A lot of times, we think there is a problem in my life because of this or that. We rarely think that it’s my sins that are causing a problem.
It’s not my coworker, it’s not my life situation, it’s not my illness, not my family situation, or anything else; it’s my sins. My sins are making me incapable of dealing with this problem in a way that a true christian would deal with it. No matter your problems, no matter whose fault it is, it’s also always your fault. That’s the way a Christian thinks.
—Fr. Seraphim Holland
Category: ANGER
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Everything, the merest trifles, even the smoke of a candle blowing on him, irritates and angers the impatient man, because he is very self-loving, and cares much for the welfare and comfort of his carnal man, which he ought oftener to crucify in different ways.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ -
These angers are crippling, like a fit when they happen, and then, when they are over, haunting me with remorse. Those who know me well and love me have come to accept them as part of me; yet I know they are unacceptable.
—May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude -
What we gain from fasting does not compensate for what we lose through anger. Our profit from scriptural reading in no way equals the damage we cause ourselves by showing contempt for a brother. We must practice fasting, vigils, withdrawal, and the meditation of Scripture as activities which are subordinate to our main objective, purity of heart, that is to say, love, and we must never disturb this principal virtue for the sake of those others. If this virtue remains whole and unharmed within us nothing can injure us, not even if we are forced to omit any of those other subordinate virtues. Nor will it be of any use to have practiced all these latter if there is missing in us that principal objective for the sake of which all else is undertaken.
—St. John Cassian (Conferences, Conf. One sect. 7; Paulist Press pg. 42)
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“Anger is vanquished by renouncing our desires and our own will.”
—Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica -
“I have never seen anyone corrected through anger, but always through love.”
—Elder Joseph the Hesychast -
When I was ill and I did not give up my anger towards my brother, I saw that the angels were withdrawing from me and were crying over the death of my soul and that the demons were rejoicing at my anger. That is why I asked you to go to the brother and implore him for his forgiveness for me. When you brought him to me, and I bowed before him and he turned away from me, I saw an angel who was holding a fiery spear and who struck the unforgiving one with it. Immediately, he fell dead. But to me the same angel gave his hand and helped me up, and here I am healthy again.”
How often in life it happens that embittered and irreconciled Christians suddenly leave this world and set out for the kingdom of eternity with anger in their souls! What pardon can they expect from God if they themselves have not forgiven those who have sinned against them?! It is terrible to live irreconciled, but it is even worse to die irreconciled! Bitterness and strife make the soul unfit to bear divine grace, and thus they destroy it.
The Meaning of Suffering and Strife & Reconciliations
Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev -
You seem unduly distressed about your relations’ disapproval of your actions. Why this great agitation? Since in all conscience you are certain of not being responsible for their hostile attitude to you, and since you are sure you have done nothing to induce them to feel or think as they do, be at peace. Be at peace and pray for them. We cannot persuade all that our actions are right, our motives pure. Everyone has his own way of approaching life, his own ideas on most things.
SO GOOD QUOTES 