Love is the solution to every problem, the motive for all good.
—Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert
Category: BEST OF
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As I began to work on getting my own life back on track, I relegated time with my mother to every other Sunday and holidays, holding her (and our relationship) at arm’s length. What seemed at the time to be self-care and boundaries was also a mixture of avoidance and burden—but I didn’t truly know this until a Tuesday afternoon one day in November.
She’d called me the night before and I’d ignored it; she was lonely and called me a lot, and I’d decided that I couldn’t always stop what I was doing to answer. But the next day I got a call at work from my brother, telling me to come home at once. When I got there I found that she’d died in her sleep the night before.
I checked the voicemail that she’d left me. In it she’d asked me to come over and see a movie with her.
The guilt caved me in.
The following weeks and months were a blur. I was beside myself with grief, regret, and the illogical thinking that can come with loss: Maybe if I’d come over that night she wouldn’t have died. Maybe if I’d been around more, called more, or been a better daughter, maybe that would have changed things.
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Sometimes when we have been overcome by pride or impatience, and we want to improve our rough and bearish manners, we complain that we require solitude, as if we should find the virtue of patience there where nobody provokes us: and we apologize for our carelessness, and say that the reason of our disturbance does not spring from our own impatience, but from the fault of our brethren. And while we lay the blame of our fault on others, we shall never be able to reach the goal of patience and perfection.
—St. John Cassian, Institutes, Book VIII, Chapter XVI. Of the Spirit of Anger. -
“If you avoid crowds and turn your back on the world, be prepared to act as though you are the one who is making a mistake.”
—unknown hermit -
No one tells you anything? No one communicates anything to you? Bless the Lord! He prevents your interior from cluttering, and covers problems. Love with gratitude those carry your worries for you. Aid them with your smiling docility. Accept your “carefree state.“ God has established you in solitude, he himself to be your sole worry. It is His will that He be the only bread of your soul. Do not consent to strain your ears, not even to the “gossip” of the community. Only pray for those who are in difficulty; exhort them, if the opportunity presents itself, to love the cross of Christ. Human consolations do nothing but weaken souls. Do not easily speak or receive things in confidence. Do you think that someone else will understand better than Jesus?
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Enter into your entertainments only as you are asked to do so. Be friendly, but do not seek out invitations. Those who watch you, at least the reasonable ones, will be happy to see you sociable enough to join them, but be careful enough to not always be found entertaining yourself. When you do appear at these entertainments, do so in a godly manner. The world is critical of people who condemn its ways while living by its rules.
—François Fénelon, The Seeking Heart -
Most psychological problems, including the difficult ones like addiction, may be eliminated through relationships.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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This [same] description may be applied to departments and organizations. Someone might go to a [new] church, and after frequenting it for several months, he would say, “This church is bad and I will not go to it again. Its service is bad, there is no orderliness in it, but even everything in it is bad.” Then he looks for another church, and classifies it as bad too. In the end, he separates himself from every church, because he will not find a perfect church on earth. Every church has flaws and weaknesses.
I read once a saying of an author, which included the following: “There is no perfect church, devoid of weaknesses and deficiencies, in this world. And if it so happened that we find a perfect church with no flaws in it, I advise that you should not go to it, because you are an imperfect person, and none of us is perfect; therefore, as soon as you enter it, this church will be imperfect, because of the presence of an imperfect person in it—that is, you.”
And we sometimes isolate ourselves from others, whom we have characterized as evil, or we isolate [ourselves] from church. Or perhaps a person may isolate himself from his job, when he is doing a work he does not like, and so he submits his resignation and looks for another job, and so he moves from work to work, and everywhere he goes he finds flaws only. Therefore, he keeps on saying that he has not found people who love him, and there is no fairness in this work, etc. And this person continues to search for perfection, and will not find it, for there is no absolute perfection on earth.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
Many of us come to Orthodoxy having read good books about great spiritual athletes and it is easy to form romanticised expectations about what the clergy should be like. If we come to church with unrealistic ideas the devil may use them to disappoint us and convince us that things aren’t good enough and that we should look elsewhere. We must remember that the demons will do everything in their power to prevent us from becoming part of Christ’s Church and our own lack of discernment can be a dangerous pitfall. The grace of the priesthood is a real and wonderful blessing, but it is given to men of flesh and blood. The devil will delight in telling us how unworthy the priest is: but rest assured, the priest is only too aware of his own unworthiness.
A certain monk lived in a monastery, and he was always angry. He decided, “I will leave this place and dwell by myself as a hermit, and then I will no relations with anyone, and the passion of anger will leave me.” Leaving the monastery, he settled in a cave. One day, having taken up a pitcher of water, the monk set it one the ground, and it tipped over. Again he drew the water, and the pitcher tipped a second time. The he drew it again, and it fell a third time. The brother got angry, picked it up and broke it. When he had come to himself, he understood that the devil had triumphed over him and said, “Behold, I have gone away into seclusion, and I am conquered! I will go back to the monastery, for patience and the help of God are necessary everywhere!” And he returned to his previous place.
—Ancient Patericon -
“As you approach the truth, your solitude will increase.”
—Michel Houellebecq, TO STAY ALIVE
SO GOOD QUOTES 