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

There is yet another reason that may cause our prayer to go unanswered: namely, that though we pray we yet continue in sin.

As for uprooting your passions, begin with self-reproach and with awareness of your own weaknesses; and consider yourself to be deserving of afflictions.

Humble yourself, reproach yourself, consider yourself the very last and the very worst of all, condemn no one - and you will receive God's mercy.

Should you accuse and condemn yourself before God for the sins on your conscience, you will be justified for doing so.

But, say the saints, now that you recognize the darkness in your own heart and the weakness of your flesh, you lose all desire to pass judgment on your neighbor. Out of your own darkness you see the heavenly light that shines in all created things reflected the clearer: you cannot detect the sins of others while your own are so great. For it is in your eager striving for perfection that you first perceive your own imperfection. And only when you have seen your imperfection, can you be perfected. Thus perfection proceeds out of weakness.

One who is capable of seeing himself is better than one who has been made worthy to see angels.

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

How much joy, how much peace of soul would a man not have wherever he went... if he was one who habitually accused himself.

He who believes in Christ is not judged, for he judges himself, and sets his feet aright to follow the light that goes before him. As a man in deep darkness adapts his step to the candle in his hand, so also he who believes in Christ; that is, he who is set to follow after Christ as the light in the darkness of life.

Be despised and rejected in your own eyes, and you will see the glory of God within yourself. For where humility blossoms, there God’s glory bursts forth.

The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny oneself. To deny oneself means to give up one's bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God.

A sign of deliverance from our falls is the continual reckoning of ourselves as debtors.

Increasing self-criticism is the sign of increasing humility. Indeed, there is no clearer sign.

One who is capable of seeing himself is better than one who has been made worthy to see angels.

Self-knowledge is a true idea of one's spiritual growth, and an unbroken remembrance of one's slightest sins.

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.

He who smells the smell of one's own foul odor doesn't smell the foul odor of anyone else.

He alone knows himself in the best way who thinks of himself as being nothing.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)