Dealing with Hurts

Having recently spoke to someone on this subject I decided to publish an article concerning this.  In getting hurt the immediate human reaction is usually to justify one’s self and blame the other.  What follows is one usually nourishes the hurt and this is spiritually destructive.  How can we avoid this?  Here I am relating how various spiritual fathers/mothers have responded to this.  I will list them by name and continue with what they told me.

Fr. Polyvios (He was a noted confessor in Thessalonika during the 1990’s. His reply seems to be concentrated on the general improvement of a person’s spiritual life.)

The sins and distancing and fall from God is not only legalistic but there is also psychological and spiritual reasons behind this.  And sin creates a wall between us and God.  In as much as our relationship with God becomes bad simultaneously our relationship with others becomes bad.  The Scriptures say that love casts out fear.  One thing I can tell you which will bring one close to God is to become more active in the Sacraments of the Church especially with worship services.  Also to pray and to read the Scriptures, and the fathers different spiritual works.  Pass on to them more faith and trust in God, lead them to what is righteous in God.  Pass on this message: that He is a personal God, not an impersonal God Who just created the world and pushed it into motion and let it go, but in Orthodoxy God is a personal God.  This matters to our personal life and if we live that which is said in the Divine Liturgy, “Let us commit our whole live to Christ our God”, the more those petty feelings will leave us.

Sister Salome (Second to the Abbess Philothea, she was the senior sister in the convent of St. John the Theologian which was under the direction of St. Paisius the Athonite.) 

It doesn’t matter what has happened no one should say that they are 100% right.  A person must look at themselves and try to understand the cause of this happening and be ready to humble themselves and to say that they are part of the cause.  This would help it to pass away.  When hurts occur one has to look at the whole situation and try to understand in the context of the whole situation what has taken place.

     This could be for saving reasons.  This can work for salvation when one tries to understand it in a different way.  In this way it is for saving reasons: when one tries to see their own faults through what has happened, and not to say they are 100% right and to acknowledge God’s providence working for their good in what has happened.

Father Jeremiah (A monk of the Monastery of Iveron on Mount Athos)

I think there are a number of different things here it is possible that you don’t have a good relationship with someone.  This does not mean that you have to feel any evil against them or anger or hate.  If we do that shows that there is still some sort of egoism and self-centeredness with us.  If someone has sort of written themselves off and consider themselves to be nothing then if someone does you some harm or does something evil—that is, something which is  not true or whatever—I think that if you don’t consider yourself anything, sort of nothing and if you’ve written yourself off, I don’t think you’ll get upset.  It should not matter to you what other people think about you or what your reputation is, if it does then that can be just pride or vanity.  Nor should we have any anger or anything against anybody, we should always give forgiveness, even to people who do us harm or injure us and our enemies.  In a sense feel sorry for them, in the sense that they do this because there is something not right with them and they are sick.  If anything, they need our prayers so that they can repent.  If a person seems to be sort of against us maybe there is a breakdown in faith in that person.  So we must say a prayer after bad things they do or they say in order to guard ourselves and help the other person.

Father Zachariah (He is at present the Elder of the Monastery of St. John the Baptist at Essex, England)

He spoke of transforming the energy of emotion to something higher and gave the following example:

Suppose my brother whom I live with and love very much does something that hurts me.  And there is pain there.  I cannot escape it but what I must do is use the energy of this pain and transform it into something higher.  Otherwise I will start thinking on a psychological level: “He hurt me he should not have done this.”  I can get angry and have bitterness.  This is the sorrow that leads to death.  But I must transform this pain.  I have this pain and I take it to God in prayer.  And I should look to myself and think that I have been negligent and lazy.  And therefore this has come upon me because of my sins.  God woke me up and I have contrition because of my sins or negligence.  He used my brother to wake me up and I must pray and ask God to forgive my brother and have mercy on me.