Why true Christians have no enemies
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- Опубліковано 2 лип 2024
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The video 'Why true Christians have no enemies' was recorded by Fr Seraphim (Aldea) at Iona Monastery (The Orthodox Monastery of the Dormition of the Mother of God and All Saints of Iona), on the Isle of Iona.
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May God bless us all!
😢 We have a situation that your teaching fits. Thank you fr Seraphim for your teaching, only God can help, so I pray. Hope the weather improves quickly 🙏🙏🙏Prayers for all of you.
Father thank you for dedicating your life to God, please pray for my wife during her pregnancy and our submission to God. Thank you.
Thank you for these words Father! I come from a very convert-heavy parish, where a great majority of our community has come from other faiths, and I do find that there is a very common temptation among us, especially early on after coming to the Orthodox church, to carry some degree of hate or negativity towards our past faiths and communities. I think many people tend to feel as though they were deceived or led astray before, and they want to quickly cast it all off into the fire as they start anew in the church, but end up wrongfully hating the people they had known before. I have witnessed many times that this frequent attitude of callousness in "casting off" our pasts has now become an obstacle for our brothers and sisters from those other faiths against even considering the Orthodox Church, because they rightly perceive that so many of us have judged them in condemnation. I remember you saying before, Father, that to hate your brother or sister is to murder them in your heart, and how true that is, if our judgment becomes an obstacle to their salvation. We may not have physically murdered their body, but we would have murdered their soul. Lord have mercy on us.
Yes, this is a very common attitude. It is very painful to see and hear - especially if you are associated with a denomination that is subject to a lot of judgment from other Christians.
This is especially painful when you hear Christ's words to that young man 'go back to your own people and tell them all the good things God has done for you'. This happens especially in the West, because most new converts (including convert clergy) have not let go of their previous protestant mindset, which forces them to define themselves not by loving those they left behind, but by judging and rejecting them. Pray for them and learn from these mistakes - there is opportunity to grow even in witnessing the mistakes of others. Be blessed, my dear one.
I suffered from this when I became an atheist but thankfully God helps me at least try to avoid doing it again since becoming Orthodox. It is a very easy trap to fall into. Lord have mercy on us.
Thank you father for this beautiful message.
Glory be to God, dear one. Please keep us in your prayers.
Please pray for me father that I have the will to come back to Christ and his church.
Thank you for blessing my life with your beautiful sermons
Glory be to God for all things, dear one. Please keep us in your prayers.
Whenever I listen to Father S. I feel a sense of peace and understanding. He just makes everything easier to comprehend for me. I believe God created us all in his image and that we all need to love each other and forgive one another. It is hard to do but we need to do our best. Thank you Father for all you bring to us week after week. Be Blessed!
Father pray for Ricardo, from Mexico. Thank you for your words and your wisdom. It is truly a blessing
May Christ heal anything that needs healing in him, my dear one.
Thank you, Fr. Seraphim for your message of love and for your ministry. From a grateful Episcopalian, praying for all my brothers and sisters at thr Mull and Iona monasteries.
Hi father. Thank you for your generosity and your sincere desire to help people love Christ. Please father pray for me because i am a sinner. I felt deep in a hole where I'm am slowly dying from the pain I have not to be able to overcome. If I was a true christian, father, I would have an enemy, worst than the devil himself and that would be me. But I have a dream, father, and it is to become a true disciple and maybe a friend of Jesus Christ. I dream to become a true christian ! The Lord Jesus called me once and I really tried to follow him. For many years I toggled between a life of fragile freedom and a life of sin. I searched for help and I prayed every day of my sinful life. And I still pray. And still Jesus called me again and again and with all of my heart I rose on my feet and followed Him. But now father I am so tired ! I am tempted to say it is impossible to overcome myself... and I fear to loose God. Listening to your teachings gave me many times hope and that's why I decided to write to you. sorry for my english, because I'm french and I hope I was clear enough. Thank you for your time and may God bless you for eternity.
You speak direct to my situation. Thx. You and the monastic community are ever in my prayers.
