“It is good that you do not sin. If you do sin, then it is good that you do not delay repentance. If you repent, then it is good that you do not return to sin. If you do not return, then it is good that you know this is with God’s help. If you know, then it is good that you thank Him for the state that you are in.”
—St. Basil the Great
Category: FORGIVENESS
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The greatest source of tears which the saints, the desert ascetics, used is weeping for sins. It is a source out of which abundant tears spring forth, for everyone who offers a true repentance with all their heart, feeling sorry for their sins, which caused all these sufferings to their compassionate Redeemer, portraying His wound before them and His open side by the spear of their sins. Therefore, you can do nothing but weep and shed tears.
They are the tears of regret for the lost time in entertainment and the false happiness in the vain pleasures of the world.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Pray
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Sometimes we ask, “Why is he treating me in this manner? Why this injustice?” This question itself is wrong. It will produce within us some kind of anger and intolerance. Therefore, we, as children of God, must program ourselves to endure injustice because of conscience toward God.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Endure Injustice
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What does “enduring because of conscience toward God” mean? While you can talk back politely to the one speaking with you, or you can answer “eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,” or you can ignore them completely and not answer them, or any other kind of reaction, here however he is saying to you: “For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully” Then he continues, saying, “For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently?” That is to say, if I did something wrong, and then someone yelled at me, and I remain silent and endure it, here I deserve it because I had done something wrong. Then he goes on to say, “But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God,” meaning that, if I am walking uprightly, and then someone rebukes me or yells at me, and I take it patiently, this is commendable before God.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Endure Injustice
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To help you grow in enduring others, you should find excuses for them. And when I say, “find excuses,” I am speaking about finding real excuses. Like the Lord on the cross, He said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do,” which was a real excuse. They did not know that He is the Messiah, the Son of God. When you find excuses for others, this will help you to endure them.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Endure Injustice
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“If we only could realize that there is no evil in a person that is not at the same time a suffering in this person.”
— Met. Anthony Bloom -
If you want to change and eliminate the problems which you have encountered because of your upbringing, enter into a loving relationship with God and others [in your life], and these problems will be resolved. When I learn how to love God, and train myself to love my brother, I will change and become conformed to the image of His Son.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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If you are suffering from a trial, which you are going through because of [your] upbringing and education, and if you endure this suffering with your true self and you expose it to the light of the grace of Christ, then Scripture says to you, “That you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”(James 1:4) The following will take place: your true self will grow and become complete and lacking nothing, through this suffering.
As for the grumbling soul, which is not joyful, but is always complaining about its upbringing in such a home, it will neither grow nor be healed.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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Being a human means accepting promises from other people and trusting that other people will be good to you. When that is too much to bear, it is always possible to retreat into the thought, “I’ll live for my own comfort, for my own revenge, for my own anger, and I just won’t be a member of society anymore.” That really means, “I won’t be a human being anymore.”
You see people doing that today where they feel that society has let them down, and they can’t ask anything of it, and they can’t put their hopes on anything outside themselves. You see them actually retreating to a life in which they think only of their own satisfaction, and maybe the satisfaction of their revenge against society. But the life that no longer trusts another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on How to Live with Our Human Fragility
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I’ve seen lives changed on the sick bed, monsters turn into babies on the sick bed—monsters—people that no one can talk to, and they’re babies, holding the hands of their loved ones, saying, “Forgive me, I know I was difficult. I’m sorry—you endured a lot from me. I caused you a lot of pain, and I was a monster, and I was a terrible person, and I hope God can forgive me.”
—Fr. Paul Girguis
SO GOOD QUOTES 