Whoever has overcome temptation, will also be able to help the tempted.
The past as a “fact” is not erased from life. We can cover it with repentance, make it powerless to eternity, but as a historical fact it remains definitively unchanged.
I am not, of course, the first one to feel ashamed of his past, of something inappropriate I said or wrote. But I already find some satisfaction in this, that even in the years that followed I was given the opportunity to reflect on the mistakes I made before.
And now I repeat that we preach nothing other than the Cross. And if we invite someone to go with us, we call him only to the Cross, and we consider this to be the greatest and most incomparable glory.
When the Lord visits the soul, then the Cross becomes lighter, and sometimes even implacably sweet. But when He is willing abandon it in every trouble and illness, then we must rejoice in the hope that he will receive even greater glory.
Elder Sophrony of Essex
*The article was originally published in Greek in ikivotos.gr