Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. How to get rid of the sin of resentment
Let time will pass
Archbishop Georgy of Nizhny Novgorod:
— When communicating with some people, I sometimes feel an inner spirit of dissatisfaction with life: the sun does not shine for them, the wind does not blow and the water does not flow. And when you compare modern life With the time of open persecution for one profession of faith (after 1917), you begin to understand that our sorrows and problems are disproportionately less than they were then. And it comes inner humility- and thank God for everything, and it’s a sin to grumble about your life. It is in this plane that we must treat our own touchiness.
I think that in relation to the one who offended, at first there is no need special signs attention, but at least do not contradict this person, treat him evenly. And secondly, let time pass. After all, the devil seems to push one person against another. And by responding to aggression with aggression, we are grist to the devil's mill. If we pause this process, then the “fire” begins to fade. It also happens that the one who offended you is spiritually weak and it is through him that the demon wants to hit you and knock you out. Christian spirit life. Look at it this way and it will become much easier for you. And don’t forget the proverb - God endured and commanded us.
God is the judge 
Alexander, Bishop of Dmitrovsky, vicar of the Moscow diocese:
- If we are offended, it means that we believe that we were treated unfairly, that we received something undeservedly. It is with these words that a person most often expresses his resentment. But a humble person accepts everything as if from the hand of God and, like a prudent thief, can say: “What is worthy for our sins is acceptable” (Luke 23:41). If we recognize that what happened to us is not just the arbitrariness of man, but God’s permission, then the heart will not lose peace and it will be easier to cope with the sediment of resentment that may appear in the soul without our consent.
Resentment is not a creative feeling; it divides people, at the same time, it increases bitterness and suffering in the soul of the one who bears it. Our entire Christian life is in question: we cannot hope for forgiveness of our sins by God if we do not know how to forgive all spiritual debtors who have offended us and therefore are, as it were, in debt to us.
From the treasury of Church Tradition, one can recall that patericon case when a monk came to one elder and said that he could not forgive his brother for some kind of misconduct. To which the elder replied that in this case, even in prayer, he should omit the words: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12),
Reconciliation with one's neighbor -- necessary condition our appeal to God, about which the Lord says in the Gospel: “If you bring your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matt 5:23-24). Not wanting to forgive the offender, we cannot even give a note in church for Eucharistic commemoration or light a candle, and confession will turn out to be hypocrisy. Maybe understanding this will sober someone up and give them strength to fight this soul-destroying feeling.
It is also very important to pray for the offender. You can bow for him with prayer. For example: “Lord, save and have mercy on your servant (name) and through his holy prayers save me, a sinner.” Of course, but always our offender Orthodox man and capable of any prayer. But praying for the salvation of any person, no matter what his beliefs, is always possible and useful both for him and for us. The main thing when praying like this is to force yourself to have a heartfelt goodwill. At first it will be done through gritted teeth, with great difficulty, but then it will become easier.
In addition, in order to learn not to bear grudges, it is necessary to transfer all judgments to God. “Vengeance is Mine - I will repay” (Rom. 12.19), says the Lord in Holy Scripture.
Our people have adopted an expression that adequately expresses the biblical truth: “God is the judge.” When a person can say this, the weight will be lifted from the soul.
I do not agree that a person is a hypocrite if he tries to communicate with the offender with outward friendliness in order to get rid of the offense from his heart. The Lord looks at our human will, at the motivation of our actions. If a person tries to develop a good attitude towards the offender in his soul, then this is the path to overcoming the offense. It’s just that a person’s heart after the Fall is not always obedient. It easily responds to passionate stimuli, but very often remains indifferent to what should be characteristic of us by our God-like nature.
Therefore, you have to force yourself to change your sinful disposition to a benevolent state. First comes the realization that one is wrong, then comes a strong-willed effort, specific actions to correct oneself, and only then, over time, something can change for the better in the heart, in inner man. Saint John Chrysostom speaks about it this way: “Do deeds of love, and love will come to you.”
We get what we deserve 
Hegumen Sergius (Rybko), rector of the Church of the HOLY SPIRIT at the LAZAREVSKY cemetery
The basis of touchiness is sin - self-pity and vanity. A person is offended because someone hurt his pride.
At the same time, the consequence of resentment is embitterment and resentment.
Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov writes in the first volume of his writings that once when he was saying the Jesus Prayer, he wanted to be publicly insulted. This is how grace works - for a spiritually successful person, insults even turn into sweetness. Proud people do not understand this; for us, grievances are a burden. But for the humble they are a joy.
You need to fight resentment with humility. When a person considers himself a sinner and worthy of all reproaches and sorrows, then they no longer affect him. Humble as “Vanka-Vstanka”, it is impossible to drop him. No matter how you humiliate him, don’t vilify him, no matter how much dirt you plunge him into, he’s like water off a duck’s back. Because he is already in another world and human grievances do not concern him.
But as soon as you begin to realize some truth in your touchiness, then anxiety arises. But our truth is human, it is nothing before God’s truth. God's truth is the highest justice, according to which nothing unfair happens, which means we deserve this “injustice.” As soon as we admit this and put aside our human truth, then everything will immediately calm down—we will be reconciled with God, and we will forget our grievances.
How to deal with an offender? Sometimes it happens that forcing yourself to smile is a matter of love. It will be hypocrisy if your lips seem to be “smeared with honey”, and there is a stone in your bosom. It’s completely different if touchiness manifested itself in you due to passion, and you repent, regret, but cannot cope with it. Therefore, all that remains is to establish a relationship with a person and force yourself to love, at least with the help of a friendly smile. And if you force yourself to smile, then gradually the resentment will melt away. We must remember that this is work - forcing yourself to peace and love. Sometimes they say: “I only go to church when I feel like it,” forgetting that the Gospel commandments must always be observed, and not when I feel like it. Whether we like it or not, whether we are offended or not, no one has canceled the commandment of love for one’s neighbor.
Yes, I'm fat, he's right! 
Priest Andrei Lorgus, Dean of the Faculty of Psychology of the Russian Orthodox Institute of St. John the Evangelist
Resentment is a way of manipulating another person, the one who offended you. By showing your resentment to another, you can make him feel guilty and use it for your own purposes. And this is a sin. The sin also lies in the fact that we condemn the offender. But perhaps he did not want to offend us.
