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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.

It is no small struggle to be freed from self-esteem. Such freedom is to be attained by the inner practice of the virtues and by more frequent prayer; and the sign that you have attained it is that you no longer harbor rancor against anybody who abuses or has abused you.

Self-esteem is so deeply rooted in us and so firmly enmeshed in us, making us think that we are something, and something not unimportant, that it always hides in our heart as a subtle and imperceptible movement, even when we are sure that we do not trust ourselves and are, on the contrary, filled with complete trust in God alone. In order to avoid this conceit of the heart and act without any self-reliance, led only by your trust in God, take care always to preserve an attitude in which the consciousness and feeling of your weakness always precede in you the contemplation of God's omnipotence, and let both alike precede your every action.

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.

A haughty person is not aware of his faults, or a humble person of his good qualities. An evil ignorance blinds the first, an ignorance pleasing to God blinds the second.

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.

Nothing is better than to realize one's weakness and ignorance, and nothing is worse than not to be aware of them.

Nothing so abets our secret destruction as conceit and self-satisfaction, or so cuts us off from God and provokes our chastisement at the hands of other men as grumbling, or so disposes us to sin as a disorderly life and talkativeness.

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

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

I prefer a defeat accompanied by humility to a victory accompanied by pride.

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

God seeks nothing else from us men except that we do not sin; this alone. But this is not a work of law; it is rather a careful guarding of the image and dignity from above. In these things, affirmed in our nature and bearing the radiant garment of the Spirit, we shall abide in God and He in us. We shall be called good, and sons of God by adoption, marked in the light of our knowledge of God.

Strive to walk worthily of the vocation to which you were called.

Pride is the forerunner of every fall.

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.

It is no small struggle to be freed from self-esteem. Such freedom is to be attained by the inner practice of the virtues and by more frequent prayer; and the sign that you have attained it is that you no longer harbor rancor against anybody who abuses or has abused you.

Sometimes, when we are overcome by pride or impatience and are unwilling to amend our ill-conditioned and disordered way of life, we complain that what we need is solitude, as though in solitude, meeting with no provocation, we should find there the virtue of patience, making excuses for our slackness, and laying the blame of our agitation not upon our own lack of patience, but ascribing it to the faults of our brethren, whereas so long as we impute to others the causes of our own faults, we shall never be able to reach the goal of patience and of perfection.

Arrogance cannot bear to see itself scorned and humility held in honor.

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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)