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

The soul of prayer is attentiveness. As the body without a soul is dead, so prayer without attentiveness is dead.

When you pray fervently, watch, for there will be temptations. This happens to everyone.

If someone should ask: how am I to pray?, the answer is very simple: fear God. Experience of the fear of God arouses attention and consciousness in the heart and forces it to stand with devotion before God.

When praying, endeavor by every means to feel in your heart the truth and the power of the words of the prayer; feed yourself upon them as upon an imperishable food; water your heart with them as with a dew; and warm yourself by them as by means of a beneficial fire.

We must always pray, so that the Lord will tell us what we must do, and the Lord will not leave us in confusion.

Pray humbly. If you should proudly think your prayer agreeable to the Lord and worthy of being answered, take it from me that it won't be heard.

Whatever you have endured out of love of wisdom will bear fruit for you at the time of prayer.

If a man tries to overcome temptations without prayer and patient endurance, he will become more entangled in them instead of driving them away.

Do not be always wanting everything to turn out as you think it should, but rather as God pleases; then you will be undisturbed and thankful in your prayer.

A servant of the Lord is he who in body stands before men, but in mind knocks at Heaven with prayer.

The enemy of our salvation especially strives to draw our heart and mind away from God when we are about to serve Him, and endeavours to adulterously attach our heart to something irrelevant. Be always, every moment, with God, especially when you pray to Him. If you are inconstant, you will fall away from life, and will cast yourself into sorrow and straitness.

Pray firstly to be purified of passions, secondly to be freed from ignorance and forgetfulness, and thirdly to be delivered from all temptation and forsaking.

The best form of prayer is one that implants the clearest idea of God in the soul and thus makes space for the presence of God within us.

You should not make long prayer, for it is better to pray little but often. Superfluous words are idle talk.

What is self-justification? - Self-justification is when a man denies his sin, as we see in the case of Adam, Eve, Cain and others who have sinned but, wishing to justify themselves, denied their sin.

Stand at prayer before the invisible God as if you saw Him, and with the conviction that He sees you and is looking at you attentively.

Prayer... by its action it is the reconciliation of man with God, the mother and daughter of tears, a bridge for crossing temptations, a wall of protection from afflictions, a crushing of conflicts, boundless activity, the spring of virtues, the source of spiritual gifts, invisible progress, food of the soul, the enlightening of the mind, an axe for despair, a demonstration of hope, the release from sorrow.

Do not pray that things may be according to your desires, for they are not always in keeping with the will of God. Better pray as you were taught, saying: ‘Thy will be done’ on me (Matt. vi 10). And ask thus about all things, for He always desires what is good and profitable for your soul, whereas you do not always seek it.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)