To overcome your resentment, it is useful to understand its nature, and here psychotherapeutic work is sometimes needed.
At the everyday level, you can try to cope with this like this:
1) Assume that the people who offended you did not do it out of malice.
2) Accept these people for who they are.
3) Accept yourself as you are. For example, you are told that you are fat. You need to tell yourself: “Yes, I’m fat, what can I do? For now I can't change anything. But this is not a reason to be offended by another if he said so.”
It is best to communicate with the offender in the same way as before. There is no hypocrisy in this. After all, the one who is offended does not explain it in love. Openness and friendliness is higher than resentment.
So why does Christianity encroach on this last stronghold of human dignity, why does it call for voluntarily giving up your inalienable right - not to forgive the pain and tears of the one who mercilessly burst into your life and scorched your heart? What kind of paradoxical call is heard in the Gospel: ... love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you (Luke 6:27-28)? This is probably the most incomprehensible commandment of Christ. In fact: why love those who hate, offend and persecute you? They probably need our love and forgiveness least of all in the world. So why then force yourself to such a difficult and thankless task?
Why you can’t take revenge on your offenders is even more or less clear: after all, if you respond with evil to evil, then it’s unlikely that there will be less evil in the world. With well-deserved grievances, everything is also clear, since here it is simple and everyone clear principle: If you earn it, get it and don’t complain. But what to do when you were offended for no reason, if you were spat on, trampled and humiliated simply because the offenders wanted it that way? Is it really possible to forgive too?
When they grab a hammer
One of best stories Vasily Shukshin (which is called “Resentment”) begins with a banal and, alas, ordinary situation: a person was rude. He came with his little daughter to the store to buy milk, and the saleswoman mistakenly took him for a hooligan who had started a drunken brawl there the day before. And no matter how much poor Sashka Ermolaev justified himself, no matter how much he explained to the people around him that he was not guilty of anything, it was all in vain. In front of his daughter he was disgraced and scolded last words God knows why. The story ends with a terrible picture: Sashka runs home to get a hammer to break the head of one of his offenders. And only a happy accident prevents him from committing murder.
This is, of course, just a work of art. But in it, Shukshin was able to surprisingly accurately show a strange feature of the human soul - to react sharply and very painfully to unfair accusations. In fact, what does it matter if they say nasty things about you that you have nothing to do with! After all, your conscience is clear and, it would seem, it’s time to just laugh and feel sorry for the people who are so deeply mistaken about you.
But that was not the case... As soon as someone speaks badly about us, a wave of hostility towards this person immediately rises in our souls. And if the offender persists in his ridiculous accusations, this hostility can develop into real hatred, clouding the eyes, rejecting common sense and demanding only one thing - to repay the offender at all costs. In this state, it really doesn’t take long to grab a hammer...
What is this terrible force, capable of pushing an honest and respectable person to commit a crime just because someone told him all sorts of nonsense?
In the language of Christian asceticism, such a force is called passion, but, of course, not in the sense that the authors of lyrical poems and love stories put into this word. In the Christian understanding, passion is a certain property of human nature, which was initially good and useful, but later turned out to be disfigured beyond recognition by sin and turned into a dangerous disease. Patristic literature speaks of eight main sinful passions, to one degree or another, inherent in every person: gluttony, fornication, love of money, anger, sadness, despondency, vanity, pride. All these passions and diseases hide within us for the time being, remaining unnoticed, although in fact they can gradually determine the entire structure of our life. But as soon as those around you even slightly touch these sores, they immediately make themselves felt in the most direct way.
Actually, this is exactly what happened to the hero of Shukshin’s story. After all, Sashka Ermolaev was indeed absolutely not to blame for the outrages that the saleswoman attributed to him. But the unfair accusation hit his vanity and pride hard, and they, in turn, aroused anger. As a result, a nice and kind man almost became a murderer.
The clueless saleswoman and the indifferent customers who supported her attacks on the innocent were certainly wrong. And, of course, you can’t offend people; it’s even unnecessary to talk about it. But you can still perceive the insult inflicted in very, very different ways. You can grab a hammer. Or you can look into your heart and be horrified by the turbidity that an unjust insult has raised in it. It is in such a situation that it is easiest to see your spiritually painful state, to understand how deeply passion has taken root in you. And then the offenders become, albeit unwitting, but still benefactors who reveal to a person his spiritual ailments with their careless or even evil words and actions.
This is how the holy righteous John of Kronstadt spoke about this: “... do not be irritated by ridicule and do not harbor hatred for those who hate and slander, but love them as your doctors, whom God sent you in order to admonish you and teach you humility, and pray for them To God... Say: they do not slander me, but my passion, they do not beat me, but this snake that nests in my heart and hurts it when slander is applied. I take comfort in the thought that perhaps good people They’ll knock it out of there with their barbs, and then it won’t hurt.”
From coal to fire
Very often people get offended by seemingly completely harmless things. It’s not just a word, but just a glance, a gesture or an intonation that is enough for a person to see in them something offensive to himself. It’s a strange thing: after all, no one even thought of offending anyone, but the offense is right there again, scratching your heart with a clawed paw and not allowing you to live in peace.
The paradox here is that any unforgiven offense is always the “product” of the offended person himself and does not at all depend on anyone else’s efforts or lack thereof. Even the grammatical structure of the word offended directly indicates this. After all, in in this case“Xia” is nothing more than the now out-of-use Slavic vowel of the pronoun “oneself.” Thus, being offended means offending oneself, that is, giving vent to thoughts that kindle in the soul a sweet mixture of consciousness of one’s own humiliation and a sense of moral superiority over the offender. And although people do not like to admit such things even to themselves, everyone knows from childhood how pleasant it is to feel offended. There is some kind of unhealthy pleasure in this, becoming addicted to it, you begin to look for offense even where there was no trace of it.
F. M. Dostoevsky writes in “The Brothers Karamazov”: “It’s sometimes very pleasant to be offended, isn’t it? And after all, a person knows that no one offended him, but that he invented an insult to himself and lied for beauty, exaggerated it himself in order to create a picture, became attached to a word and made a mountain out of a pea - he himself knows this, and yet he is the very first he is offended, he is offended to the point of pleasantness, to the feeling of greater pleasure, and thereby reaches true enmity...”
