Category: FORGIVENESS & REPENTANCE

  • Abba Paphnutius, the disciple of Abba Macarius [the city-dweller], said that the elder used to say: “When I was a child, I and the other children used to pasture cattle and they went off to steal some figs. One [fig] fell as they were running along: I took it and ate it and, when I recall that, I sit weeping.”

    Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers

  • “Why hate the person who grieved you? It is the devil, not he, who grieved you. Hate the illness, not the person who is ill.”

    —Amma Syncletica

  • “We take others to task for small mistakes, and overlook greater ones in ourselves.”

    —Thomas à Kempis

  • If your brother does not wish to live peaceably with you, nevertheless guard yourself against hatred, praying for him sincerely and not abusing him to anybody.

    —St Maximos the Confessor

  • “It is shameful for the gnostic to be involved in a lawsuit, whether as plaintiff or defendant: if as plaintiff, [it is shameful] because he will not have endured patiently; if as defendant, because he will have acted unjustly.”

    —Evagrius Ponticus

  • We are quick enough to feel and brood over the things we suffer from others, but we think nothing of how much others suffer from us.

    —Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

  • And therefore God, the Creator of all, caring above everything for the restoration of His handiwork, and knowing that the root and cause of offenses lie not in others but in our own selves, has bade us not to separate ourselves from consort with the brethren, nor to avoid those whom we think that we have injured or that they have injured us, but rather to soothe their feelings, knowing that a perfect heart is acquired, not by drawing apart from men, but by the virtue of patience. This virtue, when it is firmly held, will make us to hold to the love of peace even with them that hate peace, and when we possess it not, our lack thereof makes us constantly at enmity with those who may be perfect and higher in virtue than we. For it needs must be that, in the course of human intercourse, occasions of perturbation will arise which will make us hurry to quit the company of those to whom we are bound, and for this reason, when we leave one set of companions for another, we are not ridding ourselves of causes of sadness, but only changing them.

    +St. John Cassian, Selected Writings of St. John Cassian the Roman

  • “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”

    —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

  • “Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day’s chalking.”

    —Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace

  • We want to keep ourselves from putting blame for our misfortune on anybody else, no matter how obviously it may appear to be the fault of another person. Misfortune is meant to give us a bigger purpose than looking for someone to blame. It is to draw our attention to God and our need for God-to bring us to repentance.

    God’s Path to Sanity
    Dee Pennock