The Journey towards Love

[TER]

Study, my child, to acquire in your life dignity, simplicity, understanding, continuous prayer, manliness, unfeigned love, wisdom, seemliness. Be sympathetic, love the poor. Attain silence and patient endurance. Do not slander, do not laugh at anyone. Acquire angerlessness, modesty, and humility, so that the Lord will glorify you before the angels and the saints.

- Elder Athanasius of Grigoriou

 

[TER]

Just as people do not enter a war in order to enjoy war, but in order to be saved from war, so we do not enter this world in order to enjoy this world, but in order to be saved from it. People go to war for the sake of something greater than war. So we also enter this temporal life for the sake of something greater: for eternal life. And as soldiers think with joy about returning home, so also Christians constantly remember the end of their lives and their return to their heavenly fatherland.

- St. Nicholas of Serbia

 

[TER]

A Christian must be courteous to all. His words and deeds should breath with the grace of the Holy Spirit, which abides in his soul, so that in this way he might glorify the name of God. He who regulates all of his speech also regulates all of his actions. He who keeps watch over the words he is about say also keeps watch over the deeds he intends to do, and he never goes out of the bounds good and benevolent conduct. The graceful speech of a Christian is characterized by delicateness and politeness. This fact, born of love, produces peace and joy. On the other hand, boorishness gives birth to hatred, enmity, affliction, competitiveness, disorder and wars.

- St. Nektarius of Aegina

 

[TER]

With all your power, ask the Lord for humility and brotherly love, because God freely gives His grace for love towards one's brother. Do an experiment on yourself: one day ask God for love towards your brother, and another day - live without love. You will see the difference.

- St. Silouan the Athonite

 

[TER]

Love sinners, but hate their deeds, and do not disdain sinners for their failings, so that you yourself do not fall into the temptation in which they abide... Do not be angry at anyone and do not hate anyone, neither for their faith, nor for their shameful deeds... Do not foster hatred for the sinner, for we are all guilty... Hate his sins, and pray for him, so that you may be made like unto Christ, who had no dislike for sinners, but prayed for them.

- St. Isaac the Syrian

 

[TER]

Whoever will not love his enemies cannot know the Lord and the sweetness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches us to love our enemies in such way that we pity their souls as if they were our own children.

- St. Silouan the Athonite

 

[TER]

As God illumines all people equally with the light of the sun, so do those who desire to imitate God let shine an equal ray of love on all people. For wherever love disappears, hatred immediately appears in its place. And if God is love, then hatred is the devil. Therefore as one who has love has God within himself, so he who has hatred within himself nurtures the devil within himself.

- St. Basil the Great

 

[TER]

Whoever sees in himself the traces of hatred toward any man on account of any kind of sin is completely foreign to the love of God. For love toward God does not at all tolerate hatred for man.

- St. Maximos the Confess

 

[TER]

What is perfection in love? Love your enemies in such a way that you would desire to make them your brothers ... For so did He love, Who hanging on the Cross, said "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)

- St. Augustine

 

[TER]

Happy is the man in whom there is love for God, for he bears God within himself. The one in whom there is love is with God, above all things. Whoever has love in himself does not fear. He is never mad at anyone, nor does he exalt himself above anyone. He does not calumniate anyone, nor does he listen to the calumniator. He does not compete with anyone, is not jealous, does not rejoice in the fall of another, does not slander the fallen, but sympathizes with him and helps him. He does not disdain his brother who is fallen into need, but helps him and is ready to die for him. Whoever has love fulfills the will of God.

- St. Ephraim the Syrian

 

[TER]

It very often happens that the mist of the spirit of malice surrounds our heart, and does not allow us to speak peaceably with our neighbours, who have once or several times offended us, or expressed ill-will towards us. We must pray fervently to the Lord, that He Himself would disperse this mist of malice, and fill our heart with mercy and love, even towards our enemies, for they, in the blindness of the passions - of pride, envy, covetousness, malice - do not themselves know what they do, as the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ knew not what they did when they persecuted Him all His life and at last put Him to a shameful death. We must remember that the Christian religion consists in loving our enemies: 'For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans do the same?' (Mt. 5:46).

- St. John of Kronstadt

 

[TER]

If I give all my goods to feed the poor... if I add to this sacrifice the fiery martyrdom of my flesh; if I hand my body over for the sake of Christ; if, nevertheless, I am impatient, prone to anger, jealous, proud; if I become enraged when wrongs are done to me; if I am on the lookout for my own interest; if my thoughts are evil; if I do not patiently and gladly endure all that happens to me; then the renunciation and the martyrdom of the outer man will be of no benefit to me as long as the inner spirit wallows in its old and sinful ways. It will be of no value that when in the first zeal of conversion I despised the simple substance of the world, which is neither good nor bad but neutral, if I took no care to throw out at the same time the evil goods of a corrupt heart and made no effort to achieve a Godlike love, a love which is patient and kind, which is not jealous, not boastful, which does not show annoyance or is wrong-headed, which is not on the lookout for itself, which thinks no evil, which endures all and sustains all, and which, finally, never allows itself to slip into the snares of sin.