In this all-too-familiar painful “pleasure” of resentment, one can find the answer to the question: why in Christianity is an unforgiven resentment defined as grave sin. To put it very briefly, the word sin is what the Church calls that which contradicts God’s plan for man. In other words, sin is everything that is contrary to our nature, destroys us, harms our mental or physical health, but at the same time promises some short-term pleasure and therefore seems desirable and pleasant. The suicidal principle of a person’s attraction to sinful “joys” is quite accurately expressed in the famous Pushkin line: “... Everything, everything that threatens death, / for the mortal heart conceals / inexplicable pleasures...” St. Isaac the Syrian, who said, even more categorically defined the destructive sweetness of sin. that the sinner is like a dog who licks the saw and becomes drunk with the taste of his own blood.
It is not difficult to notice how much this tragic image resembles the rapture of one’s own resentment, described by Dostoevsky. And even if the offense turns out to be not far-fetched, but very real, this does not change anything.
The ember of resentment can be carefully fanned in your heart by thinking about the injustice of what happened, endless mental dialogues with the offender, the consciousness of your own rightness, and other ways that an offended person will always have a great variety of. And as a result of all these “spiritual exercises”, resentment from a small coal gradually turns into a raging flame that can blaze in the soul long months, or even years. And if, because of someone else’s offensive word or deed, a person started such a fire in own soul, then it would be quite natural to say about him that he was offended. That is, he offended himself.
Right to be offended?
Several decades ago, a positive image of a touchy hero arose in Soviet culture (though his touchiness was then bashfully renamed vulnerability for the sake of euphony). This type roamed through various works of art and quietly took offense at the injustice and oppression that rained down on him from the generous author’s hand. This is how writers and filmmakers expressed their protest against human callousness, trying to draw the audience’s attention to the suffering and loneliness of a person in a soulless society of cog people. The goal was, of course, noble, and the image of a vulnerable hero worked here perfectly. But, unfortunately, every stick has two ends. Downside this artistic method became a romanticization of the offense itself. After all, if the one who offends is bad, then the one who is offended is good. Therefore: to offend is bad, but to be offended is good.
As a result of this identification of the hero’s moral assessments and his state of mind On the same beautiful, piercing and kind stories of Vasily Makarovich Shukshin, a whole generation of very vulnerable, but in fact just touchy people, grew up. They considered the right to be offended to be a completely normal attribute of a person with a fine mental organization, and therefore they reacted extremely sharply to the slightest manifestation of someone else’s rudeness and callousness. like this moral position voiced it very convincingly in his lyric poem Eduard Asadov:
How to easily offend someone:
He took and threw out his word, angrier than pepper...
And then sometimes a century is not enough,
To bring back a lost heart.
At first glance, everything here is correct and clear. And you should not offend a person under any circumstances, and you need to watch your words when communicating - that’s all true. But in this short poem there is another very important topic, which seems to be in the background and therefore not so noticeable. The offended hero (remaining, as they say, behind the scenes) turns out to be so vulnerable that because of one evil word he is ready to forever close his heart to a person, and to a person close to him, since you can only lose what was yours. From such categoricalness of the hero, from this intolerance of other people’s weaknesses and shortcomings, one becomes alarmed, first of all, for himself. After all, with such a “subtlety” of nature, in the end you can end up left in splendid isolation, offended by the whole world. And this state is much more terrible and destructive than the most evil words and insults. Offended man buries himself alive in the shell of his own claims to others, and even the Lord will not be able to free him from such a terrible imprisonment. Because you can break this shell only from the inside, by sincerely forgiving your offenders. And let the offenders not need our forgiveness at all. But we ourselves urgently need it.
Hieromartyr Arseny (Zhadanovsky), killed by the Bolsheviks in 1937, wrote: “The virtue of forgiveness is also attractive because it immediately brings a reward for itself in the heart. At first glance, it will seem to you that forgiveness will humiliate, disgrace you and elevate your enemy. But that's not the case in reality. You have not reconciled and, apparently, have placed yourself highly - but look, you have placed an oppressive, heavy stone in your heart, giving food for mental suffering. And vice versa: you forgave and, as it were, humiliated yourself, but at the same time you lightened your heart, brought joy and consolation into it.”
Two certificates
It may seem that forgiveness is an easy matter for Christians, since they know so well what it means. However, this is not at all true. Forgiving offenses is always a feat in which, through your pain and humiliation, you need to see in the offender the same person as yourself, and through his anger and cruelty, you must discern the same spiritual illnesses that act in you too. This is very difficult to do, especially in cases where resentment has already taken deep roots in the soul, and even a conscious volitional effort does not always help in the fight against this misfortune.
It happens, for example, that a person has forgiven his offender, but when he again inflicts an insult, the former evil sharply revives in the indignant soul. It happens that the offense is forgotten and the offender is forgiven, but if trouble happens to him, we experience some kind of secret cruel satisfaction. And if we have overcome this stage, we still sometimes cannot contain our bewilderment and disappointment when we learn about the well-being of someone who once offended us. While formally forgiving the offense caused, in the depths of our souls we still continue to consider him our debtor and subconsciously hope that God will reward him as he deserves. But this is not at all the hope for future retribution that the Lord expects from us.
Metropolitan Sourozhsky Anthony After the war, he worked as a doctor and communicated a lot with former victims of fascist concentration camps. These were people who were offended every day for several years in a row so terribly that one could not even think about it without shuddering. But what did they learn from this many years of experience of insults and humiliation, how did they treat their offenders? Bishop Anthony cites two unique documents in his book - a prayer written on a piece of wrapping paper by a deceased prisoner of the Dachau death camp, and the story of his old acquaintance, who himself spent four years behind barbed wire. Probably, you can theorize about Christian forgiveness for as long as you like, agree with it, or challenge it... But before this unanimous testimony of two people who endured unimaginable suffering, I just want to bow my head and remain reverently silent:
““Peace to all people of evil will! Let all revenge, all calls for punishment and retribution cease. Crimes have filled the cup; the human mind can no longer contain them. The hosts of martyrs are innumerable.
