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  • Divine Liturgy: Sundays 9:30AM
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Quotes

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

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

Prayer is truly a heavenly armor, and it alone can keep safe those who have dedicated themselves to God. Prayer is the common medicine for purifying ourselves from the passions, for hindering sin and curing our faults. Prayer is an inexhaustible treasure, an unruffled harbor, the foundation of serenity, the root and mother of myriads of blessings.

Prayer attunes us for converse with God and, through long practice, leads us to friendship with Him.

The evil spirit tries to scatter prayer as if it were a sand heap, tries to turn the words into dry sand, without coherency or moisture - that is to say, without fervor of heart. Thus prayer may become either a house built on sand or a house built on a rock. Those build on sand who pray without faith, absently, coldly: such prayer is scattered of itself, and does not bring any profit to him who prays; those build on a rock who, during the whole time of their prayer, have their eyes fixed upon God, and pray to Him as to a living person, conversing face to face with them.

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

It is natural for the poor man to beg, and it is natural for man made poor by the fall into sin to pray.

Undistracted prayer is the highest doing of the mind.

Let us then not lose heart, nor be slothful or timid in prayer. Even if we have been brought down to the depths of evil, prayer can speedily draw us back.

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

Do not shun poverty and affliction, the fuel that gives wings to prayer.

'If our prayer is not in harmony with our deeds, we labor in vain,' Abba Moses often told the young monks. 'How are we to accomplish such harmony?' they asked him one day. 'When we make that which we seek fitting to our prayer,' explained the saint. 'Only then can the soul be reconciled with its Creator and its prayer be acceptable, when it sets aside all of its own evil intentions.'

No one can be saved without the renunciation of his will, even though he might struggle fervently, for our will and our manner are like a bronze wall between us and God.

Observe your thoughts, and beware of what you have in your heart and your spirit, knowing that the demons put ideas into you so as to corrupt your soul by making it think of that which is not right, in order to turn your spirit from the consideration of your sins and of God.

When you are praying, don’t rack your brains to find words. On many occasions the simple, monotonous stammering of children has satisfied their Father who is in heaven. Don’t bother to be loquacious lest the mind is bewildered in the search for words. The tax-collector gained the Lord’s forgiveness with a single sentence, and a single word charged with faith was the salvation of the robber. Loquacity in prayer often fills the head with foolish fancies and provokes distractions. Brevity on the other hand - sometimes only one word is enough - in general favors recollection.

It is natural for the poor man to beg, and it is natural for man made poor by the fall into sin to pray.

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.

When said with pain, the prayer gives birth to mourning. Mourning brings tears. Tears in turn give birth to purer prayer. For tears like a fragrant myrrh wash away the filth, and thus the inbreathing of God is cleansed, which like a dove is confined within four walls, as if made of the four elements.... And then, as soon as the walls break down and collapse, the dove immediately flies to the Father whence it came.

That prayer may be poured forth with that fervor and singleness of heart that it ought to have, these rules must always be observed. In the first place, anxiety concerning the things of the flesh must be altogether be put away; then we must not allow to enter our minds any thought or even memory of worldly cares or business. We must cut off slanderings, vain words or many words, jestings and the like. We must root out the disturbances of anger especially, and despondency, and also tear up the evil roots of carnal lust and avarice. And so with these and similar faults done entirely away with and cut off, - things which can also be discerned by human eyes - and with such a cleansing and purifying as we have mentioned first carried out in the sincerity of simplicity and innocence, we must lay the unshakable foundations of humility strong enough to sustain a tower which shall pierce the heavens.

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Parish

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)