It seems to me that a cornerstone of our growth in Christ and our spiritual peace is the willingness to forgive offenses and to embrace the action of forgiveness. Nothing can substitute for the sincere act of doing so. As long as we refuse to “go there,” we cannot heal. Let us ask God to help us forgive the unforgivable that He may heal us and bring us all closer together. For some it may be easier than for others, but we are all called to this gate of freedom. The question is, are we willing to unlatch the gate on our spiritual journey? It is up to us, individually.
As we approach the Sunday evening Forgiveness Vespers service, I would like to share this article found at http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/resentforgive.aspx. I will share the start of the article below and if it speaks to you, you can click on the link to keep reading.
I also ask general forgiveness of all who will read here, to forgive me any offenses I have given you recently or over the years. I confess that I am a sinner and that I have given various offenses to people over time. Not that I am proud of it, but rather ashamed for not sharing the love of God, instead, as I have been forgiven much by Him.
Kali Sarakosti - Blessed upcoming 40 Days of Great and Holy Lent,
Pres. Candace
Resentment and Forgiveness
by Hieromonk Damascene
A talk delivered at the Annual
Assembly of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America, St. George Serbian
Orthodox Church, San Diego, California, February 28, 2003.
1. The Misuse of the Incensive Power
Since we are approaching Forgiveness Sunday, I've
chosen, with the blessing of His Grace Bishop Longin, to speak on the subject
of Anger, Judgment, and Resentment, and on their cure: Forgiveness and
Reconciliation. First I will speak about the problem and then I'll discuss the
solution.
Anger, judgment, remembrance of wrongs, grudges,
resentment: these are passions with which all of us struggle in one way or
another. Why are we prone to them? According to the Holy Fathers of the Church,
the power that causes anger was part of man's original nature, which was
created "good" by God (cf. Genesis 1:31). The Fathers say that man's
soul was originally created with three powers: the intellective or
"knowing" power, the appetitive or "desiring" power, and
the incensive or "fervent" power. Man was supposed to use his
intellective power to know God, his appetitive power to yearn for God, and his
incensive power to courageously repel temptation—beginning with the temptation
of the serpent in the Garden.
Instead of using their incensive power to repel
temptation, however, Adam and Eve succumbed to their first temptation: they ate
of the forbidden fruit. According to the Holy Fathers, the essence of the
serpent's temptation lies in these words: "Eat of this fruit and you shall
be as gods" (cf. Genesis 3:5). St. John Chrysostom says that Adam
"expected to become himself a god, and conceived thoughts above his proper
dignity." [1] This is a key point which we'll keep coming back to.
When the primordial Fall occurred, man's original
nature, created in the image of God, became corrupted. He acquired what the
Holy Fathers call a fallen nature. He still had the image of God in him, but
the image was tarnished: "buried," as it were, under the corruption
of his nature. Now he had an inclination toward sin, born of his desire to be
God without God's blessing. All of us share that fallen nature; there is a part
of each one of us that wants to be God. In popular modern terms, that part of
us is called the "ego."
When man fell, the three powers of his soul became
subject to corruption, along with his body, which became subject to death and
decay. Now man used his intellective power to puff up with knowledge and be
superior to others; now he used his appetitive power to lust after other
people, after the things of this world, after sinful pleasures, wealth, and
power; and he used his incensive power, not against temptation, but against
other people, against things, and sometimes against life and God Himself. The
incensive power expressed itself as sinful anger and wrath. The first man born
of woman, Cain, got so angry and jealous that he murdered his own brother,
Abel.
So, here we are, all members of the family of Adam
and Eve, possessing a fallen nature that wants to be God, and a corrupted
incensive power that gets angry at the wrong things.
Very clear teachings on anger and the incensive
power can be found in the first volume of The Philokalia, in
the teachings of St. John Cassian, a Holy Father of the fifth century.
According to St. John Cassian, all anger directed at other people—all such
wrong use of our incensive power—blinds the soul. He writes: "We must,
with God's help, eradicate the deadly poison of anger from the depths of our
souls. So long as the demon of anger dwells in our hearts ... we can neither
discriminate what is good, nor achieve spiritual knowledge, nor fulfill our
good intentions, nor participate in true life.... Nor will we share in divine
wisdom even though we are deemed wise by all men, for it is written: Anger
lodges in the bosom of fools (Eccles. 7:9). Nor can we discriminate in
decisions affecting our salvation even though we are thought by our fellow men
to have good sense, for it is written: Anger destroys even men of good
sense (Proverbs 15:1). Nor will we be able to keep our lives in
righteousness with a watchful heart, for it is written: Man's anger
does not bring about the righteousness of God (James 1:20)....
"If, therefore, you desire to attain
perfection and rightly pursue the spiritual way, you should make yourself a
stranger to all sinful anger and wrath. Listen to what St. Paul enjoins: Rid
yourselves of all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, and all
malice (Eph. 4:31). By saying 'all' he leaves no excuse for regarding
any anger as necessary or reasonable. If you want to correct your brother when
he is doing wrong or punish him, you must try to keep yourself calm; otherwise
you yourself may catch the sickness you are seeking to cure and you may find
that the words of the Gospel now apply to you: Physician, heal
yourself (Luke 4:23), or Why do you look at the speck of dust
in your brother's eye, and not notice the beam in your own eye? (Matt.
7:3).
