• 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.

Where there is simplicity, there are a hundred Angels, but where there is cleverness – there are none.

Having withdrawn from the palace to the solitary life, Abba Arsenius prayed and heard a voice saying to him, 'Arsenius, flee, be silent, pray always, for these are the source of sinlessness.'

It seems to me that, in all cases when indignity is offered to us, we should be silent; for it is our moment of profit.

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.

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.

Apt silence bridles anger.

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

Walk before God in simplicity, and not in subtleties of the mind. Simplicity brings faith; but subtle and intricate speculations bring conceit; and conceit brings withdrawal from God.

The lover of silence draws close to God. He talks to Him in secret and God enlightens him.

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.

If you pile up on one side of the scales all the works demanded by ascetic life, and on the other side-silence, you will find that the latter outweighs the former. Many good counsels have been given us, but if a man embraces silence, to follow them will become superfluous.

Silence of the lips is better and more wonderful than any edifying conversation. Our fathers embraced it with reverence and were glorified through it.

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I shall indicate to you the most direct and simple method to acquire the habit of silence: ...reflect as often as you can on the pernicious results of indiscriminate babbling and on the salutary results of wise silence. When you come to taste the good fruit of silence, you will no longer need lessons about it.

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

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.

When the door of steam baths is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul in its desire to say many things, dissipates the remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good... Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.

Live simply and God will not leave you...

Blessed are those who, from love of God, have girded their loins with unquestioning simplicity for this sea of suffering, and who do not turn back.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)