St. John Chrysostom asks the offended:
Why do you refuse to be reconciled to your enemy? He is
speaking ill of you, calling you a fornicator? So what? If he is
speaking the truth, correct yourself, it not—laugh at it!...And even better,
not only laugh but rejoice—according to the Word of God: Blessed are ye,
when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company,
and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s
sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy: For, behold, your
reward is great in heaven (Luke 6:22-23). And if he has spoken
the truth, and you…condemn your transgressions, you will receive a reward…Often
the enemies with their just rebuke accomplish that which your friends cannot
with their praises and pleasant words.
If we, beloved Christian readers, are patient with our enemies
and seek the blame for their unkind attitude towards us in ourselves, we will
be saved.
A young and spiritually immature monk went to live in a certain
monastery. He thought that there he would find paradisiacal manners and
that everyone would love and respect him as a most dear brother. What was
his disappointment when after a while he noticed that eight of the brothers
loved him and two did not! He could not put up with the dislike of these
two, so he left that monastery and went to search for another where everyone
would like him.
In the second monastery, all brothers welcomed him kindly and
treated him very well in the beginning. However, that did not last very
long. Soon the likes and dislikes toward the newcomer surfaced, and,
unfortunately, this time only four loved him and four others hated him and were
worse than those in the first monastery: they annoyed him, judged him,
sneered at him, and did not miss an occasion to hurt him. The unhappy
monk could not put up with that, so he left this monastery, too.
In the third monastery where he settled, he quickly found out
that almost nobody liked him. His reputation for being quarrelsome and
lacking perseverance preceded him to this monastery, and the brothers there met
him with distrust. The young monk, realizing that he had come from bad to
worse, began wondering if it was not his fault that he could not win the love
of the others and decided to remain in this last monastery amid the cold and
hostile attitudes of the brothers until he could win their love with God’s
help.
When he apprised his own behavior, he found that he was to blame
for his quarrels with the brothers because he did not endure their teasing with
patience. A fortunate thought occurred to him, and he wrote on a piece of
paper, “I will endure everything for Jesus Christ’s sake,” and put it in his
belt. Every time when someone insulted him or sneered at him, he took the
piece of paper out of his belt, read it, remembered the promise of endurance
which he had made to God and calmed down…TO BE CONTINUED
No comments:
Post a Comment