Therefore, do not place their suffering on the scales of Your justice, Lord, do not turn them against their tormentors with a terrible accusation in order to exact a terrible retribution from them. Give them something different! Put on the scales, in defense of executioners, informers, traitors and all people of evil will - the courage, spiritual strength of the tortured, their humility, their high nobility, their constant internal struggle and invincible hope, a smile that dried up tears, their love, their tormented, broken hearts that remained adamant and faithful in the face of death itself, even in moments of extreme weakness. Place all this, Lord, before Your eyes for the forgiveness of sins, as a ransom, for the sake of the triumph of righteousness, take into account good, not evil! And may we remain in the memory of our enemies not as their victims, not as a terrible nightmare, not as ghosts relentlessly pursuing them, but as assistants in their struggle to eradicate the rampantness of their criminal passions...”
The second example is of a person I knew very closely. He was significantly older than me, a participant in the First World War, where he lost an arm; he and his mother Maria Skobtsova saved people during the German occupation - Fedor Timofeevich Pyanov. The Germans took him to the camp, he was there for four years, and survived. When he returned, I met him by chance on the street and said: “Fyodor Timofeevich, what did you bring back from the camp, what did you come back with?” “I returned with horror and anxiety in my soul. - Have you lost faith? “No,” he says, “but while in the camp I was a victim of cruelty, while I faced the danger of not only death, but torture, I could say every minute: Lord, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing!” And I knew that God must hear my prayer, because I had the right to ask. Now I'm free; our tormentors, perhaps, did not understand and did not repent; but when I say now: Lord, forgive me, they don’t know what they are doing, suddenly God will answer me: how will you prove the sincerity of your forgiveness? You don't suffer, now it's easy for you to say...
This is also a hero of forgiveness.
And I am deeply confident that in the end, when we all stand before the judgment of God, there will not be such a victim who will not defend his tormentor, because before the time comes for the final Last Judgment over humanity, everyone, having died, will have time to look at himself as if in the mirror of the Divine, see himself in relation to Christ, see what he was called to be and was not, and will no longer be able to condemn anyone" (from the book of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh "Man before God").
During confession, those wishing to receive communion are always asked by the priest if they hold a grudge against someone. The words “Following to Holy Communion” also indicate that before accepting the Holy Gifts, make peace with those who have saddened you, that is, get rid of the sin of resentment.
Mechanism of action
Resentment is truly a destructive sin. It negatively affects both the offender and the offender. It all starts with the fact that a person feels that he was treated badly, rudely, that he deserved better treatment, and so on.
A person falls into the net of this sin because of his tendency to pride. I’m so good, how could he offend me? I don't deserve to be treated this way! That's it, I'm stopping communication with him!
While you are thinking this, the demons are applauding their perfect work and coming up with a plan to make things worse. Then the sin of resentment moves to a “higher” level.
For example, revenge. They hurt you, why endure? They said something sharp - respond in kind, “disgraced you in front of everyone” - leave the podium, holding your head up proudly, hit you - don’t you have fists too? It used to be something similar: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
The Savior Himself sets an example of humility and patience
But the Savior came into the world and changed everything. He, the sinless one, accepted execution for the sins of the whole World, the Son of God died like the last thief. And even when Christ was crucified, he prayed for his offenders: forgive them, Father, because they do not know what they are doing.
Christ came into the world with ideas that were completely “wild” for that time. If earlier the principles of “tit for tat” operated, then Jesus taught those who strike one cheek to turn the other. He is an example of perfect love and humility.
Archpriest Alexander Ilyashenko asks the question to the point: can you imagine an offended Christ or an offended Holy Mother of God? Sounds like nonsense?
Correct, because this feeling is not inherent in God (since He has no vices) and was not inherent in man by nature. In the history of mankind, the sin of offense (like vices in general) appeared only when the ancestors transgressed the commandment.
The Incarnation of the Savior changed a lot in the sinful world and showed humanity an example of holiness, gave hope for salvation and life with Christ.
Many saints also suffered undeserved insults. For what? They followed the path of the Savior, polished their patience and humility, and were purified by sorrows. Christ himself calls blessed those who will endure reproach, exile, and slander for the sake of the Lord. Their place is in heaven.
If before people thought about revenge, today Christians ask God to overcome the sin of resentment and pray (!) for those who hurt them.
Forgive me, brother, or How to get rid of the sin of resentment
When true humility, love and patience come, a person sincerely, with open arms, accepts the one who taught him a lesson in humility and forgiveness. The crafty spirits grind with anger.
There is even a parable about two monks who quarreled. They expressed all the negativity to each other, poured out all the dirt. The demon barely has time to write. I filled all the walls, ceiling, floor with scribbles, there was no room left - I started writing on my belly. He tries, he hurries... But the monks realized it in time. One said: “Forgive me, brother.” The second replied “God will forgive! And me." Everything written has disappeared.
Getting rid of resentment benefits both a person’s spiritual health and physical health. Scientists have discovered that hidden grievances provoke education cancerous tumors. So resentment destroys a person from the inside, and getting rid of such sin cleanses a person, freeing up space in the heart to accept Christ.
How to get rid of the sin of resentment? The advice is very simple to understand, but difficult to implement. Don't rely on yourself. Pray. Ask God to help you and the one who offended you. Do not destroy yourself and others, but create - love, patience, humility, human relationships and peace of mind.
Take it for yourself and tell your friends!
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We all know what offense is, because we have offended and been offended. Without realizing it, everyone who offends and everyone who is offended hurts themselves, because they deprive themselves of the sun of love. The offender hurts not only his soul, but also his body: evil emotions give rise to painful tension in the body, which affects his physical metabolism and disrupts life. The offender offends himself first of all. But the one who is offended also acts unreasonably and injures himself. You need to cover yourself with a bright shield from insults and not pay attention to them. And what is even higher is to counter insult with love, meekness, generosity. " Learn from Me, said Christ the Savior, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls"(Matthew 11:29). This is a simple road to happiness, which a person often thinks about without knowing the path to it.Resentment may be unconscious. Offending comes from pride, wanting to humiliate a person, from vindictiveness, anger. People also offend because of greed, envy, vanity, selfishness, and simply because of spiritual insensitivity and moral inattention.
An entrepreneur (individual or collective, like a state, a party) offends people most shamelessly, exploiting them not only economically, but also morally.
