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

Whoever is experienced in the spiritual interpretation of Scripture knows that the simplest passage is of a significance equal to that of the most abstruse passage, and that both are directed to the salvation of man.

Whenever in your path you find unchanging peace, beware: you are very far from the divine paths trodden by the weary feet of the saints. For as long as you are journeying in the way to the city of the Kingdom and are drawing near the city of God, this will be a sign for you: the strength of the temptations that you encounter. And the nearer you draw close and progress, the more temptations will multiply against you.

Put aside bodily considerations when you stand in prayer, lest the bite of a flea, a gnat or a fly deprive you of the greatest gain afforded by prayer.

When you pray fervently, watch, for there will be temptations. This happens to everyone.

He who guards his lips, watches over his soul; but he who is bold with his lips, dishonors himself. Silence gathers, but much talking scatters.

When beset by temptations pray for courage and strength to remain firm. Remember: there is an eternity!

The Holy Fathers teach us how to become familiar with the Gospel, how to read it and how to understand it, what helps and what opposes its understanding. Therefore, at first you must devote more time to reading the Holy Fathers...

The Fathers used to say, “If temptation befall thee in the place thou dost inhabit, desert not the place in the time of temptation: for if thou dost, wheresoever thou goest, thou shalt find what thou fliest before thee.”

The Scriptures were not given merely that we might have them in books, but that we might engrave them on our hearts.

Remember that a good action is always either preceded or followed by temptations. God permits this so that the virtue, exercised in that particular action, may be confirmed, consolidated, steeled.

In general, loquacity opens the doors of the soul, and the devout warmth of the heart at once escapes. Empty talk does the same, but even more so… Empty talk is the door to criticism and slander, the spreader of false rumors and opinions, the sower of discord and strife. It stifles the taste for mental work and almost always serves as a cover for the absence of sound knowledge…

Teach your mouth to say what is in your heart.

But let us speak that which is good, to the edification of faith. That is, to speak only what will help to build up our neighbor in virtue; nothing more than that.

Reading the scriptures is a great safeguard against sin.

Ignorance of the scriptures is a precipice and a deep abyss.

Nothing is more unsettling than talkativeness and more pernicious than an unbridled tongue, disruptive as it is of the soul’s proper state. For the soul’s chatter destroys what we build each day and scatters what we have laboriously gathered together.

If Moses, who was a god to Pharaoh, was shut out from the Land of Promise because of one word, how much more will not the evil speech of our tongue, by which we offend and hurt both God and man, shut us out from heaven?

You have a mouth sealed by the Spirit? When you are speaking, think first of what you are saying, of what words are fitting for a mouth such as yours.

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)