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

If you feel no pang in committing minor offences you will through them fall into major transgressions.

Believe me, brethren, the more we are now in earnest to keep ourselves free from sin, the more confident shall we then be in His Presence.

Those who have sinned must not despair. Let that never be. For we are condemned not for the multitude of evils, but because we do not want to repent...

All sin is due to sensual pleasure, all forgiveness to hardship and distress.

For never is a man forced into sin by another’s fault, unless he have, stowed away in his heart, matter for evil deeds. Nor is a man to be held a victim of sudden deception if at the sight of a woman’s beauty he fall into an abyss of vile lust. Rather is it that diseases of soul, deeply hidden away and lost to view, come then to the surface on the occasion of the sight.

Let us not put off from day to day, without observing how sin is injuring us.

Just as desire and rage multiply our sins, so self-control and humility erase them.

Being delivered from bodily sins is not enough, we must also cleanse the inner energy which dwells in our souls.

What is it that commends our own life? Is it miracles, or is it a life scrupulously and uprightly lived? It is rather from the latter that miracles arise, and to that they tend. For he that lives a worthy life, draws this grace upon himself; and whosoever receives such graces receives them that he may help others to amend their lives. For even Christ wrought miracles that He might the more be accepted as worthy of belief, and so might the more attract men to Himself, and by this means bring sanctity into their lives.

One who is capable of seeing himself is better than one who has been made worthy to see angels.

There is a sin which is always 'unto death' [1 Jn 5:16]; the sin which we have not repented. Even a saint's prayers will not be heard for the unrepented sin. The person who repents correctly does not imagine that his sins are cancelled through his own effort; but knows that through this effort he makes peace with God.

Sin, to one who loves God, is nothing other than an arrow from the enemy in battle. The true Christian is a warrior fighting his way through the regiments of the unseen enemy to his heavenly homeland.

He who does not consciously choose to distance himself from a cause for sin, will be drawn to sin, even against his will.

If however any one thinks that he is not being burned when sinning, to him the Scripture saith, Shall a man wrap up fire in his bosom, and not burn his clothes? For sin burns the sinews of the soul, and breaks the spiritual bones of the mind, and darkens the light of the heart.

Do not stir up a memory that will cover your prayer with mud, do not root around in the soil of your old sins.

The man who has come to loathe sin has mounted the first rung of the heavenly ladder.

Self-knowledge is a true idea of one's spiritual growth, and an unbroken remembrance of one's slightest sins.

Don't get lazy, and don't let time pass, for you will not recover the time that you waste idly everyday.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)