Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power—it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen, to. the doctor.
—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
-
-
Humility is not losing your true personhood. It is losing the false self that is exhausting you.
—Fr. Elijah Estafanous -
When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different. It is the same because, here also, forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or no bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. They keep on replying, “But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise.” Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. (This doesn’t mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart-every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God’s forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough. As regards my own sins it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men’s since against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought. But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine per cent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one per cent of guilt which is left over. To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life—to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son-how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.” We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves.
There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.
—C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory -
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 -
4. Brother and Sister
Try to blame yourself, yourself only and not your relations, for all. Be certain that none can offend or hurt us without God’s permission; and whenever God permits it, it is always for our good. Punishments, tests, temptations, are all equally good for us.
You may ask your brother for help; but do it courteously, gently, without insistence. Besides this, pray, have faith, and abandon yourself-and the whole pattern of your life-to God. Pray fervently that peace may be restored in the family.
Although I have not the honor of knowing you personally, I have heard so much from your distressed townsfolk about the exemplary life your family led during your father’s lifetime and of the bitter enmity which now divides you, that I am writing to beg you to come to your senses.
Stop these endless quarrels and bitter insults! Do not provide the enemy with this delight: he enjoys nothing better than the distortion of family life, the mockery of it.
Remember that you are pupils of Christ; of Christ who teaches us to love not only our friends, but even our enemies, and to forgive all who trespass against us. But if you forgive not mere their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matt. 6:15). What a frightful prospect!
And so, I beg of you, leaving all recriminations, make peace among you and strive for the greatest boon of all: strive for the inner peace.
-
A home is a Christian one, when all the members of the household bear each other’s burdens, and when each one condemns only himself.
-
We are often indifferent to our brethren who are distressed or upset, on the grounds that they are in this state through no fault of ours. The Doctor of souls, however, wishing to root out the soul’s excuses from the heart, tells us to leave our gift and to be reconciled not only if we happen to be upset by our brother, but also if he is upset by us, whether justly or unjustly; only when we have healed the breach through our apology should we offer our gift.
—St. John Cassian, Philokalia, Vol. 1 p.84
-
The drunkard, the fornicator, the proud – he will receive Gods mercy. But he who does not want to forgive, to excuse, to justify conciously, intentionally … that person closes himself to eternal life before God, and even more so in the present life. He is turned away and not heard.
-
As long as Fr. Faltaous had even the slightest sense that there was a monk who was upset with him, or someone who had some hard feelings towards him, or even if he felt that he had upset anyone in any way, he would instantly go to apologize to him – before the setting of the sun.
The Star of the Sheheet Desert
Fr. Faltaous El Souriany -
‘If you are ashamed of your sins you will never repent and if you confess them to gain sympathy you will never be healed’
SO GOOD QUOTES 