Forgetfulness (Spiritual)
- Michael Haldas
- Jul 8
- 4 min read
“The received word of God, sown into the depth of the heart, begins its secret work, like leaven in dough. However, that which was heard once before must be constantly repeated. Such is the nature of Man. He is prone to forget the most important things. It is amazing, for example, that it is part of our nature to always forget that we are going to die. If we remembered this always, then we would have lived differently. Also, awareness of the fact that God sees all our deeds, and even our innermost thoughts is constantly disappearing from our memory. If we remember this, the number of our sins would be drastically reduced!” (Sergei Komarov)
“Modern culture may indeed have become “disenchanted.” It represents a cultural amnesia, a forgetting of the fulness of our humanity. When we become lost in our entertainments, we become prisoners of the passions and seemingly immune to true wonder. The passions are an easy mark for a culture lost in commerce. Nonetheless, there remains within us a quiet suspicion that there is more to the world than meets the pocketbook. That suspicion, along and along, can blossom into faith when doors are opened, or we perceive the One Door that truly matters reflected in the world around us.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“What did Pharaoh do when he wanted to make the Jews forget about God, to lose the desire to serve God?” He gave them work and money. He told the Egyptians: “Give them food, whatever they want, even a little more, so they eat well. And give them work for the whole day.” If they eat and work all day, they’ll forget about God. And this is exactly what Satan does with us sometimes. He gives us a ton of work so we’ll spend the whole day amidst work and worries. He also gives us the means to have a good time thanks to this work. And the result is that we lose our aspiration, our direction, and we forget where we’re going.” (Elder Paisios, Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol)
“ [Christ to the Goats] ‘My child, have you ever thought that ignorance and forgetfulness are the two greatest sins? You lost the aim of life. You lost the salvation of your soul by ignoring and forgetting your poor and miserable brothers and sisters. By forgetting and ignoring the fact that I Am in them! I Am in you! I Am in everything! There is no excuse for not knowing Me, Your Creator! You lost your aim by making yourself the only thing you ever remembered and thought about. You are far from the actual purpose of your creation. You failed!” (Bishop Emilianos)
“Self-knowledge about our weaknesses may be necessary so that we can make amends to others, so that we can realize whom we’ve hurt, so that we can stop hurting the people around us. Such knowledge is also helpful if we would have a good and honest confession. But self-awareness alone won’t lead to transformation. To have that, you have to unknow yourself by forgetting yourself and falling in love with Christ. This art of becoming a child again, of having the self-forgetfulness of an innocent child, is the art of spiritual life in the Church, when that childlike innocence is then focused not on toys or games but on the loving face of Christ.” (Timothy G. Patitsas)
“Forgetfulness is the forgetting of Wisdom's laws concerning virtue, and the beginning of its cure is obedience from the heart to Wisdom. Such obedience is the road to life and peace.” (Orthodox Study Bible, Proverbs 3:1,2)
“In the 1981 film Excalibur, the wizard Merlin tells King Arthur and his knights that ‘it is the doom of men that they forget.’ This is true. Due to the virus of sin in us we tend to easily forget all of the wrong things we say or do, while easily remembering the wrongs said and done to us. We forget what we should remember and remember what we should ‘forgive and forget,’ reducing these latter words to a meaningless cliché. Only a continual focus on Christ will heal this way of thinking and being.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)
"Since God is invisible, forgetfulness of God is one of the greatest human temptations. Fasting helps to mitigate that forgetfulness and, in so doing, makes love for God possible." (Aristotle Papanikolaou)
“This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.” (Peter Kreeft)
“Monotony and misery cannot exist where there is love. But the fire of love must be kept burning warmly & brightly with the sweet wood of sacrifice. In teaching us to cross the “I” out of life, our Lord tells us the secret of happiness; what the Saints call the ecstasy of self-forgetfulness. For divine love is always self-effacing, seeks to give rather than to receive, to serve rather than be served, to love rather than to be loved, and will sacrifice anything for the beloved. Only then does love become a clean and holy fire in the heart, and not an ugly flare of lust.” (St. Seraphim of Sarov)
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