This was precisely St. Thérèse’s insight: It is easier to love people in the abstract than to tolerate the person at your table, the one who makes funny noises when she eats or who scrapes his knife on the plate in an annoying way. It is such trials that refine our capacity for love. For we learn forgiveness only when there is something to forgive; we learn patience when our patience is sorely tested.
The Saint’s Guide to Happiness
Robert Ellsberg
Author: SO GOOD QUOTES
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“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
―C.S. Lewis,The Weight of Glory -
For the humble, the severity of the offense and the existence of an apology are extraneous factors in terms of one’s willingness to forgive. This new perspective on forgiveness offers freedom (a favorite theme of Dostoevsky) in that the one offended has the power to forgive in each and every circumstance and is not constrained by such factors as the severity of the offense or the presence of an apology. It is a freedom based on knowing who we are, what God has done for us, and what we desire to give Him in return. Always aware of the ten thousand talents that we owe God, always aware that He has forgiven us with His grace and loving kindness, always aware that all of us will stand together one day before our Maker, we come to understand what ultimately matters is not so much what was said to us or done to us, but our faithfulness to Christ’s love, our imitation of His forgiveness, and our humility before the weaknesses of others.
Fr. Alexis (Trader)
Less Injustice or More Humility: Two Perspectives on Forgiveness -
If this marriage is agreeable to Him, your eagerness will increase after prayer.
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And beware you do not blindly insist that things must work out according to what you consider to be right and good. God sometimes does permit such blind insistence to be followed by the fulfilment of our ardent desires. This always leads to misery and disaster (intended to open our eyes on our folly), and happens particularly often when our desires are founded on wild passions.
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Make a rule never to speak to any one but your confessor either of your illusions or of your temptations.
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If He intends that you should be this man’s wife all hindrance will be overcome, and marry him you will. But if God does not wish it, no matter how you plan and strive for it, will be of no avail.
And beware you do not blindly insist that things must work out according to what you consider to be right and good. God sometimes does permit such blind insistence to be followed by the fulfilment of our ardent desires. This always leads to misery and disaster (intended to open our eyes on our folly), and happens particularly often when our desires are founded on wild passions.
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How do you how do you hear God’s voice? Because I think that’s a very key part, like knowing and discerning the voice of God versus, you know, the voice of you know, the devil or the voice of men. Like, how do you discern the voice of God, and how do you act accordingly, knowing that this is what God wants.
The more serious the decision and or the issue, the more clear God will make his voice. And it won’t always come from just one source. I feel it comes from a number of sources. As I said earlier, I also don’t like to make either natural decisions, and so I hear God’s voice through consultation, through deliberation, through thought process, through prayer, of course, that underpins all of that. So yes, a lot of people around me, young and old, adults and children, I feel that they culminate into how I hear God’s voice.
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Try to make sure that nothing you do in life is not something that can’t be sanctified. Don’t do things that cannot be blessed by God.
—Archbishop Angaelos -
“I’m like, this is really cool that I’m allowed [the Antonians]– I feel in this pursuit of godliness to link it – we’re in this pursuit of becoming holy, and we also have a distinct personality, and this is okay, right? The whole be yourself, don’t sin, the very Antonian He who knows himself knows God. Have your character and don’t do wrong with it. And so even in the stories that included wrong, there’s still a sense of you’re allowed to be your own personality.
Abouna Angaelos was a trouble-maker. Those people have the image of the elder Abouna Angaelos in the late days sitting in a chair advising, praying, blessing, healing, all these things, but that was after decades of this. He wound up there and increased in faithfulness, and God increased him.
But it was a sense of I’m allowed to be me growing. I’m going to make mistakes. I shouldn’t want to make mistakes or make mistakes on purpose, but I’m going to, And am I going to be healed? Am I getting instruction?
Because when they tell these stories, there’s a message behind it, and it taught me this and my eyes became open to this. How can I not pursue this? How can I having tasted health want to be sick? How having tasted God can I desire to be a sinner? I am a sinner. How can I want that if I have tasted God?”
—Fr. Antony Paul
SO GOOD QUOTES 