SO GOOD QUOTES

Category: JUDGMENT

  • The almsgiver is a harbor for those in necessity: a harbor receives all who have encountered shipwreck, and frees them from danger; whether they are bad or good or whatever they are who are in danger, it escorts them into its own shelter. So you likewise, when you see on earth the man who has encountered the shipwreck of poverty, do not judge him, do not seek an account of his life, but free him from his misfortune. God has excused you from all officiousness and meddlesomeness… . A judge is one thing, an almsgiver is another.

    —St. John Chrysostom, On Wealth and Poverty

  • Is it less grave to steal silver than gold, because silver is less valuable than gold? From the point of view of the victim, the loss of silver is less grave. But for the perpetration of the crime, there is no difference.

    On Living Simply
    St. John Chrysostom

  • “We can find something edifying in everybody’s life. Even the worst thief has something good in him.”

    —Elder Thaddeus of Serbia

  • And once I begin to realize that my own life is a life full of compromise, a life full of little steps toward the Kingdom of Heaven (a calling that I fall so miserable short of), then I will start to have compassion on others. You know, there are some sins I have never tempted with. Drunkenness, for example, has never been a temptation to me. There are some commands of Christ that are less difficult for me to fulfil than others—mostly, it seems, because I am seldom seriously tested in those areas. And, surprise, surprise, it seems that the sins that are not struggles for me are the very sins that I find most offensive in others. The commandments that are least difficult for me to understand and strive to keep are the very ones that cause the most offence in me when others do not seem to keep them. I find this phenomenon quite predictable, at least in myself.

    But when I keep myself aware of the many and great compromises in my life, the great distance between the life I actually live and the life in the Kingdom of Heaven I strive to enter, then it is easier for me to have compassion on others. When I realize that there are whole swaths of disobedience to Christ’s commands in my life, whole areas where the teaching of Christ has made little or no impact, then it is easier for me to be compassionate on the blindness of others.

    Your Kingdom Come: Look To The Monastics
    Fr. Michael Gillis

  • “Our starting point is always wrong. Instead of beginning with ourselves, we always want to change others first and ourselves last. If everyone were to begin first with themselves, then there would be peace all around!”

    —Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives

  • “Although one can be supported, comforted, and helped throughout one’s life, the step of death itself, the moment of death, well that has to be taken all alone.”

    The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
    Cardinal Robert Sarah, Nicolas Diat

  • If the Lord delays granting you full victory over your enemies and puts it off to the last day of your life, you must know that He does this for your own good; so long as you do not retreat or cease to struggle wholeheartedly. Even if you are wounded in battle, do not lay down your arms and turn to flight. Keep only one thing in your mind and intention—to fight with all courage and ardour, since it is unavoidable. No man can escape this warfare, either in life or in death. And he who does not fight to overcome his passions and his enemies will inevitably be taken prisoner, either here or yonder, and delivered to death.

    Unseen Warfare
    Lorenzo Scupoli

  • Hold your approaching death and the Judgment constantly in your mind, and you will preserve your soul from sin.

    —Abba Evagrius

  • “If you want to find rest in this life and the next, say at every moment, ‘Who am I?’ and judge no one.”  

    —Abba Poemen

  • What vanities, what foolish fancies often occupy most of us, even in sight of the highest, the most important objects of faith, in sight of the greatest holiness. For instance, when a man stands before the icons of the Lord, of the Mother of God, of an Angel, of an Archangel, of one or a whole assembly of Saints, at home or in the temple, and, sometimes, instead of prayer, instead of laying aside, at this time, in this place, all worldly cares, he casts up his accounts and reckonings, goes over his expenses and receipts, rejoices at the gain, and grieves at the loss of profits, or the failure of some undertaking (without, of course, a single thought of spiritual profit or loss), or else he thinks evil of his neighbour, exaggerating his weakness, his passions, suspecting him, envying him, judging him, or if it is in church, he looks at the faces of those, standing near him, also how they are dressed, who is nice looking, and who not, or making plans what he shall do, in what pleasure or vanity he will spend the day, and so on. And this often happens at the time when the greatest, the most heavenly Sacrament of the Eucharist, that is, of the most-pure Body and Blood of our Lord, is being celebrated; when we ought to be wholly in God, wholly occupied in meditations on the mystery accomplished for our sakes, of the redemption from sin, from the eternal curse and death; and on the mystery of our being made godly in the Lord Jesus Christ. How low we have fallen, how earthly-minded we have become, and from what does it all proceed? From inattention, and the neglect of our salvation, from attachment to temporal things, from weakness of faith, or unbelief in eternity.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