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

Pride is known by its deeds as a tree is known by its fruits.

Those who have sinned must not despair. Let that never be. For we are condemned not for the multitude of evils, but because we do not want to repent...

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.

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

I prefer a defeat accompanied by humility to a victory accompanied by pride.

'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.

Sometimes, when we are overcome by pride or impatience and are unwilling to amend our ill-conditioned and disordered way of life, we complain that what we need is solitude, as though in solitude, meeting with no provocation, we should find there the virtue of patience, making excuses for our slackness, and laying the blame of our agitation not upon our own lack of patience, but ascribing it to the faults of our brethren, whereas so long as we impute to others the causes of our own faults, we shall never be able to reach the goal of patience and of perfection.

Our own will is like a wall of brass between us and God, preventing us from coming near to Him or contemplating His mercy.

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.

Nothing so abets our secret destruction as conceit and self-satisfaction, or so cuts us off from God and provokes our chastisement at the hands of other men as grumbling, or so disposes us to sin as a disorderly life and talkativeness.

A haughty person is not aware of his faults, or a humble person of his good qualities. An evil ignorance blinds the first, an ignorance pleasing to God blinds the second.

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.

It is vain that some unenlightened people seek the greatest evil for man somewhere else, rather than in sin. Some consider disease to be the greatest evil, others - poverty, and others - death. But neither disease, nor poverty, nor death, nor any other earthly disaster can be such a great evil for us as sin is. These earthly misfortunes do not separate us from God if we are seeking Him sincerely, but, on the contrary, they bring us closer to Him.

If you feel no pang in committing minor offences you will through them fall into major transgressions.

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

Do not want things to turn out as you would like, but want whatever happens. That way you will be at peace with everyone.

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.

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

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