SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: FORGIVENESS

  • 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. Mini 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

  • 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