Exploitation is a many-sided form of injustice. The history of mankind is full of this sin until our times. But now it is not feudal barons and not only money bags that exploit the poor - these former poor people themselves, who have become administrators, party members, representatives of the proletariat, brutally exploit the poor (collective farm peasants, workers), however, covering up this exploitation with very flattering for themselves, but empty words.
Exploitation of one's neighbor may not be an expression of any personally hostile feelings; it can be moral insensitivity, the search for personal, party, or state benefits. They are trying to justify exploitation—material and spiritual—in our days with lofty motives. The goal of the revolution for the benefit of all justifies great grievances against people. Soulless planners who do not see a living person operate with humane phrases. The utilitarian materialistic approach to immortality is mortally offensive to man and humanity. human soul.
But feelings of justice and compassion can also be born in a materialist, contrary to his materialist theory. As a person, a materialist can be morally sensitive. And it happens that the heart of a believer in God (contrary to the spirit of this faith) is filled with greed and heartlessness. Just as a materialist can have unbelief only on the tip of his tongue, so faith in God is sometimes only on the tip of a believer’s tongue. (Belief in God is not a theoretical declaration.)
Nowadays people even insult faith in God (by forcing them to write great holy name God with a small letter). But man can offend God even less than the constellation Orion or Cygnus. Unbelievers only harm their own lives.
A person is offended by a person with his evil (or insufficiently good) will. And all these countless “molecular” grievances in the world, all our personal and common evil give birth in the world to those black thunderclouds of conflicts, wars and murder that make humanity tremble. And it can be destroyed.
Previously in history, in the name of faith in God, kings and leaders of nations offended non-believers (or people who were not as religious as themselves). Now in a number of countries non-believers offend believers.
Said to the man: “You know the commandments: do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not offend.”(Mk 10, 19). But if an offense occurs, it must be countered with non-offensiveness. Overcoming evil also includes overcoming resentment. We humans offend each other so easily. And it’s even easier - we get offended. Even if no one offends us, we are offended even then. We sometimes want to feel offended, and this shows bad human infantility. A child sometimes wants to cry, not because his mother has offended him, but because he suddenly has a sweet desire to feel (and, most importantly, to show himself!) offended. This is the immaturity of the soul. An active egoist offends, a passive one is offended. The grievances of active people and the touchiness of passive egoists greatly interfere with life. And there is only one way out of these states - to freedom of spirit: not to offend anyone and not to be offended by anyone.
Father Alexander, what is resentment? Only internal pain or retention of evil, memory of evil?
- I won’t answer these questions first, but I’ll ask you myself: is it possible to imagine an offended Savior, or an offended Mother of God?.. Of course not! Resentment is evidence of spiritual weakness. In one place in the Gospel it is said that the Jews wanted to lay hands on Christ (that is, to grab Him), but He walked among them, through an aggressive, bloodthirsty crowd... It is not written in the Gospel how He did this, perhaps He was so angry at He looked at them, as they say, and flashed lightning with his eyes, so that they got scared and parted. This is how I imagine it.
- Is there a contradiction? His eyes sparkled - and suddenly humble?
- Of course not. The Word of God says: “Be angry and do not sin.” The Lord cannot sin - He is the only Sinless One. We are the ones of little faith and pride; if we get angry, it is with irritation and even malice. That’s why we get offended because we think that they are angry with us too. A proud person is already internally ready to be offended, because pride is a distortion of human nature. It deprives us of dignity and those grace-filled powers that the Lord generously bestows on everyone. A proud person himself refuses them. It is impossible to offend a humble person.
- And yet, what is resentment?
- Firstly, this is, of course, sharp pain. It really hurts when you are offended. Due to our inability to repel physical, verbal and spiritual aggression, we constantly miss the blow. If any of us is forced to play chess with a grandmaster, then it is clear that he will lose. And not only because he doesn’t know how to play, but also because the grandmaster plays very well. So, the evil one (as Satan is called) plays perfectly. He knows how to walk in order to hook a person by the most pain points. The offended person may think about the offender: “Well, how could he? How did he know it would hurt me? Why did you do that?” And the man, maybe, didn’t even know anything, the evil one just directed him. That's who knows how to hurt us. The Apostle Paul says: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in high places.” The evil one moves us, and we obey him, even if unconsciously, out of our pride.
A proud person does not know how to distinguish between good and evil, but a humble person does. For example, out of my pride I can say something that hurts a person very painfully. Not because I want to hurt him, but because the evil one puts such words into my proud soul at a time when the one with whom I communicate is most defenseless. And I really get into it very much for him painful point. But still, this pain is because a person does not know how to humble himself. A humble person will say to himself firmly and calmly: “I received this for my sins. Lord have mercy!” And the proud one will begin to be indignant: “Well, how is this possible?! How can you treat me like this?”
When the Savior was brought to the high priests, and the servant hit Him on the cheek, with what dignity He answered him. Was He offended or upset? No, He showed truly royal majesty and absolute self-control. Well, again, can one imagine that Christ was offended by Pilate or the high priests?.. It’s funny. Although He was tortured, mocked, slandered... He could not be offended at all, he could not.
- But He is God and man, father.
- So, the Lord calls us to perfection: “Learn from Me, for I am meek and humble in heart.” He says: “If you want no offense to touch you, if you want to be above any offense, then be meek and humble in heart, like Me.”
- What if the offense is not deserved?
- Was He deservedly offended?
- But this is dishonest, if there is some kind of untruth, slander, then you just seethe because you don’t agree with it.
- It seems to me that it could be even more painful if they tell you the truth: “Ah-ah, that’s what you are like!” “But I’m really like that... Those bastards!”
- We hit the nail on the head!
- We hit the nail on the head. And they said it in front of everyone! No, to quietly, to say something delicately, to pat her on the head or sweeten things up. Right in front of everyone!.. It will hurt even more. “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you unrighteously because of Me.” It is good when people are unfairly slandered. When it is undeserved, we are blessed, and when it is deserved, we must repent and ask for forgiveness.
- And the second part of the question? Resentment - includes holding onto evil, memory of evil?
