Revealing Temptations

“Those Christians who truly love God prove their love by bearing temptations and are strengthened in love: they are tested, like gold in fire, and by this testing become friends of God. On the contrary, those who do not love God ‘fall away as dross, since giving way to the enemy they leave the field of battle laden with guilt, either because of the laxity of their mind or because of their pride. They were not worthy to receive the power that the saints had working with them…’ In this way, temptations reveal who is a friend and who is an enemy of God, who is faithful and who is not. Temptations are therefore that ‘crisis’, a judgment before the Last Judgment, where the separation of the sheep from the goats takes place.” (Hilarion Alfeyev, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, pgs. 98-99)

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