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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.

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.

Be despised and rejected in your own eyes, and you will see the glory of God within yourself. For where humility blossoms, there God’s glory bursts forth.

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

I wish I could persuade spiritual persons that the way of perfection does not consist in many devices, nor in much cogitation, but in denying themselves completely and yielding themselves to suffer everything for the love of Christ. And if there is failure in this exercise, all other methods of walking in the spiritual way are merely a beating about the bush, and profitless trifling, although a person should have very high contemplation and communication with God.

Do not lend your ear to the tongue of the slanderer, nor your tongue to the ear of him who likes malicious talk, speaking or listening with enjoyment to words against one's neighbor. Cut yourself off from them, lest you fall away from love of God and find yourself exiled from eternal life.

Should you accuse and condemn yourself before God for the sins on your conscience, you will be justified for doing so.

How much joy, how much peace of soul would a man not have wherever he went... if he was one who habitually accused himself.

O, you souls who wish to go on with so much safety and consolation, if you knew how pleasing to God is suffering, and how much it helps in acquiring other good things, you would never seek consolation in anything; but you would rather look upon it as a great happiness to bear the Cross of the Lord.

A sorrowless earthly life is a true sign that the Lord has turned his face from a man, and that he is displeasing to God, even though outwardly he may seem reverent and virtuous.

When can someone understand human suffering? When he also suffers. When he goes through the same, he learns and understands the other person's suffering. Otherwise, he is callous and is not grieved, unless he happens to have a good nature. But all natural attributes merit neither honor nor dishonor; achievements and falls depend on our own free will.

It is better to eat meat and drink wine and not to eat the flesh of one's brethren through slander.

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

He who smells the smell of one's own foul odor doesn't smell the foul odor of anyone else.

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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.

If you are not willing to repent through freely choosing to suffer, unsought sufferings will providentially be imposed on you.

Who has conquered the body? He who has made the heart contrite. Who then has made the heart contrite? He who has denied himself.

There is yet another reason that may cause our prayer to go unanswered: namely, that though we pray we yet continue in sin.

If a man has a friend and he is absolutely certain that his friend loves him, and if that friend does something to cause him suffering and be troublesome to him, he will be convinced that his friend acts out of love and he will never believe that his friend does it to harm him. How much more ought we to be convinced about God who created us, who drew us out of nothingness to existence and life, and who became a man for our sake and died for us, and who does everything out of love for us?

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

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440-526-5192 (Phone)