The Journey towards Love

[TER]

"God is Love. And if we call upon God in our life as the Holy Fathers teach us, then we are calling upon Love. If we know and believe that He is present everywhere at all times and if we are united with Him in our hearts, He will teach us how to love our neighbor. For we do not know how to love either the Lord or our neighbor. The evil spirits often so interfere with the Divine love given us by God that they often lure us away from the path of real and true love. Their suggestions are full of the physical and emotional aspects of this world: enjoyment and lust, which is nothing but enslavement.

It often happens that a person, either young or old, falls in love with another person or even an object. Some people fall in love with gold and cannot bear to be separated from it or from their wealth, house, and possessions, and they become enslaved. If someone were to take this from them, they would become desperate. Many times the powers of evil bring such people to the brink of self-destruction.

Is this love? The spirits of evil often come and meddle with the Divine love that God has planted in us. That kind of love (corrupted by the evil spirits) is without discernment. But the love of God is boundless…Love is perfection, says the Apostle (Rom. 13:10). God is perfect, He is faultless. And so, when Divine love becomes manifest in us in the fullness of Grace, we radiate this love not only on the earth, but throughout the entire universe as well. So God is in us, and He is present everywhere. It is God’s all-encompassing love that manifests itself in us. When this happens we see no difference between people – everyone is good, everyone is our brother, and we consider ourselves to be the worst of men, servants of every created thing.

In this kind of love we are humbled; our soul is at peace and in humility. And humility is the perfection of the Christian life. It is not in the raising of the dead or in working miracles that Christian perfection lies, but in extreme humility. When we are illumined by the Grace of the Holy Spirit in the fullness of Divine love, then we want to serve everyone and help everyone. Even when we see a little ant struggling, we want to help him.

So, love is sacrifice. Love sacrifices itself for its neighbor."

-Elder Thaddeus

 

[TER]

“If you have something on your conscience that bothers you, then go directly and make a prostration to show your repentance: “Please, forgive me, my brother, for I was wrong”. This action corrects your mistake. Do not disregard your conscience. We may wrong one another for we are human. Whether someone said something bad to you or he did not carry out what you asked him to do, your conscience might be troubled. Without exception, humble yourself before your brother and say “forgive me”.

~Elder Ephraim of Katounakia

 

[TER]

Let your soul devote itself to the prayer 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me' in all your worries, for everything and for everyone. Don't look at what's happening to you, look at the light, at Christ, just as the child looks to its mother when something happens to it. See everything without anxiety, without depression, without strain and without stress. There is no need to exert yourselves and strain yourselves. Let all your effort be directed toward the light and toward acquiring the light, so that instead of devoting yourselves to thoughts of despair, which do not come from the Spirit of God, you devote yourselves to the praise of God.

All unpleasant things which are within your soul and cause you anxiety can become occasions for the glorification of God and cease to torment you. Have trust in God. Then you will forget the worries and become His instruments. Distress shows that we are not entrusting our life to Christ. Doesn't St. Paul say, We are afflicted on every side, but not distressed?

Deal with everything with love, kindness, meekness, patience and humility. Be rocks. Let all the waves break over you and turn back leaving you untroubled. You'll say, 'That sounds fine, but is it possible?' The answer is 'Yes, always - with the grace of God.' If we look at things in human terms, of course, it is impossible. But instead of affecting you adversely, all these things can be of benefit to you, increasing your patience and your faith. Because all the difficulties that surround us represent a kind of gymnastics for us. We exercise ourselves in patience and endurance. Listen and I'll give you an example.

A man once came to me and started to recount all his grievances with his wife. When he had finished I said to him:
'Are you really so stupid?'
'What's so stupid about what I've been saying?' he asked.
'Everything,' I replied. 'This wife of yours loves you deeply.'
'I know,' he said, 'but look at all the things that she does to me...'
'She does all these things to you to sanctify you, but you're too dim-witted to realize it. Instead of being sanctified, you are infuriated and you make your life hell.'
If only he had had patience and humility, he wouldn't have missed those opportunities for sanctification.

