• Vespers: Saturdays 5PM
  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
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Quotes

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

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

If a man accuses himself, he is protected on all sides.

When you intend to do something and see that your thought is perturbed, and if after invoking God's Name it remains perturbed even by a hair's breadth, know from this that the action you mean to commit is from the evil one and refrain from commiting it. For nothing done with perturbation is pleasing to God.

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The more a man struggles to do good, the more fear grows in him, until it shows him his slightest faults, those which he thought of as nothing while he was still in the darkness of ignorance.

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.

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.

The martyrs will show their torments, the ascetics their good works; but what will I have to show but my apathy and my incessant indulgence?

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

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Let us avail ourselves of the example of that holy staretz who used to say: 'Depart, evil one; come, beloved!' Once a brother who overheard his words and supposed that the staretz was speaking to another man asked him 'With whom are you conversing, father?' And the staretz answered: 'I am driving away evil thoughts and calling the good ones to my side.' And so, if we are tempted, let us use the words of that staretz, or others like them.

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.

Who has conquered the body? He who has made the heart contrite. Who then has made the heart contrite? He who has denied himself.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Do not regard the feelings of a person who speaks to you about his neighbor disparagingly, but rather say to him: 'Stop, brother! I fall into graver sins every day, so how can I criticize him?' In this way you will achieve two things: you will heal yourself and your neighbor with one plaster. This is one of the shortest ways to the forgiveness of sins; I mean, not to judge. 'Judge not, and ye shall not be judged,' (Luke 6:37).

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)