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Quotes

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

A prayer offered while one has any cause to reproach a fellow man is an impure prayer. There is only one whom the praying person may and must reproach, and that is himself. Without self-reproach, your prayer is as worthless as it is while you are reproaching someone else in your heart. Perhaps you ask: How can one learn this? The answer is: One learns it through prayer.

Humble yourself, reproach yourself, consider yourself the very last and the very worst of all, condemn no one - and you will receive God's mercy.

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 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.

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?

Love the poor, and through them you will find mercy.

A man who has embraced poverty offers up prayer that is pure, while a man who loves possessions prays to material images.

I had wasted much of my time and devoted almost all of my youth in acquiring knowledge which now appears as just foolishness before God. Then one day I awoke suddenly, as if from some deep sleep, and saw the intense light of divine truth, and realized the absolute worthlessness of all the wisdom taught by the leaders of this world. I wept many tears for the wretchedness of my life and prayed for some guidance to lead my life to faith. The first thing I did to reform my previous way of life was to mix with the poor...

Do not regard the feelings of a person who speaks to you about his neighbor disparagingly, but rather say to him: 'Stop, brother! I fall into graver sins every day, so how can I criticize him?' In this way you will achieve two things: you will heal yourself and your neighbor with one plaster. This is one of the shortest ways to the forgiveness of sins; I mean, not to judge. 'Judge not, and ye shall not be judged,' (Luke 6:37).

The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny oneself. To deny oneself means to give up one's bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God.

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

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

But, say the saints, now that you recognize the darkness in your own heart and the weakness of your flesh, you lose all desire to pass judgment on your neighbor. Out of your own darkness you see the heavenly light that shines in all created things reflected the clearer: you cannot detect the sins of others while your own are so great. For it is in your eager striving for perfection that you first perceive your own imperfection. And only when you have seen your imperfection, can you be perfected. Thus perfection proceeds out of weakness.

Increasing self-criticism is the sign of increasing humility. Indeed, there is no clearer sign.

Self-accusation before God is something that is very necessary for us; and humility of heart is extremely advantageous in our lives, above all at the time of prayer. For prayer requires great attention and needs a proper awareness, otherwise it will turn out to be unacceptable and rejected, and `it will be turned back empty' to our bosom.

Vanity is eliminated by acting secretly, and pride by ascribing to God all that is well done.

He who believes in Christ is not judged, for he judges himself, and sets his feet aright to follow the light that goes before him. As a man in deep darkness adapts his step to the candle in his hand, so also he who believes in Christ; that is, he who is set to follow after Christ as the light in the darkness of life.

If a man accuses himself, he is protected on all sides.

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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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[email protected]
440-526-5192 (Phone)