О любви к ближнему

What could be more beautiful, more enjoyable than love for one's neighbor? Loving is bliss; to hate is torment. The entire law and prophets are focused on love for God and neighbor (Matthew 22:40). Love for one's neighbor is the path leading to love for God: because Christ deigned to be mysteriously clothed with each of our neighbors, and in Christ is God (1 John 4:14, 15). Do not think, beloved brother, that the commandment of love for one’s neighbor was so close to our fallen heart: the commandment is spiritual, but flesh and blood have taken possession of our hearts; the commandment is new, but our heart is old. Our natural love is damaged by the fall; it must be put to death - Christ commands this - and holy love for one’s neighbor, love in Christ, must be drawn from the Gospel. The properties of a new person must be all new; no old quality suits him. Love from the movement of blood and carnal feelings has no price before the Gospel. And what value can it have when, when the blood is heated, he takes an oath to lay down his soul for the Lord, and a few hours later, when the blood cools, he takes an oath that he does not know Him? (Matthew 26:33, 35, 74). The Gospel rejects love that depends on the movement of blood, on the feelings of the carnal heart. It says: “Do not remember that you have come to bring peace to the earth; you have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to separate a man from his father, and a daughter from her mother, and a bride from her mother-in-law. And defeat the man of his own household” (Matthew 10:34–36). The Fall subjected the heart to the dominion of the blood, and, through the blood, to the dominion of the ruler of the world. The Gospel frees the heart from this captivity, from this violence, and brings it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches us to love our neighbor holy. Love, kindled and nourished by the Holy Spirit, is fire. This fire extinguishes the fire of natural, carnal love, damaged by the Fall 25. “He who says that one can have one and the other love deceives himself,” said Saint John Climacus 26. How fallen is our nature? Anyone who is by nature capable of loving his neighbor with ardor must put extraordinary pressure on himself in order to love him as the Gospel commands him to love. The most ardent natural love easily turns into disgust, into irreconcilable hatred (2 Samuel 13:15). Natural love was also expressed with a dagger. In what ulcers is our natural love! What a serious ulcer on her - addiction! A heart possessed of partiality is capable of all injustice, all lawlessness, just to satisfy its painful love. “A flattering measure is abomination to the Lord, but the weight of righteousness is acceptable to Him” (Prov. 11:1). Natural love provides its beloved with only earthly things; she does not think about heavenly things. She is at enmity against Heaven and the Holy Spirit: because the Spirit demands the crucifixion of the flesh. She is at enmity against Heaven and the Holy Spirit: because she is under the control of the evil spirit, the spirit of the unclean and lost. Let's get down to the Gospel, beloved brother, let's look in this mirror! looking into it, let us cast off the old garments in which the fall clothed us, and let us adorn ourselves with the new garment that God has prepared for us. The new robe is Christ. “As many as you have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal.3:27). The new robe is the Holy Spirit. “You will be clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49), the Lord said about this robe. Christians are clothed in the attributes of Christ through the action of the all-good Spirit. Perhaps for a Christian this is a robe. “Put on our Lord Jesus Christ, and do not please the flesh through lust” (Rom. 13:14), says the Apostle. First, guided by the Gospel, throw away enmity, resentment, anger, condemnation and everything that directly opposes love. The Gospel commands us to pray for our enemies, bless those who curse, do good to those who hate, and leave to our neighbor everything no matter what he does against us. If you want to follow Christ, try to fulfill all these commandments by deed. It is not enough to just read with pleasure the commandments of the Gospel and marvel at the high morality that they contain. Unfortunately, many are satisfied with this. When you begin to fulfill the commands of the Gospel, then the rulers of your heart will stubbornly oppose this fulfillment. These rulers are: your own carnal state, in which you are subject to flesh and blood, and the fallen spirits, to whom the country is subject - the carnal state of man. Carnal wisdom, its truth and the truth of fallen spirits will demand from you that you do not lose your honor and other perishable advantages, and protect them. But you must withstand the invisible struggle with courage, led by the Gospel, led by the Lord Himself. Sacrifice everything to fulfill the gospel commandments. Without such a donation you will not be able to fulfill them. The Lord said to His disciples: “If anyone wants to follow Me, let him deny himself” (Matthew 16:24). When the Lord is with you, hope for victory: the Lord cannot but be the winner. Ask the Lord for victory; ask for her through constant prayer and crying. And an unexpected action of grace will come to your heart: you will suddenly feel the sweetest rapture of spiritual love for your enemies. You still have a fight ahead of you! you