That is so kind and loving of you, dear one. Thank you for your prayers, and may Christ repay you for your love when you need Him most.
acest mesaj ar trebui să fie un "fir roșu" în studiile teologice din orice liceu și facultate. E de fapt lentila ce pune dragostea de Hristos în lumina corectă.
Dear Father, we love you! What a beautiful icon of the Theotokos in your background! ❤
It is a new mosaic icon of the Mother of God, which I hope to install at the entrance to my cell one day. It is beautiful, indeed. Be blessed, dear one.
@@mullmonastery May the most Holy Theotokos always protect and provide for you and the monasteries, dear Father! ❤️
Thank you Father. So needed ❤️
Wow thank you Father. I am always amazed and nourished by your messages. This one is one of the most powerful. The Lord sustain you and welcome you in His Love and Peace and Truth.
bless you father and thank you. it was a blessing to listen.
Thank you for putting into words, what I have no idea how to express. Peace be with you.
Be blessed!
Father, bless. I like how Fr Stephen De Young puts it, we are to see other humans, not as enemies, but as slaves to the enemy, so pity and empathy are the attitude we are to take to our fellow slaves
Thank for you for this message, Father. I need to listen to it over and over. I know how to be "pious" and involved in my Orthodox community and to feel I love God (Father/Son/Holy Spirit) -- but I have serious trouble loving (even not disliking!) most people. This is a grave spiritual problem, I know. May the Lord have mercy on me.
Amen, amen, amen
I needed this.
My hurt pride has fueled hate from daily spiritual attacks. How can we trust others when we know we are being used. I guess be wise a serpents and gentle as doves. It is hard to separate sometimes. Daily repentance has helped but some days your just tired and you pick up the offenses again and have to lay it back down at the Father's feet. Deliver us O Lord.
Amen❤❤❤❤please bless us Armine Artak Zhormen and Artush🎉🎉🎉🎉thank you
Glory be to God on High! There is so much hate and judgment in the world. Thank you for clarifying that both are same. There is so much that each one of us have to repent for so that we may taste the Glory of God.
Repentance means change, my dear one, and change begins with acknowledging what we do wrong. Once we know and we own up to what we do wrong in the sight of God, repentance simply means correcting that behaviour. I pray that all of us (myself included) get to see the depth of our sin, so we may at least begin our repentance in this lifetime. Please remember us in your prayers
❤ This is a message that I needed to hear.
I will ask God to help me with this Holy way of being. Lord, have mercy on me a sinner. If God can forgive me for my stuff I should be more Christ like to forgive another. There are people that I have despised. I need to stop this. What I should do is pray 🙏 for people for whom Christ died on the cross and that is everyone. 🙏
It's always great to stop by and spend some time. Have a blessed day.
The same to you, dear one - wherever you are in this big world, may Christ bless your day.
Dear father seraphim, Thanku so much 🙏🏽I have been witnessing my own mind, reacting to my troubled heart, in thoughts of despair, and rejection, of those seemingly violating the scriptural Truths - almost feeling a loathing - Thanku for reminding that we cannot loathe WITHOUT judgement - yes yes - thankuuuuuuu 🙏🏽yes I have been feeling self righteous - forgive me lord 🙏🏽
I grew up an angry young man
Psychology showed me my anger was directed against my deceased mother.
Psychotherapy showed me my anger was justified but it wasn’t my mother’s fault
Now my anger dissipates right?
It does.
But I wondered about psychological damage; I wondered about just how damaging it is, because we have no idea it is even there.
I wondered if God makes all things good where do we get a corruptible psyche from?
The answer was original sin and Satan. There is the origin of our corruption, body and psyche. Now I didn’t have to just let my anger dissipate
We still have somewhere to place our anger - at Satan.
Now I am no longer angry with my neighbour but with Satan
Now I am no longer a divided humanity but a united humanity against Satan
`For our struggle is not against flesh and blood'…... (St. Paul)
We’re all in this together
Ce que vous dites me parle, j'ai de la compassion et je prie pour une personne qui me persécuté mais je me défends aussi selon la loi des hommes.Dieu vous bénisse et vous garde, Amin 💘. Nous sommes toutes et tous unis en Dieu (trinité une) ,c'est l'oublis de Dieu qui détruit l'humanité ❤
May God bless and protect you for your prayers and love, dear Isabelle. May He nourish this seed of understanding in you, so you may grow spiritually and help others grow, as well.