- from Wounded By Love, The Life and Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios

 

[TER]

To believe in Christ's words and deeds is easy, for it only involves believing in our hearts and confessing with our tongues. But the test of the truth of our faith is by our deeds and behavior. After faith comes the "narrow gate" and the hard way, which everyone who has believed in Christ must go through. The narrow gate is the critical point at which one crosses from the wide way, which leads to destruction, to the hard way, which leads to life. It is where the heart and conscience are examined in the light of the cross.

The worst enemies hidden within a believer are hatred, feuding, anger, judgment—including judging others without judging oneself—defaming others, and trying to remove the speck out of their eyes while ignoring the log fixed in the pupil of one's own eye (cf. Matthew 7:3).

Unfortunately, there are those who find these sins insignificant and are oblivious to them. They are unaware that these sins have become part of their nature. They practice them shamelessly as if Scripture and the Day of Judgment did not exist—as if there were no narrow gate in front of them.

Faith to them will be of no use, because those who behave in such a way have trampled on love, despising and abusing it.

Love is God. It is the testimony to the true Faith and its effectiveness. Christ's teachings will always remain on a higher plane than that which the human race will ever attain to, even by its utmost efforts, in order that humanity may ever remain penitent before God and Christ, and therefore, hold fast to Divine Grace.

— Matthew the Poor

 

[TER]

If someone, who sees Christ's sacrifice and love, does not believe that He is our God...
…and in order to believe asks for miracles, he will neither be able to truly love, nor to truly believe in Him.

Christ was incarnated, mocked, whipped, crucified, out of His extreme love for humankind; He shed His blood for us. All these facts explicitly indicate to everyone that He is true love. Impelled by the fact that “God is love,” we should love Him in return and believe that He is our God, for “we know no good apart from Him”.

-Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos, +1994

 

[TER]

…”A house is not built by beginning at the top and working down. You must begin with the foundations in order to reach the top.” They said to him, “What does this saying mean?” He said, “The foundation is our neighbor, whom we must win, and that is the place to begin. For all the commandments of Christ depend on this alone.”

-Abba John the Dwarf

 

[TER]

If a man builds a house and leaves it without a roof, this house can’t be used at all. In the same way, if a man acquires all the virtues but not love, the house remains roofless and is of no benefit at all.

-Elder Philotheos of Paros, +1980

 

[TER]

It is a fearful thing to hate whom God has loved. To look upon another- his weaknesses, his sins, his faults, his defects- is to look upon one who is suffering. He is suffering from negative passions, from the same sinful human corruption from which you yourself suffer. This is very important: do not look upon him with judgemental eyes of comparison, noting the sins you assume you'd never commit. Rather, see him as a fellow sufferer, a fellow human being who is in need of the very healing of which you are in need. Help him, love him, pray for him, do unto him as you would have hime do unto you.

- St. Tikhon of Zadonsk

 

[TER]

"Our life and our death are with our neighbor. If we do good to our neighbor, we do good to God; if we cause our neighbor to stumble, we sin against Christ."

-St. Anthony the Great

 

[TER]

"Man becomes fearful of judging others and looks upon every other person as better than himself. And if he sees other people, be they adulterers or unrighteous, he considers them as better than himself ~ a fact that he truly feels in his hidden conscience and not something just claimed in his outward speech. This he does from a heart free of all impurities. He looks upon everything as good, for he looks and thinks with God's mind."

-St. Isaac the Syrian, Bishop of Nineveh

 

[TER]

"Snatch your neighbor from his sins, so far as you can, and refrain from condemning him, for God does not reject those who turn to him. Let no evil word about your brother stay in your mind, so that you can say, 'Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.' (Matthew 7:12)."

-St. Hyperichius

 

[TER]

"Remember this, my dear brothers: be quick to listen but slow to speak and slow to rouse your temper; God's righteousness is never served by man's anger; so do away with all the impurities and bad habits that are still left in you—accept and submit to the Word which has been planted in you and can save your souls.

