If you fall into some transgression, quickly turn to the realisation of your weakness and be aware of it. For God allows you to fall for the very purpose of making you more aware of your weakness, so that you may thus not only yourself learn to despise yourself, but because of your great weakness may wish to be despised also by others. Know that without such desire it is impossible for this beneficent self-disbelief to be born and take root in you. This is the foundation and beginning of true humility, since it is based on realisation, by experience, of your impotence and unreliability.
From this, each of us sees how necessary it is for a man, who desires to participate in heavenly light, to know himself, and how God’s mercy usually leads the proud and self-reliant to this knowledge through their downfalls, justly allowing them to fall into the very sin from which they think they are strong enough to protect themselves, so as to make them see their weakness and prevent them from relying foolhardily on themselves either in this or in anything else.
Unseen Warfare
Lorenzo Scupoli
Category: JUDGMENT
-
-
You must remember that you are a sinner. Always have that knowledge when you evaluate anyone else. I’m a sinner, they’re a sinner. Who am I to say my sin is better than theirs?
—Fr. Seraphim Holland -
How many good servants are rejected because people look only to what is not normal of them?
—Fr. Antony Paul -
Saints of God, he says, may be found sitting in the theatres, apparently looking on at the performance, while their hearts are holding intercourse with God. It is part of Christian perfection to pass no judgment upon those who remain in the world, not even upon those whose lives are notoriously bad.
Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian Introduction
-
She also said, ‘In the world, if we commit an offence, even an involuntary one, we are thrown into prison; let us likewise cast ourselves into prison because of our sins, so that voluntary remembrance may anticipate the punishment that is to come.’
-
You might look at someone and judge them — maybe they’re living a sinful life, maybe they’re struggling with a sin that brings more shame than others — and you’re judging them without discernment knowing that if you lived a day in this person’s life, you would never be able to fight the sin that they’re fighting with daily.
—Fr. Paul Girguis -
Respect the opinion of the person with whom you speak, however much you disagree with it.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, A Whisper of Love: Poems, Prayers and Sayings -
The moral qualities of the individual beggar have nothing to do with it; that is Christ’s concern, not yours. Who are you to judge your brother? Christ is using his hand and mouth to test your compassion of Himself. Will you fail Him?
-
You seem unduly distressed about your relations’ disapproval of your actions. Why this great agitation? Since in all conscience you are certain of not being responsible for their hostile attitude to you, and since you are sure you have done nothing to induce them to feel or think as they do, be at peace. Be at peace and pray for them. We cannot persuade all that our actions are right, our motives pure. Everyone has his own way of approaching life, his own ideas on most things.
