Loving your neighbor

Do we know how to forgive?

If someone would give us a slap, could we forgive him? Could we, the young ones, be able to turn the other cheek? If someone would curse us, could we bless him after? If a friend would betray us, could we forgive him? Those are many questions that are hard to answer. Here is what St. John Chrysostom says:

“Think of all your mistakes you have to give an answer, but more important, to forget the injustice committed by others to you, forgive those who offended you, in order to have the right yourself to be forgiven – to earn, this way, a relief of your troubles.”

Greeks, without big expectations, often gave regarding of those, evidences of wisdom. And you, who must eventually leave this world, with such greater expectations, won’t you do it, or remain in hesitation?

What solves itself, don’t assign and respect the divine law – and, rather, let your passion be eradicated without a reword, instead to deserve a reword?

If the ages will erase envy, you can’t pull any avail. Would you say that remembering an affront will provoke the anger? Remember all the good made for you, by that who affronted you, and all the bad that you made for others.

Did he speak evil about you, did he cover you in shame? Remember what you have said to others. So I ask, how will you receive forgiveness if you don’t give it to others?  Did not you say anything bad? But you heard so many times, lots of gossip and you accepted them, and this is, of course, guilt.

Do you want to know how well is to forget the insults, and how pleasant is this to God, above all? He punishes even those who enjoy his rightful punishment. So, it doesn’t serve right to disregard those punished by God, nor the one who offended us!…

The spirit of mercy is shown here, the thing that pleases God most. Nothing feeds compassion better than forgiveness.

For the one who offended, God also showed him what needs to be done. He commanded to immediately search for the one being offended, to even leave the altar to find him and to return to the offering table only after he reconciled with him.

But that’s not a reason to expect him to come, because of doing so, you’ve lost everything. Only if you go out to meet him, God will give you an untold reward.

If you reconcile with the one who offended you, only because he comes towards you, not the divine command is the one who has settled, but only the other’s gesture. So, you remain without a garland.”

(Georgiana)

Translated by Ioniţă Radu

A day to be a good man!

„Try to spend at least one day keeping the commandments of God and you will realise yourself. Your heart will tell you how good it is to do God’s will (and for us to do God’s will means life, means eternal bliss). Love God with all your heart; at least as you love your relatives and your well-doers: value as much as possible love and kindness that He shows you, His great and countless blessings.

Try to grasp these with the heart: how He woke you to life, sharing all His good things, how He endures your sins endlessly, how He forgive them endlessly, waiting for your wholehearted repentance, in the power of His sufferings on the Cross and of His death, the Son of God, the One Borned; remember the eternal happiness promised you if you remain faithful.

Love everyone as you love yourself, namely do not deny anything that you do for yourself, banish from the heart all remembrance of the evil that the others have done to you, just as you would want others to forget the evil you have done them.“

(St. John of Krondstadt – My life in Christ)

Is the Christian, by definition, a happy man?

Father Arsenie Boca used to say that a sad Christian is like a car riding with the lights turned off in the dark. Why did the father say something like that? Is it possible to be happy all the time? Is there by any chance joyfulness a state able to characterize the Christians of our time?

I’ll start by confessing a personal experience. While I was a teenager, and even during my university years, I was a rather introvert person, with a lot of bruises in my soul, which made me feel all the time insecure and too preoccupied by my inner state. I could point what I lacked, I wished for more, but I couldn’t do anything to pursue my dreams – and, above all, I was sad.

My biggest wish was to serve God, but I saw that my wish was so far away from being accomplished that I got disappointed again.

After a long time of waiting I was ordained as a priest and I started my mission in the parish I was assigned. But as a priest you always have cases where your help is needed, even though it could only mean some piece of advice or a few encouraging words.

What surprised me most was the fact that when I began to get preoccupied by others’ issues, I forgot of those I had myself. I forgot that until then I was sad, pensive, lacking any joy of life. I had to give others what I did not have, but which, in the same time, God had plenty. Through His power, the Christians relieved their souls and in the same time I was getting full of life.

Why did I tell you all this? Because the best solutions to get rid of personal problems, of the sadness and the hardships of life, is to give – to give what we don’t have (at start), but God has. In time, we will see that by helping others we help ourselves. Soothing others, God soothes us.

Does it seem hard to believe?

