The Nature and Nurture of Wounds.

“St. John of the Ladder cites the case of a monk whom he met in a cenobium. He had a small book hanging in his belt and said that he wrote his thoughts in it each day and showed them all to his shepherd.

The discriminating shepherd can be illiterate according to the world, not knowing the wisdom of the world, but knowing God’s wisdom. Abba Arsenios had the habit of going to ask about his thoughts to a discriminating father who nevertheless was crude, illiterate, and uneducated.

Another brother asked him : “ How is it, Abba Arsenios, that you, with such a good Latin and Greek Education, ask this peasant about your thoughts?” He replied : “I have indeed been taught Latin and Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet of this peasant.”


When a person has learnt to open himself to God through his Spiritual father and to expose all his wounds created by thoughts, and the thoughts themselves, and at the same time listens to his advice, he is released from each one, he is inwardly at peace, and he knows what the peace of Christ means.”


( Source )

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