“How can
I begin to love Christ?” a spiritual daughter asked her spiritual father. The
priest replied, “We love Christ too little because we spend little time
thinking about him. We spend too little time thinking about him because we
barely know him. We barely know him because we read too little about him. Why
do we read too little? Because of our laziness and folly… To be honest, we read
a lot sometimes—but how? Our way of reading is like water flowing down the
drain.”
The
spiritual daughter asked the priest the same question again, “How can I love
Christ?” The priest said, “Work hard! Read the Gospel and be attentive, and
feel through what you’ve read. You’ve got to read very carefully and be
attentive but you don’t do it. When an individual reads the Gospel properly, it
washes him and penetrates deep into his soul.”
Archpriest Vladimir Bogdanov
You have
to prove your love of the Lord by your resolute decision, “I will believe in
You. I will do my best to follow your commandments. I will suffer for my faith
in You. I will deny everything and everyone, including my private life and my
family, but please, O Lord, don’t reject me, don’t let me lose faith and
courage. Help me not to grudge against You if the sorrows and sufferings that I
or my loved ones have to endure are too hard. Allow me to love You with all my
heart.” If you maintain this disposition, you will easily complete your life
route…
Abbot Nikon (Vorobyov)
Never
begin anything without love because whatever you do without love does not
please God and doesn’t count as a good action.
St Ephraim the Syrian
We ought
to imitate God’s love. Any chance to do good to anyone is God’s mercy, so we
must chase this opportunity and be always ready to serve our neighbour.
Whenever you do anything good, you feel so happy and so peaceful. You feel that
it is the right thing to do and you want to keep doing good again and again.
You start looking for someone else to help, comfort, and encourage. Finally,
the Lord will abide in your heart: We will come unto him, and make our abode
with him (John 14:23). If the Lord is in your heart, you have nothing to fear:
no one is able to hurt you in any way.
Holy Righteous Alexey Mechev
August 15, 2018
St.
Elisabeth Convent
CONVERSATION