- Yes, of course we continue to keep the grudge in our memory. We were offended and instead of straining our spiritual strength and repelling this very painful blow, we not only accept it, but begin, as it were, to pick and infect an already painful wound. We begin to scroll through the mental chain: “How dare he... Yes, that’s what I wanted, and that’s how he did it... And if I had said that, if I had explained it, and if more,... then he would have Understood". But at this point the thought breaks off, and you start all over again. No matter how much you strain, no matter how much you try to be cool, calm, no matter how much you try thoroughly and rationally to overcome the offense, it turns out that your thoughts are simply walking in a vicious circle. You become ingrained in the idea that you were undeservedly offended, and you begin to feel sorry for yourself: “Oh, look, I’m so unhappy... And then there are such people... I expected one thing from him, but it turns out he’s just like that! But it’s okay, I’ll explain to him that this can’t happen to me: how could you, I’ll tell you.”
A person finds himself in an endless mental cycle. He strains, invents what to say to him, how to answer. How longer person abides in him, the more difficult it is to forgive the offender. He only moves away from this opportunity because he roots himself in resentment, moreover, he develops a stereotype in himself, biologically speaking, conditioned reflex, which prevents you from communicating with this person. As soon as you see him... and it goes: “Since he, so-and-so, a scoundrel, did this to you, it means it’s impossible to talk to him. You treat him so well, but he treats you so badly...” And people stop communicating with each other because they simply cannot overcome the insult: “I might be glad to talk to him, it seems that I even tuned in, and came, and I want to, but nothing works.”
There is a wonderful story about this in Russian literature by N.V. Gogol, “How Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich quarreled.” They quarreled over a mere trifle (Gogol is a genius), well, just nothing. And nonsense turned into mortal hatred. They have spent all their money in disputes, become impoverished, and still sue and quarrel with each other, although this is absolutely futile. There were good, calm, good-natured neighborly relations, and everything was lost. Why? Because the offense is not forgiven. And each is sure that the other is the enemy. This enmity has eaten them both up and will continue to eat them to death.
- Father, what should you do when some situation arises with a person that you do not understand? Then I figured it out with him, forgave everything, and forgot. I forgot everything. Normal relationship. The next time the person does something worse. You forgive again. But he treats you even worse. And then you start to doubt. Or maybe there was no need to forgive, so that he would understand that he shouldn’t behave like that? Maybe we need something different? And then, when you forgive for the third or fourth time, you have simply come to terms with the line of his behavior, you have come to terms with the fact that he is like this, and you just need to forgive, suddenly the relationship reaches such a high point when the first, second, fifth are remembered...
- This means that you have not forgiven the first, nor the second, nor the fifth.
- But I thought I forgave...
- And there is no need to take wishful thinking. This is not only your mistake, it is very typical for each of us.
- You think you have forgiven. You don’t sort things out, not even any complaints...
- But everything is boiling inside... Only this means that we have pushed the resentment somewhere into the subconscious, and there it remains. Because when a person sins (and offense is a sin, it doesn’t matter whether we were offended fairly or unfairly, it is evil that invades our lives), he tries to hide it away from himself... There is a certain spiritual reality, it burst into life won’t just disappear, it’s here. If we try to push this spiritual reality into the underground of our consciousness, this does not mean that it has disappeared, it means that it remains in your consciousness, but in those corners of it where you try not to look. And there the resentment lurks hidden and waits in the wings.
This can be compared to a disease: a person is a carrier dangerous disease, but she is dozing. Viruses are present in the body, and if some kind of overload occurs, the body weakens, the disease can flare up and fall with all its force on a person who did not even suspect that he was sick.
If we try to cope with resentment with our strengths, we really achieve nothing. This simply contradicts the words of the Lord, who said: “Without Me you cannot do anything.” - Out of my pride, I myself want to forgive. - Well, wish it. You can wish until you're blue in the face. You can, for example, go into the forest and wish that a mosquito would not bite you. Please. You can strain as much as you want. But the mosquito doesn’t know this and will bite you anyway. And the evil one is not a mosquito, it is an active, evil, aggressive, extremely mobile and proactive force that seeks and chooses the moment when a person is most defenseless before it. And then he attacks and holds the person in a death grip - reminds poignant moments, pushes the thought to analyze the situation and relive it again and again: “How can you act unfairly like this? How? Well, how could you? You, so-and-so, my neighbor and my friend, we’ve been close for so many years, and you told me this!” And he, perhaps, did not even notice that he had said something stupid and did not understand that he had hurt him so deeply and painfully. He just doesn't know that he offended you. Because the evil one made a fuss here, and man simply became an instrument of the devil’s power.
- Well, okay, there is an evil one, evil power, but where is the Lord? What does He want?
- So that a person from a proud person becomes humble. The Lord allows us these trials so that we fight our pride. If you want to defeat this inner spiritual infection, scream, just shout. It is not necessary to shout at the offender, not to take out your pain on those around you, but to shout to the Lord: “Lord, help me! Lord, I can't cope. Lord, now this sin will drown me. Lord, give me strength to overcome it!” Cast your sorrow on the Lord. Don’t even lay it down, but lift it up. Throw it up high, high, send your sorrow to the Lord. Don’t shove it into your subconscious, not on those around you: “Oh, you are so bad, you don’t feel sorry for me,” but “Lord, have pity, give me the strength to overcome my weakness, give me the strength to endure.” This is what the Lord expects from us. If you ask like this, if you pray to the Lord to strengthen you and give you strength to endure the pain, the Lord will help. The pain of resentment is objective reality and sometimes unbearable. How can I tolerate it? Yes, why endure it? It just can't be tolerated. You need to apply all your faith, all your spiritual strength, but rely not on yourself, but on the Lord; without God’s help you will not overcome it, you will not endure it.
- Father, are tears bad?
- There are different types of tears. There are tears from pride, from resentment, from failure, from envy... And there are tears of repentance, gratitude, tenderness.
- What if, in confession, we say that we have sinned with the sin of resentment, but it does not go away?..
- This is evidence of our lack of faith, inability to repent and fight sin. I say again: the offense will not go away on its own. If you want to get rid of it, treat it like any other sin - ask God for healing. Now, a smoker, for example, or an alcoholic, cannot cope with his sin on his own, that’s it, period. A completely calm statement of fact: I can’t. This does not mean that I am bad, inferior, abnormal. This means that I am just an ordinary person, so I cannot deal with sin on my own. If he could, the Lord would not have to come to earth. Why then did God need to accept humiliation, become a man, live and experience terrible persecution and persecution, endure the torment of the cross, if people could do without His help? Why was Christ? To save a person.
