Category: JUDGMENT

  • 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

  • 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