The Passions
How am I supposed to love people who do horrific evil?
This is what Saint Sophrony of Essex was talking about, based on his understanding with his spiritual father Saint Silouan of Mount Athos, which he said, this is an impossible commandment, to love one's enemies, without the help of God. So truly we must have the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us to have love for even our enemies, to have compassion on them, to understand that they are misguided, that they are misformed by the influence of the devil. Because if we see a person who is misfigured or disfigured by sin, we should see that with repentance they could even become a great saint. Many saints in the church were once evil men. Period. We read the life of one saint every year in the church, which is Saint Mary of Egypt, and she lived a horrific life of sexual sin. And yet she repented, became such a great saint, she walked on water, she traveled far distances, she dwelt in the presence of God and lived basically on no food in the wilderness, and she is canonized by the church and we read her every single year. It reminds me of the story of Saint Porphyrios, where he saw a young woman with what he called a super mini skirt. He was with one of his spiritual children in Athens, I believe, and they saw this woman with a super mini skirt on, it says. And he turned to his spiritual child and he said, are you judging her? And he said, no, Elder, I am not judging her. No, Yeronda, I'm not judging her. And he says, that's good, because she has a very powerful soul. If she repented she would attain to a high level of holiness. So judgement and hatred and anger are the root of this hatred towards people. But if we saw them as Christ saw them, we would see them as people that were warped by the devil and his influence, and we would pray that the Lord have compassion and mercy on them, and we would hope for their salvation. But we can only do this with the power of the Holy Spirit. We need the grace of the Holy Spirit to enable us to love our enemies. In fact, Saint Silouan the Athonite said, if you want the sure test to know if somebody has the Holy Spirit, he says, they have love for their enemies. Essentially saying, listen, this does not happen without the power of the Holy Spirit.
Edited from his answer on camera. The clip has the full thing.
From “Live Q and A 12/11/25”