You feel bad, but do you really ask for salvation, for the Lord’s help? Well, how do you pray to Him? Any results? - No, but he offended me so much! Ah, I can't. - It’s not how you were offended, but how you pray! If you really pray, it means there will be results. What, the Lord is powerless to protect you from the evil one? Yes, you just don’t pray, you don’t ask! You don't want the Lord to help you. If you want, you can. That is why the Lord gives us His divine, all-conquering, greatest power in the world. Who is the evil one?
Ten is more than one, a hundred is more than ten, a million is more than a hundred, and a billion... But there is infinity. And compared to infinity, a billion is still zero. And although the evil one may be powerful, there is only one Almighty Lord. If God is with us, then no one is against us... Or rather, we are with Him, the Lord is always with us. If we are truly with God, under his divine grace, then nothing can be done to us. We can be destroyed physically, but not morally; we cannot be forced to do what we do not want. I don’t want to be offended, which means I won’t be offended. If they offend me, that means I will pray so that this offense can be overcome by the power of God.
- It seems to me that often a person, without realizing it, does not want to forgive an offense, because the awareness of his own rightness and the wrongness of the offender is somehow comforting.
- Yes: no one feels sorry for me, so at least I feel sorry for myself. This is absolutely a hindrance. And again, this is either a proud attempt to cope with one’s strengths, or wishful thinking. Resentment hurts. Even if you burn yourself with nettles, it hurts. Of course, and mosquito bite, and even a burn can be endured. But there are some deep wounds, they just don’t go away. Well, let’s say there’s some kind of abscess on my hand... Here medical care needed. You can look at your wound with all your might and say, “I want to be healthy.” No use. Nowadays, especially among Orthodox Christians, self-medication is very common. They call the doctor, and he treats the person over the phone. He heals for a day, two, a week, a month until the person understands that it would be better for him to go to the hospital after all... There they finally begin to treat him, he gets better. But you cannot treat over the phone, whether you are a thrice-Orthodox doctor or a thrice-Orthodox patient. If the illness is serious, you need to take efforts appropriate to your condition. What is our spiritual state? We don’t know how to pray, we don’t know how to humble ourselves, we don’t know how to endure, we know practically nothing. Unless you mindlessly chant prayers according to the prayer book - we know how to do that.
- How can you understand whether you have truly forgiven a person or are you trying to deceive yourself? What is the criterion for forgiving an offense?
- You can test yourself purely speculatively. Imagine that you come to the offender, offer to make peace, and he throws himself on your neck, you kiss, hug, cry, sob and everything is fine. Then imagine: you come and say: “Let's make peace? Forgive me, please,” and in response you hear: “You know, get out of here...”, “Wow. Yeah! I’m so humbled here, I came to you to ask for forgiveness, to offer peace, and you!..”
There was such a lord Meliton, during his lifetime they called him a saint. He lived in Leningrad. I had the good fortune to know him a little. He walked around in an old coat, alone, without any retinue. One day, Bishop Meliton came to the wonderful old man Archimandrite Seraphim Tyapochkin, knocked on the little gate, but the cell attendant did not see the bishop in the simple old man and said: “Father Archimandrite is resting, wait.” And he humbly waited. Once I asked the bishop: “Are you like this? loving person, how could you be like this? “How loving am I? - he was surprised, and then thought about it, “In my entire life, I have only offended a person once.”
conversation with parishioners
So, when Vladyka was a young man (even before the revolution), he studied at the diocesan school, in missionary courses, set up like a boarding school. Misha (that was his name then, Meliton is a monastic name) always studied well. One day he was sitting in the classroom, doing homework together with other guys, and suddenly Kolka, a slob and a disgrace, ran in there and scattered snuff. Everyone started sneezing, coughing... Noise, commotion. Kolka disappeared, and then the inspector appears: “What’s that noise?” And so the bishop said that he himself did not know how it escaped him: “It was Kolka who scattered the tobacco,” he pawned his comrade. This was completely unacceptable back then. Nowhere, not in the army, not in the gymnasium, not in the diocesan school, nowhere. Pawning a friend is the last thing. Well, Kolka was immediately sent to a punishment cell for disgrace for two hours. And Misha is running circles around this punishment cell, worrying about how he pawned his comrade. Although this disgrace provoked him, he doesn’t do anything himself and interferes with others, Misha worries, prays, walks... Finally, two hours later, Kolka is released, he rushes to him: “Kolya, forgive me! I don’t know how I escaped!” He told him: “Well, let’s get out of here...”. Mikhail again: “Kolya, forgive me!” The boy was 14-15 years old. They hit him on one cheek - he turned the other one. Well, what can you do, Kolka is furious and contemptuous, Misha turns around, but before he had time to take a few steps, Kolya catches up with him: “Misha, forgive me too!”
If you can turn the other cheek, then the second time normal person a hand will not rise when you truly humbly and lovingly ask for forgiveness. You really have to be a villain to hit him a second time.
The boy Misha had such faith, such prayer that he himself forgave the outrage that Kolka had committed and took all the blame upon himself, although he was provoked.
These are just people from a different cloth. They did not put up with what cannot be put up with - anger, resentment, sin. And we: “Oh, I was offended, and I was offended.” You have no right to be offended, to carry resentment in your soul - this is a sin, a spiritual illness. Whatever you want, just overcome it. If you are with the Lord, this is possible. If you have been hurt, then you need to have patience, endure and fight as long as it takes for you to truly overcome the sin. Here “I want” is completely insufficient. There is only one criterion: can you tolerate rudeness again or not?
But, of course, we are talking about more or less ordinary, everyday sins. There are grave sins, on the verge of death (let's say, betrayal - that's a completely different conversation). But actually from these everyday relationships, from these unovercome sins, a lump of sin accumulates that can crush. He cannot be tolerated. If you don’t want this stinking, rotting garbage heap to bury you, then fight every sin until you win. Try to repent so that no trace of it remains in your soul. And if there is nothing left, it means he has gone into oblivion.
- How is this? After all, there were words, there were actions, they were - this is a fact?!
