Category: FRIENDSHIP

  • “For I have often seen people who had offended God and were not in the least perturbed about it. And I have seen how those same people provoked their friends in some trifling matter and then employed every artifice, every device, every sacrifice, every apology, both personally and through friends and relatives, not sparing gifts, in order to regain their former love.”

    — St. John Climacus

  • It says in Proverbs, “He who covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends.”(Proverbs 17:9) If I learn that my brother has sinned, and I accept him and cover his sin, then I am seeking love, but if I begin speaking about his sin, and continue talking about him, I separate people.

    “We should not snoop on people, and places, to discover others’ sins. If the sins of others were presented to us, being forced upon us, we should not examine them nor turn to them.”

    —Abba Pimen the Solitary—

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • We have no need or right to run hither and thither to ask our friends what we ought to do…Every one says we must do something; and indeed things seem to have reached so desperate a pitch that we must…It is not easy at such times to stand still…but we must.

    The Gift of Suffering
    by F.B. Meyers