@@mullmonastery 🙏
Thank you Father. This topic made me think of the beautiful prayer by St. Nikolai Velimirovich: Bless My Enemies...Bless my enemies oh Lord, even I bless them and do not curse them. Enemies have driven me into Your embrace more than friends have...
I love you father and your online mass was so beautiful thank you ❤
Beautiful words, thank you for sharing this grace. This helps me with my own struggles, this issue in particular has turned into a theme in my life, as two people I love deeply are negatively affected and it has driven me to anger towards the people who have made suffer in vane. And it drove me to a spiritual fall due to anger, from which I am being allowed to rise from slowly, by God's incomparable grace. Thank you brother
Praying for true reality. I have not heard this yet. I have an important business meeting coming up. I don’t want to over think, or even think at all. I need God’s help, in Jesus Name. Covet your prayers sincerely in Jesus Name
I just received my prayer ropes today and thank you Father for finding the time to send them in the middle of your pilgrimages and also for this video. They all say dont hate the sinner ,hate the sin, but nobody talks too much about how to do that, the struggle of finding Gods image in everyone while also recognising what might be keeping them away from God.(i am thinking about LGBTQ month and how confusing it can be as a Christian having friends -who are good people, supporting this movement ) Born orthodox in 🇷🇴 , but rediscovering God now, 37 years too late, and i appreciate the humbleness and love from your content, together with standing upright for the true values of our Faith. Pray for the sinner in me. God bless. Doamne ajuta
God bless. Mulțumim. Doamne-ajută
Tot dragul, Andrei.
Spoken so well, brought me to tears. I made a short video with similar thoughts yesterday, and then found yours. I see the rise of religious hatred against others, and I have made an effort to learn from each of the world faiths, as I know Christ became man to teach us the fullness of God. In my video I quote the Ramayan, which says, “There is neither wise nor fool. Each one is as the Lord would have him to be.”
Father please pray for my sister, she stopped communicating all of her family for 7 years already. My 70 year old mom is heartbroken and missing her.
Very true* God Father is only❤
❤ Warm wishes ,dear father !! God bless you !
Thank you father ! 🙏
This is a beautiful and very deep message dear Father, from a profound thinker and a truly gifted preacher. You are mistaken when you say the message is not elevated. It is. I send you love and light; and prayers for your communities and yourself. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your love and prayers, dear one. May Christ enlighten us all so we may learn from, and grow through each other.
maybe one day ill visit in person, i think i would really love that. for now, i will attend in Christ:)
Thank you ‼️
I was rage at some people (maybe still I am), but when i heard "no one is evil by choice, (...)but by delusion". It helped me 🙂
Thank you, Holy Father Seraphim ❤
IC XC
NI KA
This does me so very much father. Thank you for spending your time to explain. God bless you.
May God bless us all, dear Steven. Please remember us in your prayers.
I find that if we have our own sins constantly before our eyes , we become less judgemental like in the story of saint Moses the strong. We, as humans, tend to have amnesia and forget the grace of God that saved us and will save our brother. Thank you for the reminder as we continue to strive in this daily struggle , to not be a part of the world but still love the people that Christ died for 🙏🥰✝️
This is the teaching of the Church in one voice, my dear one: only the one who forgets his own sins can judge the sins of another. This is why repentance is essential for our salvation, and this should be a life-long process, taking us increasingly deeper in our understanding of our personal sin, which in turn should make us increasingly less likely to judge our brothers and sisters. Please remember us in your prayers
Thank you
I like how your gestures reflect on the mosaic. Feels like Saint Mary herself reaching to us, talking to us through you or alongside you about her Son and about us. Thank you for the video Fr. 🙏
I try to always have an icon with me, dear one, because that is an immediate visual confession of the Orthodox faith. Please remember us in your prayers.
Its easy to justify making a man your enemy when you see him as a part of a group rather than an individual made in the image of God. We can stop seeing the person and just see the sinner when in reality they are no different than us, massive sinners that we are!
