Be very attentive! Do not allow any negative thought to enter your heart.
Do not minimize the significance of the negative thoughts which, when you are by yourself, you may have about anyone else. Keep yourselves from every hurtful word. This is very important. Remember also these words of Christ: ‘Do not do to others what you would not wish that they do to you’.
In the company of those who have received you [into the community], those elect of God who welcome you and accept that you serve them, consider yourself as unworthy, as honored beyond measure. Then your life will change. And on the contrary, if you judge others for insignificant and exterior things, you will lose everything.
Everything that you gain in your inner battles will be reflected in your life in God. Struggle against every passion that arouses, in you, critical thoughts about others. Do not accept what the enemy suggests to you against someone who is unjust towards you. Whether you are alone in your room or in company, every critical thought, every negative inner movement, creates a crack in your spiritual fortress and in that of your community. No thought is born or passes without consequence. With good thoughts, you will be able to see in every person that you meet someone very beloved. With negative thoughts, on the contrary, your facial expression and your psychological energies will spoil your relationships and affect the environment around you. When grace is with us, we do not see the defects of others; we only see the sufferings and the love of our brethren.
It is just as false and illusory to expect perfection from a group of people as it is to expect perfection from one person. This is firstly because we ourselves do not have a true and correct idea of what perfection is. And also because perfection is the state of total likeness to Christ. Reject any spirit of curiosity. Do your work without being concerned about whether the others are doing theirs. Each one receives from God what is his due. And we cannot cheat with God. He is so mighty and so just that we can hide nothing from Him.
‘Grant me to see my own faults, and not to judge my brother’, says Saint Ephraim in his prayer. If we begin to compare our efforts with those of anyone else, the enemy can find ways to make us discouraged.
When quarrels, enmity, and struggles for mastery manifest themselves in relations between people, unity can only be preserved if each one bears the weaknesses of others. For the Apostle Paul, it is better to bear offence than to offend.
If we pray constantly for love towards our brothers and sisters, if we pray that we may travel the road of life with the same spirit and in the unity of spiritual love, our likeness to Christ will be more easily realized. If, on the contrary, we stay on the inevitable details and defects of exterior life, we will lose the grace of contemplation of the Eternal.
When confronted with a problem, those who are greater put themselves at the service of others. This is the only possible solution. As Christ says, those who wish to be the greatest must become the servants and slaves even of the
~Adapted from Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), Words of Life, translated from the French by Sister Magdalen (Stavropegic Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Essex)
