Category: ANGER

  • We make a lot of contradicting statements that do not logically make sense. “I love everybody, but I don’t want to talk to this person.”

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri

  • Is your love for friends and favoured ones also firm? Or could any specific event make your heart change towards a love that you had for many years? That is what sometimes happens in a family which makes it collapse and separate after many years. It fails to hold fast against the water, even if it is not many waters.

    Does your love change because of a word that did not please your ears? Or a behaviour that annoyed you? Or the effect of others on you? Or for external circumstances, or financial reasons? Then the words of the Bible echo in your ears, “nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” (Rev. 2:4).

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. IV

  • You might find comfort in releasing what is inside you through criticism; then you hurt the feelings of others. But the noble one would not do this.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. IV

  • If you’re angry at somebody, if you’re bitter at somebody, prayer is the first step. Something mystical happens in prayer: the person you’re angry at, the person you’re annoyed at, when you start praying for them, God melts your heart. If you’re consistently praying for that person, when you approach that person, your demeanor is different, your mentality is different, you’re not looking at that person the same way.

    —Fr. Timothy

  • One of his brother monks offended him very deeply so that he came and said to me: “Should I go and tell him off?!”

    So I said to him, “If his conscience is alive he will come of his
    own accord to apologise to you. Otherwise there is no use in
    telling him off. It will probably make this end up worse.

    However, if he is really ignorant of the seriousness of what he
    has done, it would be better for a third party to intercede
    between you in this matter, to explain to him the extent of his offence.

    Whatever the case, it is better for you to wait, and who knows, you might be lucky enough to forget him and forget his offence!”

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • If you are faithful in loving your relative, God will set you over loving the enemy. He will give you the grace which enables you to love your enemy.

    —Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. 1

  • To Abba Pambo, who asked him, “What ought I to do?”  the old man said: “Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.”

    The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
    Henri Nouwen

  • “If you do good to one person, you may be wronged by another and so feel injured, and say or do something stupid, thus dissipating by your bad action what you gained by your good action. This is just what the demons want; so always be attentive.”

    —Evagrios the Solitary

  • 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.

    Letters of Elder Macarius of Optina

  • After a careful study of your disposition, which life has encouraged you to undertake, you have at last come to see that you have never loved; nor do you know or understand anything about love.

    Letters of Elder Macarius of Optina