Category: LOVE

  • A home is a Christian one, when all the members of the household bear each other’s burdens, and when each one condemns only himself.

    Letters of Elder Macarius of Optina

  • A man’s life or death comes from his neighbor.

    —St. Antony the Great

  • For even if at first the man who has been annoyed feeds his enemy in the hope of punishing him, yet becoming his friend by the act of giving him food he will be able to expel the desire of vengeance.

    Saint John Chrysostom
    If Thine Enemy Hunger, Feed Him
    Homilies on Profitable Subjects

  • Remember the great love and great achievements involve great risks. The measure of love is when you love without measure. In life, there are very rare chances that you meet the person you love and who loves you in return. So once you have it, don’t ever let go—the chance might never come your way again. It’s better to lose your pride to the one you love than to lose the one you love because of pride. We spend so much time looking for the right person to love or finding fault with those who we already love, when instead, we should be perfecting the love we give. When you truly care for someone, you don’t look for faults, you don’t look for answers, you don’t look for mistakes. Instead, you fight the mistakes, you accept the faults, and you overlook excuses. Never abandon an old friend. You will never find one who can take his or her place. Friendship is like fine wine—it gets better as it grows older.

    —Fr. Mauritius

  • He who has forgiven little, loves little. And he who has forgiven much, loves much. For love is born of forgiveness, and forgiveness is the remission of sins. Therefore, the more we forgive, the more we love; and the more we love, the more we are forgiven.

    —St John Climacus

  • What if God was like, “I forgive you, but I want nothing to do with you?” Is that how it works with us?

    —Fr. Elijah Estafanous

  • We make a lot of contradicting statements that do not logically make sense. “I love everybody, but I don’t want to talk to this person.”

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri

  • You hurt because you care. Therefore, the best response to pain is to dive deeper into your caring. Which is exactly the opposite of what most of us want to do. We want to avoid pain: to ward off the bitter by not caring quite so much about the sweet.

    —Susan Cain, Bittersweet

  • As for the one who is self-centred, he never knows love as it should be. And if he does love, his love would not be capable of enduring as it should be. Bear the faults of others as God bears your faults. Bear, but not in distress and bitterness of heart but in love, feeling that everyone has his own weaknesses. Maybe he also has his own excuses that you do not know.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. IV

  • Is your love for friends and favoured ones also firm? Or could any specific event make your heart change towards a love that you had for many years? That is what sometimes happens in a family which makes it collapse and separate after many years. It fails to hold fast against the water, even if it is not many waters.

    Does your love change because of a word that did not please your ears? Or a behaviour that annoyed you? Or the effect of others on you? Or for external circumstances, or financial reasons? Then the words of the Bible echo in your ears, “nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” (Rev. 2:4).

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. IV