The man is made for love and communion. But sin and selfishness make us to retire in our own shells. We begin to feel immune at others’ problems and the sadness befalls us. But it is impossible to be sad or moody when you help someone, when you show love and compassion to another person. You don’t have the means to give? Just try, because whatever you do, you do it in the name of God, and He will complete what you lack, healing you.

The origin of joy is in God and when it’s us that ask Him on behalf of the people around us, we will be ourselves changed.

Just try and you will see…

(father Alexandru Nicodim)

Love in the eyes of an Orthodox

And because in the article “There are no perfect children and neither are there perfect parents” I was saying that children have the right to live where there is love, I bring to your attention another perspective on love, a feeling so much sung and praised, but yet unknown in the true meaning of the word. I am suggesting you an Orthodox view…

“Love is a deeply human reality and of such complexity, that some give up all definitions, considering the words as useless and powerless. Love cannot be defined.  It is as mysterious as life. Hence the variety of the almost contradictory aspects of love. For the word “love” is the most fluid, the most complex, the vaguest and varied in meaning of all words.

It comprehends heaven and earth, soul and body, pureness and passion, nostalgia and instinct. For some, it is only instinct, even if it is clothed in the delusive veil of a pure ideal; for some, it is spiritual face, purely spiritual, which merges souls and unites them with God. For some it is a demonic power, through which a mysterious fascination is exerted over man in order to turn him into a blind instrument of his species, for others it is a ray from Paradise descending straight from God’s heart, in order to lift our life to perfection¹. Love is not just a feeling, as we are inclined to believe. It is more than that.

According to the Christian view, love springs from man’s very spiritual being. The person itself, in its essence, is love, that is the tendency to communion. God is love (1 John 4:8); the man, the image of God in the world, is love. That is why, due to his very being, he is predestined for communion, he cannot live alone, he cannot attain perfection on his own.

Love is ecstasy, that is self egression, so that by losing yourself into the other person, you could find yourself more completely. If unity is the aspiration of love, then duality is its necessary condition. It accomplishes a suprapersonal unity, in which the persons do not dissolve through communion, but attain fulfillment. This is the paradoxical power of love: that of uniting and at the same time preserving the individuality and bringing it to perfection. It is ‘unity within duality’. Love holds the nostalgia of eternity in itself.  It cannot conceive of separation. It gives the impression that the persons have been searching for each other and have belonged to each other since eternity, that they are predestined to belong to each other forever. Love is creative force. It brings to life the potentialities hidden within the human being and brings them up to date.  It dynamizes all energies and enriches one’s being and life, by intensifying it, fulfilling it, making it perfect. This dynamic, creative nature of love finds its expression in the love between spouses, besides the mutual self-abnegation and perfecting.

Love is creative: it calls to life, it creates life, it enriches life. The love which accomplishes the communion between husband and wife, calls necessarily for eternity or the indissolubility of this communion and its creative nature. There is a positive ratio between family love and God, since love and Christian family are steps towards God, as reflexes of transcendent realities. And God is spring and transfiguring power of life in the Christian family.

The life and soul of the Christian family is love. And it is love that God’s grandeur is reflected in. Love itself has something ‘deeply sacramental’, it is like the receipt of the Eucharist – only it is a receipt of the essences of life, where the creative breath of the Divinity can be sensed. In this personal communion, in this giving from one soul to another, one can sense the presence of God’s steps in the Christian’s soul. Because being a Christian means thinking with love, talking with love, working with love. Family is a community of love when its members strive to uproot all the vices in their lives and to embellish their souls with all the virtues which shine in the Person of Christ. It is a community of love only when it fulfills the words of the Apostle, who says: ‘love is long suffering, love is kind, love is not jealous, it does not boast, it is not inflated, it is not discourteous, it is not selfish, it is not irritable, it does not enumerate the evil, it does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth. It covers all things, it has faith for all things, it hopes in all things, it endures in all things. Love never falls in ruins.’ (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

The Christian family moulds its members through the warmth of love on whose altar self-giving – par excellence – is brought as offering. There is no other place where one can find the same resources of patience, love and self-abnegation as in parents.

The Christian family remains what it has always been. The sanctuary in which the azure flame of Orthodoxy burns ceaselessly. Of the Orthodoxy which is truth, of the Orthodoxy which is love.”

(Metropolitan Nicolae Mladin)