“In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.”
Elwood P. Dowd | Harvey (film)
Category: LOVE
-
Some people ask if help is needed. And others just help. The former act as good people, and the latter are likened to Christ.
—Monk Simeon of Mt. Athos -
The criterion of my spiritual health is this: what is the state of relations between me and those with whom I live? No other criterion is higher. Family life is the measuring stick of Christian progress for those who live in the world.
―Sister Magdalen, Children in the Church Today: An Orthodox Perspective
-
A Smile, A Gaze…
Love without limits employs the simplest means to establish contact between persons. Words are not needed. If they are pure and true, a smile or a gaze will suffice.
A smile, a gaze… Two means of infinite expression: a deep and silent expression of ourselves. Thereby a communion is created with those to whom we may never speak a word or whom we may never see again.
Whether or not you are known to me, I look at each of you attentively—you whom God has placed on my pathway. Silently, and in my presence, God makes of you living souls. He makes you present to me. In your eyes I behold your soul, just as my gaze conveys my soul to you.
We can, then, become immersed in other persons: “I am in you and you in me.” Between us there grows a living communion. Its heart, its ultimate fulfillment, is the Face of God, that Face we behold through the transparency of each other’s faces.
We smile at each other. That smile relaxes lips that previously were closed. It opens teeth that before were tightly clenched. A door has opened. Something has begun between us, something whose future we leave entirely in the hands of God.
You who have given me today a smile or a gaze that is both pure and true, and who have received from me a smile or gaze, pure and true (I stress these words, “pure and true”): I bless you in silence.
I pray to the Lord of Love that the wordless meeting of our souls will allow a brilliant light to illumine this day!
—Lev Gillet, Love Without Limits -
There is tension between George and Johnny, between Ashley and Johnny, between the world and Johnny. He spends long hours away from everyone, but watch him down in the basement, when a documentary about meerkats comes on TV. He knows his wife “loves meerkats.” He races around desperately to find a blank videotape, so he can tape the show. It would mean so much to him to give her this video. He fails. Ashley explains about the tab that keeps you from re-recording over something, but he responds with anger and, of course, takes it out on her.
-
“…and it was said that Rossetti never got over his wife’s death, because he thought he had not been perfectly kind to her during the last years of her life, and that she might have lived longer if he had been more kindly. His friends repudiate that, and say it is not true; but if it was not true of Rossetti, it is true of many people.
The sin of neglect, the sin of inattention, the sin of absorption in self, these have wrought a great sorrow in the lives of some, and they never rise out of the dust after.”
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
165. Do good to one who wrongs you, and God will be your friend. Never slander your enemy. Practice love, restraint and moderation, patience, self-control and the like. For this is knowledge of God: to follow Him through humility and other such virtues. These are the actions not of every man, but of one whose soul possesses spiritual understanding.
—St Anthony the Great
On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life
One Hundred and Seventy Texts -
Through this dichotomy, human love is assuredly differentiated from divine love. Many fathers of the Church therefore caution against this self-seeking approach to one’s relationship with God. For example, St. Basil writes:
“[A] beginning is made by detaching oneself from all external goods: property, vainglory, life in society, [and] useless desires, after the example of the Lord’s holy disciples. James and John left their father Zebedee and the very boat upon which their whole livelihood depended. Matthew left his counting house and followed the Lord, not merely leaving behind the profits of his occupation but also paying no attention to the dangers which were sure to befall both himself and his family at the hands of the magistrates because he had left the tax accounts unfinished. To Paul, finally, the whole world was crucified, and he to the world.”[22]
By cultivating this selfless love for God and all His creation, we come to learn the truth of the Lord’s saying, “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light,”[23] for when one loves God for Who He is, and not merely on account of the blessings He provides, he realizes the profound joy and gladness that ensue from walking with the Lord.
Imperfect Love: Struggling to Love Like God
Hilana Said
SO GOOD QUOTES 