Vigils Reading

ON SLANDER AND JUDGING

From a commentary by St John Climacus2 ◊◊◊

No sensible person, I think, will dispute that slander is born of hatred and remembrance of wrongs… Slander is an offspring of hatred, a subtle yet coarse disease, a leech lurking unfelt, wasting and draining the blood of love. It is simulation of love, the patron of a heavy and unclean heart, the ruin of chastity… I have heard people slandering, and I have rebuked them. And these doers of evil replied in self- defense that they were doing so out of love and care for the person whom they were slandering. I said to them: ‘Stop that kind of love, otherwise you will be condemning as a liar him who said: “Him that… talked against his neighbour, did I drive away.” If you say you love, then pray secretly, and do not mock the man. For this is the kind of love that is acceptable to the Lord.’ But I will not hide this from you (and of course be careful, lest you judge the offender): Judas was in the company of Christ’s disciples, and the thief was in the company of murderers. Yet it is a wondrous thing, how in a single instant, they exchanged places.

He who wants to overcome the spirit of slander should not ascribe the blame to the person who falls, but to the demon who suggests it. For no one really wants to sin against God, even though we all sin without being forced to do so. I have known a man who sinned openly and repented secretly. I condemned him as a profligate, but he was chaste before God, having propitiated <God> by a genuine conversion.

Do not regard the feelings of a person who speaks to you about his neighbour disparagingly, but rather say to him… ‘I fall into graver sins every day, so how can I criticize him?’ In this way you will achieve two things: you will heal yourself and your neighbour with one plaster. This is one of the shortest ways to the forgiveness of sins; I mean, not to judge. ‘Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.’

Fire and water are incompatible; and so is judging others in one who wants to repent. If you see someone falling into sin at the very moment of his death, even then do not judge him, because the Divine judgment is hidden from men. Some have fallen openly into great sins, but they have done greater good deeds in secret; so their critics were tricked, getting smoke instead of the sun…

If it is true (as it really is true) that ‘with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged,’ then whatever sins we blame our neighbour for, whether bodily or spiritual, we shall fall into them ourselves. That is certain. Hasty and severe judges of the sins of their neighbour fall into this passion because they have not yet attained to a thorough and constant remembrance and concern for their own sins. For if anyone could see his own vices accurately without the veil of self-love, he would worry about no one else in this life, considering that he would not have time enough for mourning for himself, even though he were to live a hundred years, and even though he were to see a whole River Jordan of tears streaming from his eyes…

The demons, murderers as they are, push us into sin. Or if they fail to do this, they get us to pass judgment on those who are sinning, so that they may defile us with the stain which we ourselves are condemning in another… A good grape-picker, who eats the ripe grapes, will not start gathering unripe ones. A charitable and sensible mind takes careful note of whatever virtues it sees in anyone. But a fool looks for faults and defects. And of such it is said: “They have searched after iniquity, and in searching they are grown weary of searching.’ Do not condemn, even if you see with your eyes, for they are often deceived