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

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.

When tested by some trial you should try to find out not why or through whom it came, but only how to endure it gratefully, without distress or rancor.

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...

Know that if your thought leads you to look at how others live, this is a sign of pride.

To those who do not long for it, wisdom is fear, because of the loss which they suffer through their flight from it; but in those who cleave to it, wisdom is loving desire, promoting an inner state of joyous activity. For wisdom creates fear, delivering a person from the passions by making him apprehensive of punishment; and it also produces loving desire, accustoming the intellect through the acquisition of the virtues to behold the blessings held in store for us.

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

In words of boastfulness and self-justification there always lie concealed contrariness and pride, from which God turns away. After sinning one ought immediately to 'flee.' But you say, where? To the calm haven of heartfelt repentance.

Do not hate the sinner. Become a proclaimer of God's grace, seeing that God provides for you even though you are unworthy.

Grace always precedes temptation, as if to notify you saying, 'Prepare yourself and lock your doors.'

Pride is known by its deeds as a tree is known by its fruits.

True wisdom is gazing at God. Gazing at God is silence of the thoughts. Stillness of mind is tranquility which comes from discernment.

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.

'And forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors.' For we have many sins. For we offend both in word and in thought, and very many things we do worthy of condemnation; and 'if we say that we have no sin' (I Jn. 1:8), we lie, as John says...The offenses committed against us are slight and trivial, and easily settled; but those which we have committed against God are great, and need such mercy as His only is. Take heed, therefore, lest for the slight and trivial sins against you, you shut out for yourself forgiveness from God for your very grievous sins.

Keep a strict watch against any appearance of pride: it appears imperceptibly, particularly in time of vexation and irritability against others for quite unimportant causes.

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

Those who mourn and those who are insensitive are not subject to fear, but the cowardly often have become deranged. And this is natural. For the Lord rightly forsakes the proud that the rest of us may learn not to be puffed up.

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.

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

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)