or from some other motive.

When tested by some trial you should try to find out not why or through whom it came, but only how to endure it gratefully, without distress or rancor.

In everything we do, God looks as the aim, whether it is for Him or for some other purpose we act. So, when we wish to do something good, let us have as our aim not to please men but to please God, so as to have our eyes always fixed on Him, doing everything for Him, lest we bear the labor but lose the reward.

Knowing the exact nature of everything, God permits each person to be tested according to his strength. As St. Paul puts it: 'God is to be trusted not to let you be tried beyond your strength, but with the trial He will provide a way out, so that you are able to bear it' (1 Cor. 10:13).

If someone is judged worthy to receive the gift of knowledge but allows his heart to be full of bitterness or rancor or aversion to another, it is as if he had been struck in the eye by a thornbush. That is why knowledge is no good without charity.

Grace always precedes temptation, as if to notify you saying, 'Prepare yourself and lock your doors.'

The intellect becomes a stranger to the things of this world when its attachment to the senses has been completely sundered.

Filters
Search By Keyword
Topics (Love, Anger, Confession, etc.)
See more See less
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)