Category: LOVE

  • There is an Arabic saying that says that if someone loves you, he will endure and be patient with you, but your enemy lies in wait for you to make a mistake. This is very true. If I love someone, I will let it go; I will endure. But if I do not love, I will be lying in wait to catch the person in a word he might say. Lack of endurance is lack of love.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Endure Injustice

  • There are virtues of the body and virtues of the soul. Those of the body include fasting, vigils, sleeping on the ground, ministering to people’s needs, working with one’s hands so as not to be a burden or in order to give to others (cf. 1 Thess. 2:9, Ephes. 4:28). Those of the soul include love, long-suffering, gentleness, self-control, and prayer (cf. Gal, 5:22). If as a result of some constraint or bodily condition, such as illness or the like, we find we cannot practice the bodily virtues mentioned above, we are forgiven by the Lord because He knows the reasons. But if we fail to practice the virtues of the soul, we shall not have a single excuse, for it is always within our power to practice them.

    —St Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love

  • When I joined L’Arche Daybreak, where people with disabilities are at the center of the community, no one cared that I write books or give lectures to university audiences and church groups around the world. My achievements did not impress them. What they cared deeply about was how consistently I showed up for them and showed them how much I loved them.

    —Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life

  • Still, when we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

    —Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

  • There is no aspect of any suffering whatever that is foreign to Me, that is outside Me. I am afflicted in all the afflictions of men, espousing them to the maximum, without their being able to erode My nature either by corrupting it or by diminishing it. Each human affliction releases in Me a new impulse of Love which wants to sweep into its vortex everything negative. Thou, mother who hast lost thy child,
    woman who hast lost thy husband, young girl who hast lost thy sweetheart, thou who art tortured by cancer, thou who art prisoner in a concentration camp, another the prisoner of alcohol, or of drugs, or of an egoistic sexuality, I am bowed over your misery, ah! If you but knew that I did not will such things, that they result from the work of the enemy, and that, invisibly, I am fighting for you! The outcome I prepare for you is one of light. Now is the hour and the power of darkness; and the time of their undoing must still remain hidden. But My Love will overcome their resistance and will wipe away all the tears. The veil will be lifted. Then you will see, you will understand. You will make your choice.

    —Lev Gillet, In Thy Presence

  • It is necessary to go from total selfishness to sacrificial love that is no longer focused at all on self, in the image of God’s own great love. This is the progress of the smallest creature toward the infinity of heaven…Such an evolution would normally take an extremely long time. But everything happens as though God were in a hurry. Therefore, we should not be surprised if this accelerated course is rather rough. Life is too short to complete such an important journey! If you look at it from the perspective of eternity, our life is only a brief instant. But that does not prevent us from feeling that it is long, especially if one is suffering. Let us keep this difference in mind; it will help us to understand. When we have gone over to God’s side, we will see things just as he does. Jesus explained this: A woman who is giving birth is in pain because her hour has come. But when the infant is born, she no longer remembers her suffering, because she is happy that a child is born into the world (John 16:21).

    —Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

  • It’s not my job to fix his problems. It’s my job to be there for him with love as he figures out how to handle his own suffering.

    —Malia Bradshaw, How to Be There for Others Without Taking on Their Pain

  • If you want to change and eliminate the problems which you have encountered because of your upbringing, enter into a loving relationship with God and others [in your life], and these problems will be resolved. When I learn how to love God, and train myself to love my brother, I will change and become conformed to the image of His Son.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • People look at their homes as a place to complain about and to reject, and unfortunately, in the recent days, the culture that we live in encourages more of that. But My home is a place for me to be holy, to be saintly. And if I don’t realize this, I will be lost. I’ll be truly confused. I’m not living with my family so one day I could go to another family—that’s my goal. That’s terrible, as if almost I’m not able to embrace and enjoy the life I’m living. Same thing when I’m married, same thing with my spouse, my house—I have to look at this place—this is the place of my holiness, this is the place of my purity, the place of my charity, the place of my discipline, the place of my obedience. Where else can I pray and practice real virtue, unless I am with the people that I love the most.

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri