The Journey towards Love

[TER]

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

- 1 Peter 4:8

 

[TER]

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

- 1 John 4:7

 

[Eagles' Wings]

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

- Ephesians 2:19-22

This is one of my favorite passages. What a privilege to have the Holy Spirit dwelling within a believer. What Love and Grace.

 

[jmdrake]

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

- 1 John 4:7

I learned this song at a Christian high school.

 

[TER]

Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord’ (Heb. 12:14), Why did he say ‘strive’? Because it is not possible for us to become holy and to be saints in an hour! We must therefore progress from modest beginnings toward holiness and purity. Even were we to spend a thousand years in this life we should never perfectly attain it. Rather we must always struggle for it every day, as if mere beginners.

- St. Symeon the New Theologian

 

[TER]

How are you to know if you are living according to the will of God?
Here is a sign: if you are distressed over anything it means that you have not fully surrendered to God’s will, although it may seem to you that you live according to his will. He who lives according to God’s will has no material cares. If he has need of something, he offers himself and the thing he wants to God; and if he does not receive it, he remains as unworried as if he had got what he wanted.

- St. Silouan the Athonite

 

[TER]

Christians ought at all times to preserve the remembrance of God… in order that they may show love to the Lord not only when they go into the place of prayer, but that also when they are working, talking, or eating, they may preserve the remembrance of God, and a sense of love and yearning towards Him.

- St. Macarius of Egypt

 

[TER]

If a man has no worries about himself at all for the sake of love toward God and the working of good deeds, knowing that God is taking care of him, this is a true and wise hope. But if a man takes care of his own business and turns to God in prayer only when misfortunes come upon him which are beyond his power, and then he begins to hope in God, such a hope is vain and false. A true hope seeks only the Kingdom of God… the heart can have no peace until it obtains such a hope. This hope pacifies the heart and produces joy within it.

- St. Seraphim of Sarov

 

[TER]

As the memory of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not bring about the illumination of knowledge in the soul.

– St. Maximus the Confessor

 

[TER]

To some people your love will be expressed with joy and to others it will be expressed with your pain. You will consider everyone your brother or your sister, for we are all children of Eve. Then, in your prayer you will say: ‘My God, help those first who are in greater need, whether they are alive or reposed brothers in the Lord.’ At this point, you will share your heart with the whole world and you will have nothing but immense love, which is Christ.

-Elder Paisius of Mount Athos

 

[TER]

When we are in trouble or despair of have lost hope, we should do what David did: pour out our hearts to God and tell Him of our needs and troubles, just as they are. It is because He can deal with us wisely that we confess to God: He can make our troubles easy to bear. If this is our benefit, and can save us from dejection which destroys and corrupts.
-St. Hesychius the Priest

 

[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, modestly, and humility, so that the Lord will glorify you before the angels and the saints.


-Elder Athanasius of Grigoriou

 

[TER]

You are to love every man from your own soul, but in God alone are you to place your hope and serve Him with your whole strength.


- Saint Maximos the Confessor

 

[TER]

Do you think that the man-loving God has given you much so that you could use it only for your own benefit? No, but so that your abundance might supply the lack of others.

- St. John Chrysostom

 

[TER]

There is harm not only in trying to gain wealth but also in excessive concern with even the most necessary things.
It is not enough to despise wealth, but you must also feed the poor and, more importantly, you must follow Christ.

- St. John Chrysostom

 

[TER]

The perfect person does not only try to avoid evil. Nor does he do good for fear of punishment, still less in order to qualify for the hope of a promised reward. The perfect person does good through love. His actions are not motivated by desire for personal benefit, so he does not have personal advantage as his aim. But as soon as he has realized the beauty of doing good, he does it with all his energies and in all that he does. He is not interested in fame, or a good reputation, or a human or divine reward. The rule of life for a perfect person is to be in the image and likeness of God.

- St. Clement of Alexandria

 

[TER]

God is truth and light. God’s judgment is nothing else than our coming into contact with truth and light. In the day of the Great Judgment all men will appear naked before this penetrating light of truth. The ‘books’ will be opened. What are these ‘books’? They are our hearts. Our hearts will be opened by the penetrating light of God, and what is in these hearts will be revealed. If in those hearts there is love for God, those hearts will rejoice in seeing God’s light. If, on the contrary, there is hatred for God in those hearts, these men will suffer by receiving on their opened hearts this penetrating light of truth which they detested all their life.

So that which will differentiate between one man and another will not be a decision of God, a reward or a punishment from Him, but that which was in each one’s heart; what was there during all our life will be revealed in the Day of Judgment. If there is a reward and a punishment in this revelation – and there really is – it does not come from God but from the love or hate which reigns in our heart. Love has bliss in it, hatred has despair, bitterness, grief, affliction, wickedness, agitation, confusion, darkness, and all the other interior conditions which compose hell.

- St. Symeon the New Theologian

 

[TER]

Unless we look at a person and see the beauty there is in this person, we can contribute nothing to him. One does not help a person by discerning what is wrong, what is ugly, what is distorted. Christ looked at everyone he met, at the prostitute, at the thief, and saw the beauty hidden there. Perhaps it was distorted, perhaps damaged, but it was beauty none the less, and what he did was to call out this beauty.

- Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

 

[TER]

One critical thing Jesus taught was that controlling the world is not just impossible but inherently sinful. Our task as Christians is to control no one but ourselves and to love all. Our main weapon must always be example, not control.

- Fr. Antony

 

[TER]

To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things--this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship... United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love.

- Bertrand Russell