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

A holy man told us one day, that the source of all heresies and schisms in the church was, loving God too little, and ourselves too much.

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.

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

The greatest obstacle that obstructs God's grace is self-love. When God finds one's heart emptied of all desires, He fills it with His grace.

He who loves himself cannot love God. But he who, for love of God, does not love himself, loves God.

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.

Since self-love is the origin and mother of evil, when this is eradicated all the things which derive from it are eradicated as well. For when self-love is absent, not the slightest trace or form of evil can exist in any way at all.

There is no venom more poisonous than that of the asp or cobra, and there is no evil greater than that of self-love. The winged children of self-love are self-praise, self-satisfaction, gluttony, unchastity, self-esteem, jealousy and the crown of all these, pride. Pride can drag down not men alone, but even angels from heaven, and surround them with darkness instead of light.

Self-love precedes all passions, and the scorn of ease precedes all the virtues.

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5025 E. Mill Rd
Broadview Heights, Ohio 44147

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