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.

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

If you love to enjoy true and complete delight from the Scriptures, seek to read them not merely with simple understanding, but with deeds and practical realities. Moreover, seek to read them not merely for the mere love of learning but also for the sake of ascetic endeavors & discipline, as St. Mark wrote: 'Read the words of Holy Scripture with an eye to practical applications and not merely to be puffed up by any fine thought that you may receive from it.' Another Father said: 'This is why the lover of knowledge must also be a lover of discipline. For knowledge alone does not give light to a lamp.'

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

The night was not made to be spent entirely in sleep. Why did Jesus Christ pass so many nights amid the mountains, if not to instruct us by His example? It is during the night that all the plants respire, and it is then also that the soul of man is more penetrated with the dews falling from Heaven; and everything that has been scorched and burned during the day by the sun's fierce heat is refreshed and renewed during the night; and the tears we shed at night extinguish the fires of passion and quieten our guilty desires. Night heals the wounds of our soul and calms our griefs.

A vigilant eye makes the mind pure; but much sleep hardens the soul.

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

Just as over-drinking is a matter of habit, so too from habit comes over-sleeping. Therefore we must struggle with the question of sleep, especially in the early days of obedience, because a long-standing habit is difficult to cure.

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.

I wish I could persuade spiritual persons that the way of perfection does not consist in many devices, nor in much cogitation, but in denying themselves completely and yielding themselves to suffer everything for the love of Christ. And if there is failure in this exercise, all other methods of walking in the spiritual way are merely a beating about the bush, and profitless trifling, although a person should have very high contemplation and communication with God.

The adversary of our life, the devil, employs many devices to make our sins seem small to us. Often he cloaks them with forgetfulness, so that, after suffering a little on their account, we no longer trouble to lament over them. But, my brethren, let us not forget our offences, even if we wrongly think that they have been forgiven through repentance; let us always remember our sinful acts and never cease to mourn over them, so that we may acquire humility as our constant companion, and thus escape the snares of self-esteem and pride.

If you do not learn to deny yourself, you can make no progress in perfection.

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

A humble and spiritually active man, when he reads the Holy Scripture, will refer everything to himself and not to another.

Do not approach the words of the mysteries contained in the divine Scriptures without prayer and beseeching God for help, but say: 'Lord, grant me to perceive the power in them!' Reckon prayer to be the key to the true understanding of the divine Scriptures.

Reading the Scriptures is a great means of security against sinning.

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

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?

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

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