Everything, except true love, is an illusion. If a friend behaves coldly, rudely, spitefully, insolently to you, say: “This is an illusion from the enemy.” If a feeling of enmity, arising from your friend’s coldness and insolence, disturbs you, say: “This is an illusion of mine, but the truth is that I love my friend, in spite of everything, and I do not wish to see evil in him, which is an illusion of the demon, and which is in me also; I will be indulgent to his faults, for they are in me also. We have the same sinful nature.”

Saint John of Kronstadt

When I read that this morning in “Daily Lives,” I didn’t have to work hard to bring up examples in my mind of times when people I’ve thought I knew suddenly seemed to turn on me, or times when I turned on them. When I’m the one in the wrong, I’m almost as surprised as the other person. If they say “Where did THAT come from?” I’ve had to sheepishly answer “I don’t know.” Which isn’t quite the truth. I do know where it comes from. We all do, I think, except the most deluded.
But St. John’s admonition is the wisest thing of all. It’s a good thing not to remember the hurts — real or imagined — that you’ve received from others. It’s also a good thing to be able to put your own mistakes aside, once you’ve repented and atoned for them. But the best thing is to call God to remembrance always in such clear focus that all other things are unreal by comparison. Only then can you see that, as St. John says, “everything, except true love, is an illusion.” It’s only the times when I come anywhere near that state that I become a little more of a “true lover” myself — a better friend, relative, wife, neighbor and woman.