still need to be courageous! Look at the objects of your love: do you really like them? Is your heart very attached to them? - Renounce them. The Lord, the lawgiver of love, requires this renunciation from you, not in order to deprive you of love and loved ones, but so that you, having rejected carnal love, defiled by an admixture of sin, become capable of accepting spiritual, pure, holy love, which is the supreme bliss. He who has felt spiritual love will look with disgust at carnal love, as an ugly distortion of love. How to renounce objects of love that seem to have grown to the very heart? - tell God about them: “They, Lord, are Yours; and who am I? a weak creature of no importance.” “Today I am still wandering on earth, I can be useful to my loved ones in some way; Tomorrow, perhaps, I will disappear from her face, and I am nothing to them!” “Whether I want it or not, death comes, other circumstances come, they forcibly tear me away from those whom I considered mine, and they are no longer mine. They were not mine by the very thing; there was some kind of relationship between me and them; deceived by this attitude, I called them and recognized them as mine. If they were truly mine, they would forever belong to me.” “Creatures belong to one Creator: He is their God and Master. Yours, my Lord, I give to You: I appropriated them to myself incorrectly and in vain.” For them it is more correct to be God's. God is eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, immeasurably good. To the one who is His, He is the most faithful, most reliable Helper and Patron. God gives his own to man: and men become man’s own, for a time according to the flesh, for ever according to the Spirit, when God is pleased to give this gift to man. True love for one's neighbor is based on faith in God: it is in God. “They will all be one,” the Savior of the world said to His Father, “as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us” (John 17:21). Humility and devotion to God kill carnal love. This means: she lives by conceit and unbelief. Do what you can that is useful and that the law allows, to your loved ones; but always entrust them to God, and your blind, carnal, unconscious love will little by little turn into spiritual, rational, holy. If your love is an unlawful passion, then reject it as an abomination. When your heart is not free, it is a sign of addiction. When your heart is in captivity, it is a sign of insane, sinful passion. Holy love is pure, free, all in God. It is the action of the Holy Spirit acting in the heart as it is cleansed. Having rejected enmity, rejected addictions, renounced carnal love, acquire spiritual love; “Turn away from evil and do good” (Ps. 33:15). Give respect to your neighbor as the image of God - respect in your soul, invisible to others, obvious only to your conscience. Let your activity be mysteriously in accordance with your spiritual mood. Give respect to your neighbor, without distinguishing between age, gender, class, and gradually holy love will begin to appear in your heart. The reason for this holy love is not flesh and blood, not the attraction of feelings, but God. Those deprived of the glory of Christianity are not deprived of another glory received at creation: they are the image of God. If the image of God is cast into the terrible flames of hell, and there I must honor it. What do I care about the flames, about hell! The image of God was cast there according to God’s judgment: my job is to maintain respect for the image of God, and thereby save myself from hell. I will show respect to the blind, and the leper, and the mentally damaged, and the infant, and the criminal, and the pagan, as the image of God. What do you care about their weaknesses and shortcomings! Watch yourself so that you do not lack love. As a Christian, give respect to Christ, who said for our instruction and will also say in deciding our eternal destiny: “Whatever you did to the least of these My brothers, you did to Me” (Matthew 25:40). In your dealings with your neighbors, keep this saying of the Gospel in mind, and you will become a confidant of love for your neighbor. The confidant of love for one's neighbor enters into love for God. But if you think that you love God, but in your heart there is an unpleasant disposition towards at least one person, then you are in woeful self-delusion. “If anyone says,” says Saint John the Theologian, “that I love God, but hates his brother, it is a lie... This commandment is from Him, that he who loves God also loves his brother” (1 John 4:20-21). The manifestation of spiritual love for one’s neighbor is a sign of the renewal of the soul by the Holy Spirit: “We know,” says the Theologian again, “as if we had passed from death to the stomach, as we love the brethren; Do not love your brother, for he remains in death” (1 John 3:14). The perfection of Christianity lies in perfect love for one's neighbor. Perfect love for one's neighbor is in love for God, for which there is no perfection, for which there is no end in success. Success in love for God is infinite: because “love” is the infinite “God” (1 John 4:16). Love for one's neighbor is the foundation in the building of love. Beloved brother! Seek to discover within yourself spiritual love for your neighbors: by entering it, you will enter the love of God, the gates of resurrection, the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen. Ladder. Homily XV, ch. 3. You might be interested in: