Sin is always a crime against the Father’s love. Sin occurs when we distance ourselves from God and incline towards the passions. Repentance is always bound up with abstinence from sinful leanings. Humanism, too, involves overcoming various vices. But in so far as ignorance of the deep-rooted essence of sin -pride – persists, this evil source remains entrenched and the tragical-ness of history continues to increase. The holy Fathers tell us that humility alone can save mankind, and pride alone is enough to bring us to the darkness of hell…. A great many of us frequent churches erected by man but relatively few find the “narrow way” which leads to the heavenly tabernacle not made by hands (c.f. Matt 7:14).
The struggle to “cast off the works of darkness, and… put on the armor of light” (Rom. 13:12) is a painful one. The age-old experience of holy ascetics demonstrates irrefutably that pride is the principle obstacle to enlightenment by the Holy Spirit…. God is Light, God is Truth, Love, Mercy, and much else. I would make bold to add: God is Humility. Nothing that is unclean – which means proud – can draw near Him. Pride is abomination, the opposite of Divine goodness. Pride is the principle of evil, the root of all tragedy, the sower of enmity, the destroyer of peace, the adversary of divinely-established order. In pride lies the essence of hell. Pride is the “outer darkness” where man loses contact with the God of love. “Men loved darkness” (Jn. 3:19). Repentance alone can deliver us from this hell.
People make their own hell for themselves. Better to be killed than kill is the attitude of the humble man of love.
~Archimandrite Sophrony
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