- St. John Cassian

 

[TER]

Let others mock at you, oppose you, when you are under the influence of any passion; do not be in the least offended with those who mock at or oppose you, for they do you good; crucify your self-love and acknowledge the wrong, the error of your heart. But have the deepest pity for those who mock at words and works of faith and piety, of righteousness; for those who oppose the good which you are doing... God preserve you from getting exasperated at them...

- St. John of Kronstadt

 

[TER]

So long as the soul advances 'from strength to strength' (Ps. 84:7) and 'from glory to glory' (II Cor. 3:18), that is, so long as it advances from one degree of virtue to a greater degree and from one level of spiritual knowledge to a higher level, it remains a 'sojourner', one who has no permanent home, as in the saying, 'My soul has long been a sojourner' (Ps. 120:6 LXX). For great is the distance and many are the levels of knowledge through which the soul must pass before it reaches 'the place of the miraculous tabernacle, the house of God itself, with the voice of exultation and thanksgiving, and the sound of feasting' (Ps. 42:4 LXX). It advances continually from one hymn of praise to another, from one level of divine contemplation to another, full of joy and thankfulness for what it has already seen. For all those who have received the Spirit of grace into their hearts celebrate in this festive manner, crying 'Abba, Father' (Gal. 4:6).

- St. Maximos the Confessor

 

[TER]

You should continually and unceasingly call to mind all the blessings which God in His love has bestowed on you in the past, and still bestows for the salvation of your soul. You must not let forgetfulness of evil or laziness make you grow unmindful of these many and great blessings, and so pass the rest of your life uselessly and ungratefully. For this kind of continual recollection, pricking the heart like a spur, moves it constantly to confession and humility, to thanksgiving with a contrite soul, and to all forms of sincere effort, repaying God through its virtue and holiness. In this way the heart meditates constantly and conscientiously on the words from the Psalms: 'What shall I give to the Lord in return for all His benefits towards me?' (Psalm 116:12).

- St. Mark the Ascetic

 

[TER]

The blessed apostle described even the higher gifts of the Holy Spirit as things that would vanish. He points to love as alone without end. 'Prophecies will end, languages cease and knowledge will fail' (I Cor. 13:8). As for love, 'love will never cease'. Actually, all gifts have been given for reasons of temporal use and need and they will surely pass away at the end of the present dispensation. Love, however, will never be cut off. It works in us and for us, and not simply in this life. For when the burden of physical need has been laid aside in the time to come, it will endure, more effectively, more excellently, forever unfailing, clinging to God with more fire and zeal through all the length of incorruption.

- St. John Cassian

 

[TER]

It is pointless for someone to say that he has faith in God if he does not have the works which go with faith. What benefit were their lamps to the foolish virgins who had no oil (Matt. 25:1-13), namely, deeds of love and compassion? What good did calling Abraham his father do to that rich man frying in the unquenchable flame for his pitilessness towards Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)? What use was his apparent obedience to the invitation to that man who had failed to acquire through good works a garment fitting for the divine wedding and the bridechamber of immortality? He was invited and approached because he clearly believed, and he sat down alongside those holy guests, but when he was convicted and put to shame for being clothed in depraved habits and deeds, he was mercilessly bound hand and foot, and cast into hellfire, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 22:11-14).

- St. Gregory Palamas

 

[TER]

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when Joy is the fundamental thing in him, and Grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive state of mind; Praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; Joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live.

- G. K. Chesterton

 

[TER]

What we gain from fasting does not compensate for what we lose through anger. Our profit from scriptural reading in no way equals the damage we cause ourselves by showing contempt for a brother. We must practice fasting, vigils, withdrawal, and the meditation of Scripture as activities which are subordinate to our main objective, purity of heart, that is to say, love, and we must never disturb this principal virtue for the sake of those others. If this virtue remains whole and unharmed within us nothing can injure us, not even if we are forced to omit any of those other subordinate virtues. Nor will it be of any use to have practiced all these latter if there is missing in us that principal objective for the sake of which all else is undertaken.

- St. John Cassian

 

[TER]

Faith and love which are gifts of the Holy Spirit are such great and powerful means that a person who has them can easily, and with joy and consolation, go the way Jesus Christ went. Besides this, the Holy Spirit gives man the power to resist the delusions of the world so that although he makes use of earthly good, yet he uses them as a temporary visitor, without attaching his heart to them. But a man who has not got the Holy Spirit, despite all his learning and prudence, is always more or less a slave and worshiper of the world.

- St. Innocent of Alaska