Commentary on Ephesians

Desert Fathers

One of the brothers asked Isidore, the priest of Scetis, 'Why are the demons so afraid of you?' He said, 'Ever since I became a monk, I have been trying not to let anger rise as far as my mouth.' He said also that though he felt impulses towards the sins of concupiscence or of anger, he had not consented to them for forty years.

Macarius said also, 'If you are stirred to anger when you want to reprove someone, you are gratifying your own passions. Do not lose yourself in order to save another.'

[Syncletica] said, ' "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath" (Eph. 4:26). Likewise, if you wait until the sun is going down on your life, you will not know how to say, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matt. 6:34). Why do you hate the man who has harmed you? It is not he who has harmed you but the devil. You ought to hate the sickness, not the sick man.'

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