“Above all, what sets us a part as Christians is love. We shall be asked by God: how much did you love? Whom did you love? Did you love everyone or only some? How did you love them? Nothing can transform people the way love can. Nothing can transform your children the way love can. Nothing can transform your service the way love can. Nothing can lead others to repentance the way love can. Neither logic, nor sermons, not even miracles, can have the same transformative effect which pure Christian love has. Christian love is derived; meaning, that it is the love of Christ towards his children through you. Christian love is a grace from God above all.”
— Fr. Dawoud Lamei
Category: LOVE
-
-
Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other’s faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much. Yes, I see only too clearly how bad people are. I wish I did not see it so. It is my own sins that give me such clarity.
—Dorothy Day -
You are angry with your neighbour, your brother, and say of him: “He is such and such—a miser, malicious, proud,” or that he has done this and that, and so on. What is that to you? He sins against God, and not against you. God is his Judge, not you: unto God he shall answer for himself, not to you. Know yourself, how sinful you are yourself, what a beam you have in your own eye; how difficult it is for you to master and get the better of your own sins; how afflicted you yourself are by them; how they have ensnared you—how you wish for indulgence from others towards your own infirmities. And your brother is a man like you; therefore you must be indulgent to him as to a sinful man, similar in everything to yourself, as infirm as you; love him, then, as yourself, listening to the Lord saying: “These things I command you, that ye love one another”. [John 15.17]
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ -
If a man has a friend and he is absolutely certain that his friend loves him, and if that friend does something to cause him suffering and be troublesome to him, he will be convinced that his friend acts out of love and he will never believe that his friend does it to harm him. How much more ought we to be convinced about God who created us, who drew us out of nothingness to existence and life, and who became a man for our sake and died for us, and who does everything out of love for us?
—Abba Dorotheos of Gaza -
Long-suffering and readiness to forgive curb anger; love and compassion wither it.
—St. Thalassios the Libyan, On Love, Self-control and Life
in Accordance with the Intellect -
Even if our mother or father or brother or sister or spouse or friend couldn’t love us in every way we might have liked, Père Thomas began to show me that each one did reflect an aspect of God’s love, and when taken together they reflected the fullness of God in a way I had often missed in focusing on what each one was not able to offer.
—Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life
However bad it may be at home, anyway they are your father and mother, and not enemies, strangers. Once a year at least, they’ll show their love of you.
—Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Remember people’s love for you and their good past with you, whenever you are fought by doubts of their sincerity and whenever you see them erring against you, for then their past love will intercede for them and your anger will subside.
I felt miserable because I had failed so many times in the past to respond to her help, to accept the warmth and love she tried to give me. Another wave of loneliness overcame me as I considered the times when I fought her, hated her, and pushed her away from me.
…
This was my mother; the word “mother” brings on a flow of feeling and past experiences and years of living together, loving together, and hating, too. The fighting and conflicts do not seem important anymore, the arguments and intense pains and emotions that clouded the relationship have evaporated. This was my mother, and I realize the uniqueness of our relationship.
…
In her dying, I was able to become open to myself and to my mother, to claim our relationship, to look back upon the past in quick moments while at her bedside and realize the times she did give me warmth and love, and the times when pain and emotional conflict blocked the giving and the receiving.
—Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness
Even if some people are foul and have reached the extremes of evil, often they have done one or two or three good things…. We ought to suspect the same also in the case of good people. Just as the most worthless people often do something good, so those who are earnest and virtuous often fail completely in some other respect.
—St. John Chrysostom, On Wealth and Poverty -
When you love much, you are forgiven much-and when you are forgiven much, you love much.
—Søren Kierkegaard, But One Who Is Forgiven Little Loves Little Luke 7:47 -
H.H. Pope Shenouda III on Fr. Faltaous El Souriany:
Despite the fact that Fr. Faltaous led a life full of struggles, solitude, and silence, he still has a great sense of humour. I recall that one time when we were baking pita bread, I noticed that the bread he was baking was very large in size, so I asked him, ‘Why are you making the bread so large, father?’ So he responded, ‘Some of the monks are training themselves to eat only one pita, so I am making the pita bread bigger so that it would be equivalent to three pitas
Combined!’ -
Frankness
You want to be sincere in defending the Truth. But your frankness often hurts people, they become upset and take a stand against you…
Take a good look at yourself. With how many people have you employed this hurtful ‘frank’ manner and done a lot of damage for no reason?! What is more, you have not won their souls for the Lord either.
You ought to have spoken gently and wisely, with consideration for the feelings of others, as our Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman, so that he won her soul without hurting her feelings (John 4) .
If God were to send an angel to speak to everyone about his actions, the hidden ones and those that are plain to see, could anyone bear it?
We thank God that He does not use this method, this hurtful ‘frankness’, with us, out of His great love and kindness and His sympathy for people’s feelings
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life
SO GOOD QUOTES 