Try to be more attentive to yourself instead of judging the actions, behavior, and attitude of others towards you; if you do not see love in them, it is because you yourself have no love within you.”
—Elder Leo of Optina
Category: JUDGMENT
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This [same] description may be applied to departments and organizations. Someone might go to a [new] church, and after frequenting it for several months, he would say, “This church is bad and I will not go to it again. Its service is bad, there is no orderliness in it, but even everything in it is bad.” Then he looks for another church, and classifies it as bad too. In the end, he separates himself from every church, because he will not find a perfect church on earth. Every church has flaws and weaknesses.
I read once a saying of an author, which included the following: “There is no perfect church, devoid of weaknesses and deficiencies, in this world. And if it so happened that we find a perfect church with no flaws in it, I advise that you should not go to it, because you are an imperfect person, and none of us is perfect; therefore, as soon as you enter it, this church will be imperfect, because of the presence of an imperfect person in it—that is, you.”
And we sometimes isolate ourselves from others, whom we have characterized as evil, or we isolate [ourselves] from church. Or perhaps a person may isolate himself from his job, when he is doing a work he does not like, and so he submits his resignation and looks for another job, and so he moves from work to work, and everywhere he goes he finds flaws only. Therefore, he keeps on saying that he has not found people who love him, and there is no fairness in this work, etc. And this person continues to search for perfection, and will not find it, for there is no absolute perfection on earth.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
Many of us come to Orthodoxy having read good books about great spiritual athletes and it is easy to form romanticised expectations about what the clergy should be like. If we come to church with unrealistic ideas the devil may use them to disappoint us and convince us that things aren’t good enough and that we should look elsewhere. We must remember that the demons will do everything in their power to prevent us from becoming part of Christ’s Church and our own lack of discernment can be a dangerous pitfall. The grace of the priesthood is a real and wonderful blessing, but it is given to men of flesh and blood. The devil will delight in telling us how unworthy the priest is: but rest assured, the priest is only too aware of his own unworthiness.
A certain monk lived in a monastery, and he was always angry. He decided, “I will leave this place and dwell by myself as a hermit, and then I will no relations with anyone, and the passion of anger will leave me.” Leaving the monastery, he settled in a cave. One day, having taken up a pitcher of water, the monk set it one the ground, and it tipped over. Again he drew the water, and the pitcher tipped a second time. The he drew it again, and it fell a third time. The brother got angry, picked it up and broke it. When he had come to himself, he understood that the devil had triumphed over him and said, “Behold, I have gone away into seclusion, and I am conquered! I will go back to the monastery, for patience and the help of God are necessary everywhere!” And he returned to his previous place.
—Ancient Patericon -
Evagrios considered those who spoke badly of him as benefactors.
Humility – An Antidote to Loneliness
The Community of the Desert and the Loneliness of the Cities -
There is an inner calm that even others can see and is somehow tied to an abiding empathy and respect even for those who do not wish us well.
—Henri Nouwen, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation -
“Only through shame can you be freed from shame.”
—St. John Climacus -
The second remedy is really and truly to believe in the forgiveness of sins. A great deal of our anxiety to make excuses comes from not really believing in it, from thinking that God will not take us to Himself again unless He is satisfied that some sort of case can be made out in our favour. But that would not be forgiveness at all. Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it.
—C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory -
He bore guilt and shame so that you can be free. That even when the devil wants to beat you up into your guilt and make you feel defeated of sins that I have confessed, of sins that I have repented and the devil is telling me, “No, don’t think that it just goes away that easy” yes it does, by the blood of Jesus. That when the devil tells you, “Don’t forget what you did last week or last year or when you were a teenager; don’t forget that”, you say, “I don’t know who you are talking about. I died with Christ. It is no longer me. You are no longer talking to me, i am not that person. And even if i were to look for him, i would never be able to find him because i am new in Christ because he died on the cross. The cross breaks the chain of our emotional bondness.
—Fr. Paul Girguis -
If we hide the faults of our brother, God will also hide our faults. If we expose our brothers’ faults, God will also expose ours.
—Abba Poemen -
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
SO GOOD QUOTES 