- The Lord says that He blots out sins, but what is sin? Everything that exists in the world was created by God. Did the Lord create sin? No. This means that sin does not exist like other God-created ideas, spiritual and material entities. Everything that the Lord has created is good. But sin is evil, and the Lord did not create sin, which means that in this sense there is no sin, it is a kind of mirage. Is there a mirage? Happens. Do you see a mirage? See. But in reality what you see is not there? No. And there is no sin in that sense. On the one hand there is, but on the other hand there is no. If you repent, then this pseudo-spiritual entity is expelled by the Lord from this world. Just as it was not, so it will be. And if you really forgot and forgave, you can communicate with the person as if nothing had happened. But for this you must make enormous spiritual efforts. It's not that easy at all. Everyone knows how difficult it is to forgive. We do not forgive because we do not make the spiritual efforts that are necessary to defeat evil, to completely drive sin out of this world. We limit ourselves to calming down over time.
- Father, does it happen that you don’t know if a person is offended? For some reason he doesn't speak...
- Well, come and say, but only with love and gently: “Did I offend you in any way?”
- But...
- But then pray so that your prayer overcomes the evil that you have done involuntarily and unknown to you. The evil one does not act openly. He takes advantage of our weaknesses. You have to say: “How rude and insensitive I am if I did something like that and didn’t even notice how I hurt a person. Lord, forgive me, damned one. It's my fault. I offended the man so much that he doesn’t even want to talk to me. What did I do? Lord, grant me to see my sins.”
- What if a person has a flaw? If he drinks. If he is a boor?.. How to talk to him?
- It is difficult to answer such questions, because you need to look at a specific situation. But as an example, I can cite a story from the book “Father Arseny” “Nurse”. There, answering the question of how she grew up to be so good, the sister explains that her stepmother raised her this way. Her mother died, and this orphaned girl tormented her stepmother in the first degree, simply mocked her as only a 14-year-old child can. But the stepmother was a very deep, truly deep Christian. She prayed, it’s hard to describe how. And with her humility, fiery prayer and faith, this stepmother managed to break the heart of the embittered girl.
Her own dad drank heavily once a year, brought his comrades, drunk company burst into the house, and her dear mother When she was alive, she was terribly frightened, hid in a corner, listened to reproaches and almost endured beatings. The girl waited with fear for her father’s next binge (even before reconciliation with her stepmother). And then a drunk daddy and his friends burst in and demanded that his wife set the table. And the quiet and unresponsive stepmother suddenly grabs one friend, throws him out of the threshold, and closes the other one there and closes the door. Daddy: “What, on my friends!” Almost hit her. But she grabbed whatever came to her hand and brushed it aside... And that’s it, the issue was resolved.
- Is this humility?!
“The fact of the matter is that humility is a supernatural virtue. The Lord said: “I am humble.” One of the holy fathers said that humility is the robe of the Divine. It's supernatural. A humble person is one who defeats evil at its very root. And if for this he needs to use physical strength, which means he will use it. This is not at all a mattress-mat on which you can wipe your feet: “Oh, I endure, I’m so humble.” And inside everything is seething and seething... What kind of humility is this? This is passivity before evil.
- If close person he behaves, to put it mildly, badly towards you, does not suffer from special repentance, wouldn’t forgiveness be to his detriment?
- Will. Of course it will. But, I just gave an example of a stepmother and a girl. The stepmother had enough spiritual purity to understand how to behave with this girl. Because her hands probably itched more than once, or she wanted to tell her dad... But she realized that the child was behaving this way out of some kind of wild pain. The girl lost her mother! Therefore, I met with hostility a meek, humble, quiet, loving stepmother. The stepmother reacted not with resentment, not with malice in response to this terrible aggression that was poured out on her, but in an amazingly Christian way, with inspired humility. With her love, prayer, patience and humility, she was able to overcome the most difficult temptation for this girl.
- How do you understand when to humble yourself and remain silent, and when...
- For this you just need to humble yourself. Only a humble person distinguishes between good and evil. As the Lord blesses, so he will behave. For others, it may be useful to shed seven skins. Recently, one general (he was already approaching 80) told me: “When I was 14 years old, I began to behave completely disgracefully. Moreover, our family was not an easy one, the famous shipbuilder Academician Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov visited, he and my dad spoke French, and I understood French. When topics were forbidden for me, they switched to German. And then one day, in response to some of my next rudeness, daddy took me and spanked me thoroughly. This was not a violation of my dignity. I just had awkward age, hormonal explosion. And the father extinguished this explosion with a powerful opposite action. I am grateful to my dad." His father spanked him without malice. But I do not at all encourage everyone to spank their children, because for this you need to be the kind of dads and moms who can do this with humility, internally maintaining the presence of mind. A humble man does not lose spiritual world under no circumstances. Should I tear it off? Well, then, we’ll stick it out for the good of the cause, only with love.
- Is it possible to go to communion if you can’t overcome the pain?
- There are sins that cannot be overcome in one go and, of course, in such a situation special help God's is necessary. Therefore, you need to take communion, you need to pray, repent, fight your sin. And understand that either you will conquer your sin within yourself, straining all your strength, or sin will defeat you without any effort.
- What do you mean, will defeat you?
- This means that you will lose this person, you will not be able to communicate with him at all. Since you have sin in your soul, you will act sinfully, there will be vindictiveness, rancor, and resentment. You will accumulate grievances, look for and see where they are not, and interpret everything in a bad sense. This will lead to spiritual degradation. But you need to receive communion only on the condition that you pray from your heart and repent from your heart. You may be overwhelmed by this sin, but you fight against it. There are sins that cannot be overcome quickly, you need to fight them constantly, just make sure not to relax, get tired and lose hope, that with God's help you will defeat them. Then, of course, it is simply necessary to receive communion.
The Lord sends us such trials so that we learn to fight sins. We have forgotten about some ancient sins, we don’t even think about them, but we are sinners anyway, so the Lord sends us this present visible sin so that we feel it and overcome it. But since a person is a holistic being, if he overcomes this sin, then he also overcomes others. Man is a sinner, but the Lord is merciful. You ask for forgiveness for one sin - the Lord can forgive you others. But you cannot treat the sacrament as some kind of medicine: I took the pill and your headache went away. By the way, if the head is in at the moment stopped hurting, this does not mean that the disease has passed. And here we are talking about healing completely so that this moral pain does not return.
