ЛЮБОВЬ К БЛИЖНИМ

Love your neighbor as yourself. What could be easier than this? Hating is difficult and fraught with anxiety, but loving is easy and comfortable. Truly, if the Lord said: you people love animals, such a commandment would be difficult; but when he commanded people to love people, why homogeneity, unity of origin, and natural attraction serve as a great motivation, then what difficulty can there be here? This happens with both lions and wolves, and their affinity of nature predisposes them to mutual affection. Therefore, what excuse can we have if we do not attract to ourselves with love those who are similar to us, while we tame lions and accustom them to our home (2)? One loves because he himself is loved; another because he is respected; another because his neighbor was useful to him in some everyday matter; and the fourth for some other reason. But it is difficult to find someone who would love his neighbor sincerely and as he should - for Christ. Most are connected to each other only by everyday affairs. Paul did not love like that: he loved for Christ; That’s why, although he was not loved as much as he loved, he did not weaken his love, but allowed it to take root in himself. This is not what love is today. If we examine all the reasons for love, we will find that for the majority they differ from the one indicated. And if someone allowed me to carry out such a study in this crowded meeting, then I would show that very many are connected to each other by everyday forms. This is revealed from the causes that produce enmity. Since they are united by transitory benefits, their love has neither ardor nor constancy; on the contrary, every insult, or loss of money, or envy, or love of vanity, or anything similar easily destroys their love, which has no spiritual root. If there were such a root, then nothing worldly could destroy the spiritual. Love, which has Christ as its foundation, is firm, constant, invincible; Nothing can terminate it - neither slander, nor danger, nor death, nor anything else like that. He who loves in this way, even if he suffers a thousand defeats for his love, will not leave it. He who loves because he is loved, if trouble happens to him, will interrupt his love; and whoever is united by that love will never leave it. That is why Paul said: “Love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:8). What will you tell me in your defense? Why did he offend you who was honored by you? Or that the one who benefited you wanted to kill you? But if you love for Christ, then this very thing disposes you to greater love. What in others serves to destroy love, here the same thing serves to strengthen it. Why? Firstly, because such a person is the source of rewards for you; secondly, because he needs more help and care for him. That is why, whoever loves so much does not consider either clan, or fatherland, or wealth, or mutual love for oneself, or anything else like that. But even if he was hated, offended, killed, he does not cease to love, having a sufficient reason for love - Christ. Looking steadily at Him, he remains firm and unchanging. And Christ in the same way loved enemies, ungrateful people, offenders, slanderers, haters, who did not even want to look at Him, who even preferred wood and stones to Him - He loved them with the highest love, which cannot be found similar. He says: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Look how he cares for those who crucified Him and who showed so much fury against Him! This is what He spoke about them to the Father: “Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34)! And subsequently he sent more disciples to them. So, let us also be jealous of this love, and we will look at it, so that, having become imitators of Christ, we will be worthy of both this and future blessings (7). If real life is so desirable, then what can we say about the one where there is no illness, no sorrow, no sighing? There you no longer need to fear death or fear the loss of the benefits there. Blessed, and most blessed, and many times blessed are those who have been granted this blessed lot; on the contrary, those who deprive themselves of bliss are unhappy, and extremely unhappy, and innumerably unhappy. But what, they will say, can bring us such a life? Listen to how the Judge himself talked about this with one young man. When the young man asked, “What good thing can I do to have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16) - then Christ, recalling the commandments of the law, focused on love for others. And perhaps now one of the listeners, like that rich man, will say: we have kept all that: we did not steal, we did not kill, we did not commit fornication. But you cannot yet say that you have loved your neighbor as you should love. For example, you either envied someone, or slandered someone, or did not help the offended, or did not share your property, and therefore did not love your neighbor. But Christ commanded not only this, but also something else. What is it? “Sell,” he says, “your possessions and distribute to the poor... and follow Me” (Matthew 19:21). He calls imitation of Him in deeds by followership. What do we learn from here? Firstly, that it is impossible for one who does not have all this to achieve the advantages of the future lot. When the young man said that he had done everything, then Christ, as if something important was still missing for complete perfection, says to him: “if you want to be perfect... sell your possessions and give to the poor... and follow Me.” So, firstly, we must learn this. Secondly, we see that the young man convicted himself of empty self-righteousness; after all, if he lived in such abundance, and despised others who were in poverty, then how could he say that he loved his neighbor? Let us try to spend our property in such a way as to acquire heaven. If someone often gives up all his property for worldly greatness, greatness that will remain here and cannot even last for a little while, since many were deprived of power long before death, others sometimes paid for it with their very lives, and yet, despite this, they sacrifice everything for it - if, I say, people do so much for this, then is it possible to be more unhappy than us, for the sake of endless and inalienable glory, not devoting even a little, not wanting to give even that after a little Should we leave time here? What madness is it - not to want to voluntarily give and take with us what we can lose against our will? After all, if we were led to death, and then offered to get rid of death at the cost of all our property, we, of course, would consider this a mercy; and now, when we are carried away on the way to Gehenna and could get rid of it by sacrificing half of our property, we agree rather to undergo torture and want to keep for ourselves what does not belong to us, and thus we lose what truly belongs to us. What kind of justification will we have, what kind of forgiveness, if such a convenient path to life has been laid out for us, and we rush along rapids, follow a fruitless path, depriving ourselves of everything here and there, then how could we truly acquire everything both there and here? (8) You might be interested in: