On advice

In teaching others, you are also learning yourself. Amidst the most difficult time in my life, when I was sick and suffering both in mind and body, I had to exchange letters much more often than ever before. By a strange coincidence, everyone dear to my heart was also going through hardship. Everyone would write to me, asking for help and advice. That is when I realised just how close-knit human souls truly are. Once you have thoroughly suffered yourself, you can understand everyone who is suffering and you almost know what to tell them. There is even more to it. Your mind itself becomes clearer. You come to understand things that were previously hidden from you, and you learn to see what each person needs.

Recently, I have even received letters from people I barely know, and I was able to write responses I could not have written before. And yet, I am no wiser than the average person. I know people who are far more intelligent and educated than I am, and they could give advice that is much more helpful and valuable than mine. Yet, they neither do so nor know how! How great is our Lord who makes us wise! And how does He make us wise? He makes us wise through suffering, through precisely that woe that we fear and seek to escape. In suffering and woe we find the seeds of wisdom we would not be able to learn from books. Yet whoever finds one of those seeds does not have the right to hide and withhold it from everyone else. It is not your treasure; it is God's. God cultivated it in you, and He grants us His gifts so we may use them to serve others. He commanded that we teach each other unceasingly.

Never cease to teach and give advice! Yet if you want it to benefit your own soul as well, do what I have long resolved to always do. You should always apply every piece of advice you give to yourself as well. It does not matter who you give it to, even if it is meant for someone you have nothing in common with. If you are reprimanding or criticising someone, apply that to yourself as well. Trust me, everything you say about others is true for you, too. I do not know if there is anything you could reprimand someone else for that would not also apply to you, if only you take a closer look at yourself. Always wield a double-edged sword!

If you happen to get angry at someone, you should also get angry at yourself; if not for anything else, then at least for getting angry at another. Always do this! Never take your eyes off yourself. Always watch yourself first, and only then others. Be selfish! Selfishness can also be good in a certain sense; it is just that some choose to give it such a nasty interpretation. Make your own soul pure first, and then you can labour to make others' souls pure.