Three quotes

  • The way this blog works is that if I want to add a quote to the “A Word” sec­tion in the right col­umn, I have to pub­lish it as an entry first. And I’m also a lit­tle hin­dered by the fact that only short quotes will fit.

    So I’ve entered two quotes in entries below and another from Clement of Alexan­dria some time ago, but I wanted to put the full text of them here as well, because I thought both were thought-provoking and I hated hav­ing to edit them down. (They all come from my “Daily Lives” read­ings, by the way.):

    Have great care of your chil­dren. We live at a time when much free­dom is given to the expres­sion of thought, but lit­tle care is taken that thoughts should be founded on truth. Teach them to love truth.
    – Elder Macar­ius of Optina

    It is pos­si­ble to find a word that between two views that will sig­nify both. But a mid­dle view between two oppo­site views con­cern­ing the same thing is impos­si­ble … There is no room for com­pro­mise in mat­ters of the Ortho­dox faith.
    – Mark of Ephesus

    The word­ing of that last quote was dif­fi­cult for me. But in a nut­shell, I believe the point he’s mak­ing is that we can offer lip ser­vice to oppos­ing view­points and hide our true alle­giance behind care­fully cho­sen words. Peo­ple do it all the time — think of how politi­cians find code words like “right to pri­vacy” for “right to abort” and “health care” for “abor­tion”. But it’s not pos­si­ble to hold a view that unites two utterly dis­parate views. All the care­fully cho­sen words and all the wishes to be inof­fen­sive will not make a decid­edly pro-choice per­son pro-life, or vice versa. As Chris­tians, we seek to be peace­mak­ers, we seek to find com­mon ground where we can — both in the inter­ests of our own humil­ity in sac­ri­fic­ing for oth­ers and in our love of fel­low­ship. But we can’t sac­ri­fice the truth just to please a world that loves lies. We have to pick our bat­tles, but hold onto the integrity that gives us courage to fight the bat­tles we pick. It’s just a lit­tle more of the ten­sion that all Chris­tians live with. “Be ye there­fore wise as ser­pents, but gen­tle as doves.”

    True repen­tance is to be found guilty no longer of the same things, but to uproot them alto­gether from the soul. To repent truly is to cease from sin and to look back no longer.
    – Clement of Alexandria

    Well, yes. Let him (or her, as the case may be) who has ears to hear, under­stand … and all that. If I had to recount the num­ber of times I want to just come up to for con­fes­sion and just say, “Remem­ber last time? Well, ditto.” Or maybe have pre-printed cards just to save time. “Blew it on this, did that thing I really know I shouldn’t do, basi­cally punted the whole ‘fast­ing’ kind of thing … blah blah blah.” And then you’ve got that life-long project of try­ing to really com­pre­hend in your deep­est soul — not just hear from a good source, or con­sider briefly when you’re in a good mood — what it means to repent. Because it’s not the same as feel­ing guilty, or hat­ing your­self, or (heaven for­bid) being really, really sorry that you’re suf­fer­ing the con­se­quences of your behav­ior. It’s some­thing apart, though I feel like God has been able to use those things occa­sion­ally to point me in the right direc­tion. But point­ing in the right direc­tion is not tak­ing steps. So it’s prob­a­bly a good thing that the Nativ­ity Fast is approach­ing, even if all I know at the end of it — as hap­pens far too often with me and appointed fasts — is what repen­tance isn’t.


    Related posts:

    1. The unwanted child might not be unneeded
    2. Where am I?
    3. Death and vacations
    4. Begin­ning to Pray by Anthony Bloom

    November 10th, 2005 | Grace | No Comments |

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