Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.
Luke 17:4Dear readers, are not all of our fights based on events similar to the petty and silly incident just described? How many people who have lived before us on this earth have quarreled over earthly and transient things: houses and lands, money and honors, insults and slanders. Why did all of this happen? What is the use of their having shown obstinacy and even a kind of heroism in their fights? These people have long since died, and their feuds are forgotten by the generations that followed. Only the sin remains to accuse at the Last Judgment the deceased who have died unrepentant of their animosity and to deprive them of the eternal joys of Paradise which are promised to the merciful, the meek, the peacemakers, and the righteous.
The sin of strife ruins both this life and the life beyond. It is an enemy to both our body and our soul. How is it, then, that some people seek comfort in quarrels and revenge? Why do they say, “I will not rest until I am avenged?”The Meaning of Suffering and Strife & Reconciliations
Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev
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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
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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 -
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
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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.’
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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
SO GOOD QUOTES 