The moderate person has many relationships, and does not depend on a single person to fulfill all of his needs of love and friendship. If this person’s circumstances change, he may become troubled, because he depends on this [one] person completely. The more relationships a person has, the more accepting he becomes of the boundaries of others. Therefore, we have to have many mature and sound relationships.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Build Boundaries
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The person who lives in isolation from others and refrains from helping others, has a problem with boundaries, because he shuts his doors to good things.
Nevertheless, we pray in the Divine Liturgy, “He made us unto Himself an assembled people, and sanctified us.”…
The avoiders do not allow [both] the good and the bad from entering, even though there may be a risk that God may be left outside the heart, and he does not allow Him to come in: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” (Rev 3:20)
“Do not consent in your thoughts, nor characterize in your words, any person as evil. The Lord has loosened us from the bondage of the devil, so that we should not bind ourselves again nor give our souls up to slavery by our ill opinion.”
St. Macarius
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Build Boundaries
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“If he’d learned one thing while he’d been away, it was that loneliness is the most taboo subject in the world. Forget sex or politics or religion. Or even failure. Loneliness is what clears out a room.”
— Douglas Coupland, Miss Wyoming
Pain, for instance. Everyone has it, most people want to talk about it, yet no one really wants to hear about it. Talking about one’s pain makes one boring and embarrassing. It imposes on the sympathy and energy of others.
—Noreen Masud, There is nothing so deep as the gleaming surface of the aphorism -
And sometimes we 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
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The person who has not learned how to bond with others, will find it very difficult to say to someone that he is in need of others’ help. In contrast to that is the person who has bonded with another. It is very easy for him to say that he needs your support, because he is going through a tough time.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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What happens when a person, because of upbringing, fails in bonding with others, and is not able to form successful relationships? The person feels lonely, isolated, and estranged.
This isolation and estrangement passes through three stages:
The first stage [consists of] grumbling and distress, in which the person feels pain because he is alone, and feels that he is a stranger and has nobody to ask about him, and that nobody loves him. But he may [even] grumble against God, and say that the Lord does not love him, and may grumble against society wherein he lives. This person complains, because he has failed in making sound relationships. For this person to overcome this matter, he has to deal with this pain in a positive way, and from it, as an impetus, set out to form relationships and friendships with others, and then he can heal himself and grow in a sound way. If he does not do this, he will enter into the next stage.
The second stage is what we call, the building up of the feelings of grumbling against everything around him, because the feeling of the pain of loneliness persists for a long time. So you find him grumbling against God and others, and against home, church, and school.
As for the third stage, it is the most dangerous, in which the person feels that he does not deserve to live, and then he ends his life and reaches the point of [committing] suicide.
From the aforementioned, the importance of forming relationships is made clear, and [also] bonding with God and entering into a relationship with God, so he will bask in the warmth of His love, and will attain success in his life, as Joseph bonded with God, and therefore, Scripture says, “The LORD was with Joseph, and he was a successful man.”
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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Pain and suffering went into man’s life because a relationship was no longer present.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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“Everything bad I’ve ever done – everything dysfunctional I ever did – I did because I needed love, and I was lonely.”
Anna Runkle, Crappy Childhood Fairy -
Most psychological problems, including the difficult ones like addiction, may be eliminated through relationships.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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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
SO GOOD QUOTES 