Category: JUDGMENT

  • 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

  • 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

  • The tax collector who was able to say, “me a sinner!” (Lk. 18:13) deserved to come out of the Temple justified, contrary to the Pharisee who found nothing for which to blame himself, and so said, “God, I thank You that I am not like other men: extortioners, unjust, adulterers” (Lk.18:11).

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Before the Just Judge

  • “To grieve excessively over one’s sins and to become despondent is a sign not of humility, but of pride. We must feel contrition and regret for offending the Lord with our sins, ask His pardon and try not to repeat them.

    — Abbot Nikon Vorobiev 

    “But do not be troubled or sad. The Lord sometimes allows people who are devoted to Him to fall into such dreadful vices; and this is in order to prevent them from falling into a still greater sin–pride. Your temptation will pass and you will spend the remaining days of your life in humility. Only do not forget your sin.”

    — St. Seraphim of Sarov

    How could I fall into something like that? How could I hurt God’s loving heart? How could I disloyally betray God who has done me good all my life? How could I defile the heart that has been cleansed in baptism and which Christ cleansed by His Blood? How? How could I fall from the high tower in which I was? How could I, a son of God, live as the children of the world and as a defilement of the whole earth? How could I anger God’s heart? How could I grieve the Holy Spirit who dwells in me? How could I defile myself and make myself unclean? How? Indeed the sin has been forgiven, but how could I have done that?

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Before the Just Judge

    It is wrong to regard as a virtue the excessive grief, which men feel after committing a sin, not realising that it is caused by pride and a high opinion of themselves, based on the fact that they rely too much on themselves and their own powers. For by thinking that they are something important they undertake too much, hoping to deal with it by themselves. When the experience of their downfall shows them how weak they are, they are astounded, like people, who meet with something unexpected, and they are cast into turmoil and grow faint-hearted. For they see, fallen and prone on the ground, that graven image which is themselves, upon which they put all their hopes and expectations. This does not happen to a humble man who trusts in God alone, expecting nothing good from himself. Therefore, when he falls into some transgression, he also feels the weight of it and grieves) but is not cast into turmoil and is not perplexed, for he knows that it happened through his own impotence, to experience which in downfalls is nothing unexpected or new to him.

    —Lorenzo Scupoli, Unseen Warfare

    Sometimes we hear many people say the following statement: “I have confessed, and the priest read the absolution and said to me, ‘That is it, God is not upset with you,’ but I am not able to forgive myself.” The statement,

    “I am not able to forgive myself,” means that the ideal self is pressuring the true self, saying to it,

    “Even if God forgave you, I will not forgive you.” And so, the person is tormented because he cannot forgive himself. He cannot actually accept the gift of remission and forgiveness from the hand of God, because the ideal self says to the true self that it is not worthy of forgiveness and remission. And the struggle continues, because the ideal self continually attacks the true self. But if it [i.e. the ideal self] accepts it with its weakness and helplessness, then remission is offered it from the hand of Christ, and through the Holy Mysteries, on the basis of them being a healing and growth for the soul, so the true self grows from glory to glory, till it becomes conformed to the image of His Son.

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

    When a man once truly repents, he needs to avoid thinking about the sins he committed, so that he will not sin again. St. Anthony counsels: “Be careful that your mind be not defiled with the remembrance of former sins-that the remembrance of those sins not be renewed in you.” He also says: “Do not establish your previously committed sins in your soul by thinking about them, so that they not be repeated in you. Be assured that they were forgiven you from the time that you gave yourself to God and to repentance. In that, do not doubt.” It is said of St. Ammon that he attained such perfection that, in his abundance of godliness, he no longer recognized that evil even existed. When they asked him what is that “narrow and difficult path,” he replied: “It is the restraining of one’s thoughts, and the severing of one’s desires, in order to fulfill the will of God.” Whoever restrains sinful thoughts does not think of his own sin or the sins of others, or of anything corruptible or earthly. The mind of such a man is continually in heaven, where there is no evil. Thus, sin gradually ceases to be in him-not even in his thoughts.

    —The Prologue of Ohrid by Saint Nikolai Velimirovic

    If remembering your sins stops you from loving yourself, know that this is from Satan and not God. Because once you’ve repented and confessed, your sins are forgiven, and you’re as good as new, as we read in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new cre-ation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

    —Lilyan Andrews, Waiting & Dating