{"id":3326,"date":"2015-11-15T10:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T15:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3326"},"modified":"2015-11-11T15:01:09","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T20:01:09","slug":"the-spirituality-of-the-christian-east-20151115","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3326","title":{"rendered":"The Spirituality of the Christian East — 20151115"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ladder<\/a>The tenth step on St. John\u2019s Ladder of Ascent<\/em>, is SLANDER. <\/em> Malice and the remembrance of wrongs naturally lead to gossip and slander. I am sure that all of us can recall when we have heard persons go on for years criticizing what someone once said or did without any real consideration that the object of their slander or derision has long since repented and been forgiven by God. What a shameful sin this is! God, who alone has authority to forgive sins, who alone is without sin, does not hold the sins of penitents against them, yet we sinners refuse to forgive. Thus St. John writes: To pass judgment on another is to usurp shamelessly a prerogative of God, and to condemn is to ruin one\u2019s soul. <\/em>No doubt St. John had in mind the words of Paul: Who are you to judge another\u2019s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. <\/em><\/p>\n

To pass judgment is to usurp shamelessly a prerogative of God because only someone without sin has any right to pass judgment. Thus with these simple words the Lord shamed those who were ready to stone an adulteress: He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first<\/em>. Note that \u201che who is without sin.\u201d There may be sins we have not committed, but this does not give us license to get on our moral high horse and condemn others because they commit a specific kind of sin that we have not.<\/p>\n

Christians are often guilty of this sort of discrimination. We may say, \u201cI am a sinner,\u201d but often what we really mean is, \u201cI am a sinner, but not like that <\/em>person.\u201d \u201cI am a sinner, but I don\u2019t commit that <\/em>sin. We accept \u201cnormal\u201d sins and are only outraged by \u201cabnormal\u201d sins. And by what right, and on what basis, have we decided that one person\u2019s weakness is more worthy of condemnation that our own? I believe this step generates great food for thought!
\nWhat do you think?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tenth step on St. John\u2019s Ladder of Ascent, is SLANDER. Malice and the remembrance of wrongs naturally lead to gossip and slander. I am sure that all of us can recall when we have heard persons go on for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-spirituality-of-the-christian-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3327,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions\/3327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}