AMEN ❤ AMEN AMEN
I'm very thankful you posted this. So many Baptist preachers say that if you're a Christian you must have enemies. But St Paul admonished us that we should live at peace with all men. I'm no example for anyone to follow, but I have no enemies other than the defeated one and his minions. I have no enemy in the human race and I have been to places where people say they want to kill Christians
Thank you, Father, for your wisdom and humility and for simplifying it theologically for us. I think many of us, especially the younger ones among us below 40, are struggling with coexisting with both Muslims and the new ideology of Wokeism. Suddenly, our thoughts can start wandering, leading us to hold grudges and begin researching the days of the Byzantine Empire and ancient conflicts. Thanks for your reminder of what Christ is all about. I will go and pray now.
Glory to God
☦
Old conflicts are nothing but old examples of past sins. No other proof of humanity's fall from Grace is as brutally obvious as war, including at our own, personal level - killing someone (physically or spiritually). May Christ bless and protect us all from falling into this depth of darkness.
@@mullmonastery Thank you father, God bless you.
One is not sure how one can truelly love and beloeve in everlasting damnation.
Beautiful talk - thank you! I'm not a baptised Christian, but I've been praying lately and feeling like the words sound empty when I speak them, like prayer may not be the "healthy coping mechanism" that I was trying to convince myself it is. After listening to these words, I think this is because of self-hatred, which I've been trying to let go of somehow. I wonder if joining a bible study will help this.
Beautiful words, beautiful wisdom. ❤You remind me my spiritual father.Much love and blessings from Greece 🇬🇷 ❤🎉 ( it's beautiful to see the Holy Mother with the Greek letters 🎉) May the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth bless you all ❤🎉
Wow iam speechless
Please keep us in your prayers, dear one. May Christ bless and save us all.
Thank you for this insight. Perfect timing.
Wise words. thanks mullmonastery. God bless you. Amen.
May God bless us all, dear one.
🙏Jesus I Trust in you🙏🕊✨🕊
Beautiful! If I may say we should look at ourselves in the same way. Because we beat ourselves up so much. God bless you Father. Love you!!
That is true in so many cases, my dear one. May Christ teach us all and direct us all out of our own darkness and into His Light.
Thank you for your heartfelt message of love.
Wow, those are profound life changing words, Father. God has stirred up His love in me through you. Thankyou!
Thank you Farther, your words on our sin are so profound. You have helped me, greatly, to look at my own sin with God's eyes. May the Lord bless you! ☦
Thank you for this message 😔.
These words were far better to swallow.
Glory be to God for all things, dear one. Please remember us in your prayers.
Coming back here, in a few!
Thank you,father ❤ Be blessed, Amen 🙏
Thank you Father for sharing these Truths with us. So very needed right now. I Bless you for your compassion and straight forwardedness.🙏❤️
Thank you Father Seraphim for your profound message, it's something I want to aspire to, and it does require much effort & discipline, but it is necessary. Wishing you and the Monasteries, God's Blessings.
Thank you. I needed to hear this. May God bless all of you with his joy and peace.
Please pray for me. My name is Malachi. Thank you.
May Christ bless and protect you, dear Malachi. May He keep you safe in His embrace.
@@mullmonastery Thank you. I hope to meet you one day in the Kingdom, so I can thank you in person.
This is just what I needed now!! Glory to God for all things!
Loving your enemy doesn't mean they're not your enemy. I don't think we should define enemy as someone you hate. Hatred isn't a precondition for enmity. When someone is trying to destroy or undermine or oppose you, he is your enemy. Pretending otherwise is how you get devoured by an enemy that you pretend doesn't exist Demons are my enemies not because I fail to love them, but because they have failed to love me.
I'm so pleased to have you speak to this. It's an important message and you've treated it so truthfully. God is love, mercy, compassion and we are to work at relecting that to all humanity, no matter. THAT is the call of God to us. Such a beautiful message. Thank you.
These words of yours contain the Holy Spirit. I have felt them all.
God is love.
God is holy.
Therefore, love is holy.
God bless you and humanity.
Glory to God!
🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
❤❤❤❤❤
Thank you, Father, for this message. So true.