"No matter what provokes it, anger blinds the
soul's eyes, preventing it from seeing the Sun of righteousness.... Whether
reasonable or unreasonable, anger obstructs our spiritual vision. Our incensive
power can be used in a way that is according to nature only when turned against
our own impassioned or self-indulgent thoughts. [2]
Here St. John Cassian is telling us that, when we
use our incensive power against temptation—against impassioned or
self-indulgent thoughts—we are using this power as it was originally intended
to be used, according to our original, virtuous nature, created in the image of
God. However, when we use our incensive power against anything else—especially
against other people—we are misusing it, according to
our fallen nature.
2. Playing God
Often anger is evoked in us because of our pride.
This again is a function of our fallen nature: that part of us that wants to be
God. As would-be gods, we want to be in control, we want things to go our way.
When things don't go our way, when other people don't follow our lead and go
along with our program, we get angry. This leads us to judge others. Judging
others is one way of playing God.
God is King, and He is Judge. Of course, it's best
to be a King. Therefore, in trying to play God, our ego first of all tries to
get above others and above life itself by playing King. We can try to be King
in many ways. It may be by trying to run the show and get our own way. It may
be by seeking acceptance, approval, praise, respect, popularity, earthly
security, or an important position. It may be through our achievements and abilities,
which are used toward ultimately selfish ends. It may be through vanity over
our looks, our intellect, and so on.
Even if we were to have the world at our feet all
the time, and thus confirm our King-status in our own mind, we would eventually
feel conflict—for we're not meant to be King. You can see this vividly in the
lives of celebrities, many of whom, having risen to the "top" in the
eyes of the world, are filled with inward conflict.
Most of us, however, find it impossible to play
King all the time. The world is not at our feet. We try so hard to get our own
way and make things work out exactly like we want, but it just doesn't happen
that way. People don't want to cooperate with our own way of doing things. We
don't get enough of the respect and admiration we need in order to keep up the
illusion of our Kingship. On the contrary, we often experience the exact
opposite: rudeness, disrespect, neglect, abandonment, injustice.
What is the ego—our fallen nature—to do in this
case? How can it still play God? How else than by judgment? As we
said, God is King and He is Judge. When we can't be King, we take the loser's way
of playing God: we become the Judge. No matter what happens to us, or what
people have said and done to us, we can always seem to get above
them by being their Judge. For a time it feels great! Other people and the
circumstances of our life made us feel less like a god; they have hurt and
humiliated us. But we can still be a god in our own mind by judging!
Judgment brings with it an exhilaration of false
power. Its energy comes from the wrong, prideful use of our incensive power.
But, like playing King, playing Judge eventually leads to inward conflict. If
we are setting ourselves up in God's place, our soul cannot fulfill its
original purpose of worshiping, serving and loving God. Thus, each time we
judge, we're placing a barrier between ourselves and God. A wall immediately
goes up.
3. Resentment
If left unchecked, anger and judgment will pass
into what the Holy Fathers call "secret anger," "remembrance of
wrongs," or "resentment."
Resentment—prolonged anger—is deadly to the soul.
St. Tikhon of Zadonsk says: "Just as fire if it is not extinguished
quickly will swallow many houses, so anger if it is not stopped right away will
do great harm and will cause many troubles. [3] The Holy Apostle Paul tells
us: Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for
the devil (Eph. 4:26-7). "If we take St. Paul's saying
literally," writes St. John Cassian, "it does not permit us to keep
our anger even until sunset. What then shall we say about those who, because of
the harshness and fury of their impassioned state, not only maintain their
anger until the setting of this day's sun, but prolong it for many days? Or
about others who do not express their anger, but keep silent and increase the
poison of their anger to their own destruction? They are unaware that we must
avoid anger not only in what we do but also in our thoughts; otherwise our mind
will be darkened by our anger, cut off from the light of spiritual knowledge
and discrimination, and deprived of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. [4]
Why is resentment such a deadly sin? The Holy
Scriptures tell us that God is love. Therefore, explains the
Russian Holy Father St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, "Resentment or rejection
of love is rejection of God. God withdraws from a resentful person, deprives
him of His Grace, and gives him up to spiritual death, unless the person
repents in good time so as to be healed of that deadly moral poison, resentment.
[5]
If for whatever reason we do not forgive someone
and hold onto our anger, it will truly be to our own destruction. It can poison
our entire lives, make us the captives of the devil, and eventually prevent us
from entering the Kingdom of Heaven. To help us not to lose our salvation due
to resentment, God allows us to feel inward conflict. This inward conflict
helps us to become aware of the fatal danger of the malady of resentment, and
to seek to be cured by the Supreme Physician, Jesus Christ.
The inward conflict may take many forms. We may
feel weighed down, unable to breathe lightly or freely, as if we are captives.
We may experience irrational fear, commonly known as anxiety. We may become
susceptible to physical ailments. In most cases, we will feel an inward
emptiness. That emptiness comes from the fact that, by holding onto our anger
and judgment, we have separated ourselves from God. We no longer have His
Grace, His Life, inside us, and without that we are just hollow vessels.
Our spiritual emptiness may express itself in a
generally dissatisfied and cynical attitude, in which we're always attracted to
negative thoughts and words about others. We may try to fill the void with
drugs or the excessive use of alcohol. Interestingly, the Alcoholics Anonymous
"Big Book" says: "Resentment is the 'number one' offender. It
destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stems all forms of
spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we
have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we
straighten out mentally and physically. [6]
Sometimes our resentment hurts the person we are
resenting, sometimes it does not. However, in either case we gain
nothing; we only lose, for in either case we are the ones who are hurt the
most. Let's say someone has actually wronged us. If that person repents, he
will be forgiven by God. But if we hold onto our anger, we will not be forgiven
and will suffer the consequences.
4. Forgiveness
Having looked at the malady of anger, judgment,
and resentment, let's go on to look at the cure. What are we to do to be freed
of this sickness?
