Category: FORGIVENESS & REPENTANCE

  • Considering all these things then, and counting the recompense which is given in this case and remembering that to wipe away sins does not entail much labor and zeal, let us pardon those who have wronged us. For that which others scarcely accomplish, I mean the blotting out of their own sins by means of fasting and lamentations and prayers and sackcloth and ash-es, this it is possible for us easily to effect without sackcloth and ashes and fasting if only we blot out anger from our heart, and with sincerity forgive those who have wronged us.

    —Saint John Chrysostom
    HOMILY FIVE, On the power of prayer and forgiveness

  • If someone says something harsh to you, pretend that you did not hear it and that he didn’t mean it. Take it with gentleness, laugh, turn it into something funny, don’t turn it into something serious. You can’t win people with absolute seriousness, you can’t… Christ the Lord endured all our sins.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda Ill

  • For if you are reconciled here, you are delivered from judgment in the other world; but if in the interval while the hatred is still going on, death interrupting steps in and carries the enmity away with it, it follows of necessity that the trial of the case should be brought forward in the other world. Just as many men when they have a dispute with one another, if they come to a friendly understanding together outside the law court save themselves loss and alarm and many risks—the issue of the case turning out in accordance with the sentiment of each party—but if they severally entrust the affair to the judge the only result to them will be loss of money, and in many cases a penalty and the permanent endurance of their hatred; even so here if we come to terms during our present life we shall relieve ourselves from all punishment.

    Saint John Chrysostom
    If Thine Enemy Hunger, Feed Him
    Homilies on Profitable Subjects

  • Sometimes the devil tries to make me feel I am my thoughts or my desires—”you have committed this sin and…” It’s not true.

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri

  • One of the saints said, “Those who come closest to Christ achieve the greatest victories.” What does that mean? It means that if you’re generous, and kind, you’re giving, you might overcome anger inside your heart, you might overcome resentment, hatred, lack of forgiveness inside your heart.

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri

  • He who has forgiven little, loves little. And he who has forgiven much, loves much. For love is born of forgiveness, and forgiveness is the remission of sins. Therefore, the more we forgive, the more we love; and the more we love, the more we are forgiven.

    —St John Climacus

  • What if God was like, “I forgive you, but I want nothing to do with you?” Is that how it works with us?

    —Fr. Elijah Estafanous

  • 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

  • You hurt because you care. Therefore, the best response to pain is to dive deeper into your caring. Which is exactly the opposite of what most of us want to do. We want to avoid pain: to ward off the bitter by not caring quite so much about the sweet.

    —Susan Cain, Bittersweet

  • As for the one who is self-centred, he never knows love as it should be. And if he does love, his love would not be capable of enduring as it should be. Bear the faults of others as God bears your faults. Bear, but not in distress and bitterness of heart but in love, feeling that everyone has his own weaknesses. Maybe he also has his own excuses that you do not know.

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