People in our
time and place often get carried away with the ideal of love. Whether we mean falling in love, loving our family
and friends, or loving our favorite food or activity, we talk about love a
lot. We have to be careful, however, not
to make our fascination with love simply a way of serving ourselves. It is so easy to make loving ourselves the
basis of our attachments to the people and things who bring us pleasure and
satisfaction. There is nothing wrong
with pleasure and satisfaction in and of themselves, and we should give thanks
to God for all the blessings of this life. We should certainly love ourselves as those
who bear the image of God like everyone else.
The problem is that we are often so attached to our own pleasure and
satisfaction that our love becomes simply a form of self-centeredness that
extends only to those who give us what we want.
In other words, we are often simply in love with ourselves. That is why Christ said, “And if you do good
to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.” St. Maximos the Confessor taught that such
self-love is “the mother of the passions,” which leads to a host of spiritual
maladies.[1]
Our vocation is
not to treat other people according to how they serve our sense of self but to acquire
purity of heart, for as the Lord said, that is necessary to “see God.” (Matt.
5:8) There is perhaps no greater test of the purity of our hearts than whether
we respond with love and forgiveness to those who have wronged us and who do
not bring us pleasure or satisfaction in any way. Remember what Christ said of
those who crucified Him, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
(Lk. 23:34) As Orthodox Christians, our
calling is nothing less than to embody the mercy of God from the very depths of
our being. That sublime vocation goes well beyond being an outwardly religious
or moral person who feels justified in determining who deserves our good will, care,
and forgiveness for whatever reason. If
we are truly sharing in the life of God by grace as “partakers of the divine
nature,” we will learn to love all our neighbors as He has loved us.
In today’s
gospel reading, the Lord spoke words that have always been hard to hear: “But
love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your
reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to
the ungrateful and the selfish. Be
merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”
In this passage from the gospel according to St. Luke, Christ does not
rest content with calling His followers to limit their vengeance to “an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” even though that Old Testament principle had
placed needed restraint on vengeance. (Matt. 5:38) He did not affirm the common
attitude of the time, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” an attitude
that unfortunately remains with us today in so many ways concerning religion,
politics, ethnicity, and other factors.
(Matt. 5:43) Instead, the Savior calls His followers to be in communion
with Him from the depths of our hearts to the point that we embody the divine
mercy, loving our enemies like God, Who cares even for “the ungrateful and
selfish.” Yes, He cares even for people
like me and you.
To become a
person so radiant with the love of Christ that we convey His mercy even to
people we do not like and who do not like us obviously requires much more than cultivating
warm religious feelings or a sentimental attitude toward humanity in
general. To love our enemies as He loves
us requires our deep spiritual transformation and healing as living icons of
God. We must not, then, rest content
with confessing the Orthodox Faith, attending divine services, devoting
ourselves to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and avoiding the most obvious
forms of sin in our outward behavior. These
practices are all essential and we must not neglect or diminish them in any way. We must remember, however, that they provide
the basic foundation and structure of our life in Christ. It is through them that we open our hearts to
receive the strength to take up the difficult struggle each day to reject the
habits of thought, word, and deed that so easily lead us to treat our neighbors
according to our passions and not according to the mercy of the Lord. If we persist in refusing to take up the
cross of learning to love our enemies as the Lord has loved us, it will become impossible
for us to love God, for “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother,
he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen,
cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (1Jn. 4:20)
St. Silouan the
Athonite provides good advice on how to grow in love for those who offend us:
I beseech you,
put this to the test. When a man
affronts you or brings dishonor on your head, or takes what is yours, or
persecutes the Church, pray to the Lord, saying: “O Lord, we are all Thy
creatures. Have pity on Thy servants,
and turn their hearts to repentance,” and you will be aware of grace in your
soul. To begin with constrain your heart
to love enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, will help you in all
things, and experience itself will show you the way. But the man who thinks with malice of his
enemies has not God’s love within him, and does not know God.[2]
St. Paul wrote
that “he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows
bountifully will also reap bountifully.”
The more fully we offer ourselves to the Lord, the more receptive we
become to His grace. That is certainly the case for how we respond to those who
wrong, insult, or disappoint us. We must refuse to welcome vengeful or
judgmental thoughts about them into our hearts. We must refuse to speak about them or treat
them according to our passions. Instead
of focusing our attention on their errors or fantasizing about how to get even
with them, we must mindfully pray for God to grant what is best for them
according to His lovingkindness. To pray
for them with integrity, we must take up the struggle each day of relating to them
as we would like them to relate to us.
The Apostle
wrote that “Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or
under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Our calling is not to meet some minimal
standard of forgiveness but to become so radiant with the gracious divine
energies that it becomes part of our character joyfully to love our enemies as
He loves us. As the Lord taught, “Be
merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”
The healing of our souls is an infinite journey of theosis, of becoming
like God in holiness in every dimension of our personhood. It is no surprise,
then, that such forgiveness is such a struggle and that we so often fall short
of being reconciled with others. We must
use our weakness in this regard for our humility as we call to the Lord from
the depths of our hearts for the strength to grow in loving our neighbors as He
loves us. We must use our weakness as a
reminder to keep a close watch on our thoughts, words, and deeds as we redouble
our efforts to sow bountifully the seeds of Christlike mercy in our souls. Then, as St. Paul taught, “You will be
enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce
thanksgiving to God.”
The Eucharist is
the Church’s great act of thanksgiving for the infinite love of God for sinful
humanity and the fallen creation. We lift
up our hearts and offer bread and wine, which by the power of the Holy Spirit
become the Body and Blood of the Lord, Who offered Himself without reservation for
the salvation of those who rejected Him.
Since we become “one flesh” with Him in the Eucharist, how can we refuse
to extend to our neighbors the same mercy and forgiveness that we have received
from our Lord? Remember what He said: “But
love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your
reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to
the ungrateful and the selfish. Be
merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”
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