I hang onto every word you say, Father Seraphim. I know that every word from your mouth is from the heart of the Messiah. Thank you eternally for your messages and guidance. I will thank the Holy One every day of my life for placing you in front of me. What a merciful and glorious Father we serve.
Amen🙏 Thank you dear Father❤
Amazing advice. I unfortunately just hated on someone last night. next time I will try to turn this free hateful surplus energy into a prayer for them. Thank you, Brother. ☦
11:38 Thank you, Father. Your points resonates strongly in my soul. My wife and I , not yet married but engaged at the time, were in a Pentecostal-charismatic church. We decided to hold off on sexual intimacy early on in the relationship, which didn't change when we decided to move in together.
At first we sought dialog with the church leadership and it was fine. However, as more and more church members became aware of it, a mud fight developed. It reached a point where certain people were telling me one thing in front of me and something completely different behind my back. Deceitfulness of the highest order. It reached a point where, in a conversation between three of us, our Christianity was denied and we were supposedly living in a state of sin, in the sense of apostasy before God.
There is no question that my actual love for my neighbor, forgiveness and simply being a Christian was put to the test extremely severely during this time.
And so, thanks to your explanations Father Seraphim, I now recognize what happened in those people and in me at that time. How we lost our way and only saw the sin in each other. In any case, no longer the divine light in the other(s).
I will continue to pray about this and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service.
🙏
Thank you dear father…. Where can I get more information about the pilgrimage and/or register for it?
🙏🙏🙏
❤
God in the sense you are talking indeed does't not have anymies. But we most certanly do. He clearly aknowlages thit. But however, we must be angels of the New Creation and lov them.
That's a beautiful mosaic icon. Where did you get it? I would love to have one.
The enemy is the serpent, the dragon, and the fallen angel ALL known as satan. He goes after the children of God to get to the Lord Jesus. Even in the end times, we see the people attacking True Christians for the sake of the Lord's name as they did with the apostles and the martyrs who were martyred for their faith by the Romans. God bless
And..I don't think we should judge how fallen someone is.
Peace between man and God. Peace between man and his neighbor. Peace between Monk and puffins.
First! 🤗
Edifying words, as always, father Serafim blesses us with. What puzzles my mind though is why God created this beautiful world for us, but Satan is the ruler of it. I don't fully get it.
Thank you Fr Seraphim
Glory be to God for all good things, dear one
I know you say that you often struggle with your words here, and it may be confusing. You may even be right, that you could word things better more concisely, but what you do, and you do this far better them most Christians, even most priests and pastors, is you show a love and passion what what you are saying. Many seem to be preaching more for their glory, using an authority granted by what ever church they belong to. They seem to only care about those that agree with them, and everyone who does not is their enemy.
It is very rare to run across, even orthodox priests and content creators that show that genuine love, almost a Christ like love. You do not have to be a slick, smooth talker for that love to show through. Often those who can say what they want to perfectly, those you feel what they said is 100% right without flaw, often are operating under some form of deception. This is evidenced by cult leaders and false teachers often often being quite charismatic and well spoken.
You always come of as genuine, loving in ways that are vary rare, and for me, as a half lost Christian unsure where my denomination falls, where I am being called by Christ, I have no doubt of your faith, your love, and sincerity. I wish I could find more like you, especially in my community, I would love to find a local church where those preaching had your qualities, and a humility in their teaching and wisdom.
You don't have to wish someone harm to have an enemy. An enemy is also someone who wishes harm to you. Even Jesus has those. Jesus said to love them, and he himself did
☦️🇷🇸☦️🇷🇸serbia
These are harsh words. What to do with the enemies who want you dead?
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤🥹🙏
:-)
Thank you, Dear Father Seraphim, for the closeness of your sharing what matters most to us - as Christians!
Christ speaks in depth through you!
You do each one of us a world of good!
We all grow through each other, dear Ioana. We all have something to learn from each other if we allow ourselves to learn, if our self-righteousness and pride do not prevent us from learning. I am grateful to Christ that He allows us to do anything good in this world, and I am also immensely grateful to Him for how much I learn from all my interactions with everyone
Satan is the e my enemy
The enemy is the Christian’s enemy