But you must do what the Word tells you, and not just listen to it and deceive yourselves. To listen to the Word and not obey is like looking at your own features in a mirror and then, after a quick look, going off and immediately forgetting what you looked like. But the man who looks steadily at the perfect law of freedom and makes that his habit—not listening and then forgetting, but actively putting it into practice—will be happy in all that he does.

Nobody must imagine that he is religious while he still goes on deceiving himself and not keeping control over his tongue; anyone who does this has the wrong idea of religion. Pure, unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father is this: coming to the help of orphans and widows when they need it, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world."

-James 1:19-27

 

[heavenlyboy34]

This thread reminds me of Tolstoy's short story "Where Love Is, God Is".

 

[TER]

"We become truly personal by loving God and by loving other humans... In its deepest sense, love is the life, the energy, of the Creator in us."

- Met. Kallistos Ware

 

[TER]

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness."

-Jean Vanier

 

[TER]

"Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love."

-Madeleine L’Engle

 

[TER]

A Christian must not be fanatic; he must have love for all people.

Those who inconsiderately toss comments, even if they are true, can cause harm. I met an author who was extremely pious, but was in the habit of speaking to the (secular) people around him in a blunt manner, which however penetrated so deep that it shook them very severely. He told me at one time: “During a gathering, I said such and such a thing to a lady.” But the way that he said it, crushed her. “Look”, I said to him, “you may be tossing golden crowns studded with diamonds to other people, but the way that you throw them can smash heads – not only the sensitive ones, but the sound ones also.”

Let’s not stone our fellow-man in a…. Christian manner. The person who – in the presence of others – checks someone for having sinned, or speaks in an impassioned manner about a certain person, is not moved by the Spirit of God: he is moved by another spirit. The way of the Church is LOVE; it differs from the way of the legalists.

The Church sees everything with tolerance and seeks to help each person, whatever he may have done, however sinful he may be. I have observed a peculiar kind of logic in certain pious people. Their piety is a good thing, and their predisposition for good is also a good thing; however, a certain spiritual discernment and amplitude is required so that their piety is not accompanied by narrow-mindedness or strong-headedness (strong, as in “unturning”). The whole basis is for someone to be in a spiritual state, so that he may have that spiritual discernment, because otherwise he will forever remain attached to the “letter of the Law”, and the letter of the Law can be “deadly”.

The one who possesses humility will never act like a teacher; he will listen, and whenever his opinion is requested, he will respond humbly. In other words, he will reply like a student. Whoever believes that he is capable of correcting others is filled with egotism.

-Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos

 

[TER]

The Holy Spirit teaches us to love our enemies, so that the soul pities them as if they were her own children. There are people who desire the destruction, the torment in hell-fire of their enemies, or the enemies of the Church. They think like this because they have not learned divine love from the Holy Spirit, for he who has learned the love of God will shed tears for the whole world.

You say that So-and-so is an evil-doer and may he burn in hell fire. But I ask you — supposing God were to give you a fair place in paradise, and you saw burning in the fire the man on whom you had wished the tortures of hell, even then would you really not feel pity for him, whoever he might be, an enemy of the Church even? Or is it that you have a heart of steel? But there is no place for steel in paradise. Paradise has need of humility and the love of Christ, which pities all men. The grace of God is not in the man who does not love his enemies.

-St Silouan the Athonite

 

[BuddyRey]

TodaysEpistleReading, I've been quietly following your observations regarding subjects of faith for quite a while, but I finally just had to pop in and say that I find your religious writings here among the wisest, most kind, humble, and spiritually uplifting of any I've read on these forums (or anywhere else on the Internet, for that matter). I don't know what denomination you follow (if any), but whichever it is, my gut and the "still, small voice" tells me you're on the right track!

 

[TER]

God bless you, my friend, for your kind words. I tell you the truth, it is much easier to 'appear' as a good Christian on the internet than it is to be one in the real world, and in this regard, I am an example and am far from where I should be. Nevertheless, I thank you and would also like to tell you that your posts are sincere, informative, and have helped me tremendously. May the Light of God continue to shine within you, my brother.