There Must not Be Trickery in the Church
An interview with Matushka Olga Sholkova, the
precentor of the Parish Choir of the Church in honour of Pantanassa icon of
Theotokos (Minsk), which has participated in the Royal Voice Festival that year.
Matushka Olga, first of all please tell us
about yourself. Are you a professional musician?
Yes, I
am. I studied in a specialised music school at the Belarusian State Academy of
Music first. The Lord must have brought me there because I had lived in a small
town called Liachavičy, BR, with my grandmother. One day a commission from that
school visited our nursery school. They listened to me and other children and
invited to Minsk to study in that school. My mum is a piano teacher. She had
not taught me to read music but I taught myself to play Beethoven’s Moonlight
Sonata when I was 7.
I studied
in the specialised school until Year 8. Nun Juliania (who was known as Irina
Denisova at that time) was our homeroom teacher all those years. She is a
lively, talented, and creative person. Perhaps, the most essential quality of a
teacher is not just to teach music to children but also to help them to fall in
love with music. We liked our homeroom teacher and everything she was doing. We
are very grateful to her.
After my
graduation from the music college I went on to study in the Academy of Music as
a violinist, and I was invited to play in Minsk Orchestra when I was a
third-year student. It was there that I met my future husband. It must be noted
that both of us had already been attending church services, albeit in different
parishes.
At the
beginning of our family life, our friends invited us to a small St Nicholas
Church located on the outskirts of Minsk, in a suburb called Sokol. There was
an amazing priest — young, ardent, and very enthusiastic — who served in this
railroad carriage cushioned in bricks and made into a church… Father Sergius
Komlik was singing the Akathist to St Nicholas together with the parishioners
one evening. He heard me singing and invited me to sing in the parish choir. It
happened twenty years ago.
There was
a “formidable” book in Church Slavonic called The Octoechos. I was very afraid
of it and I didn’t know how to sing (and even read) it. Little by little I
started learning it, looking for sheet music, learning the tone system and
teaching the girls who sang in the choir, and they in turn taught me. My
academic knowledge wasn’t actually useful here, especially with regard to the
Church rubrics.
How did the choir you are in charge of now
came to be?
When I
realised that my music majors weren’t enough, I went to Minsk Theological
College to become a precentor of a church choir. It seems to me that education
is important in every field. The Theological College provides a knowledge base
that allows us to see the field you specialise in as a single whole: you have
studied theology, liturgics, worship rubrics, and special music subjects.
Studies of theology gave me necessary knowledge to support my ministry as a
choir director, and I am very grateful to my teachers for their hard work,
patience, and love…
After my
husband was made a priest, I continued to sing in St Nicholas Church for
several years. I have been singing in church choir in the Parish in honour of
the Pantanassa icon of Theotokos, where my husband serves as the parish priest,
since 2013.
How did you organise the new choir? How did
you find the singers?
At the
time when our parish was founded, I was Deputy Principal of Minsk Theological
College, so it wasn’t difficult to find the singers — my students helped me.
Later, I was looking for young people who wanted to sing in church. Girls
started coming to our choir first, and then, when I cried unto the Lord, He
sent boys who came to sing with us. Of course, I am very glad to work with
young people, and I thank God for this opportunity.
Who sings in your choir now?
Two girls
have graduated from the Academy of Music where they majored in choir singing.
Two other members of our choir still continue to study in the Academy… There
are singers who do not have a special music education. Thing is, education
isn’t the only requirement, although it is very welcome… I consider my task as
a precentor to not just praise the Lord but also teach my singers proper church
singing.
What do you mean when you speak of “proper
church singing”?
It
appears to me that the singers must learn not just to sing to score but also to
understand what they sing about and to pray during the singing and reading.
First of all, we should teach them the basics of the church singing of the
Russian Orthodox Church – the authentic Russian singing tradition, not author
treatments of church chants. There are church choirs that base their
repertoires on one-part znamenny or Byzantine chant. Our choir was raised on
four-part obikhod chant. We have to be context-aware: there are people with
severe illnesses among our parishioners, so concert singing during worship
doesn’t suit them. In addition, our church is small and wooden. Its
architecture itself prevents us from singing concert-like chants. The singing
style and the architecture of a church must be mutually compatible. It would be
wrong to perform concert scores in a small wooden church with a low ceiling. It
is imbalanced and un-harmonious. There have been many precentor conferences
where choirs are called to sing simpler! With that said, we should sing very
well and be aware of what we sing and for whom we sing it.
Sometimes
we admit non-religious singers to our choir. My task as the precentor is to
really introduce them to the Church. Some of them took communion and started
their spiritual life in our church for the first time.
Is it absolutely impossible to sing in church
without faith?
People
like those will not be able to fit in our choir. We are united around one
common cause; we share common goals and convictions. We are comrades because
one must sing to God “with one mouth”. How can we sing together if we think,
live, and believe in different things? We are not just a choir but a family.
Each person is loved, cherished, and deemed absolutely precious.
That is, church choir is not merely a job for
your singers, is it?
It is an
honour to become a member of the choir. Beside that, it is a great pleasure,
responsibility, and joy.
I can’t
agree with you more, but there are so many professional singers who were taught
in recent years, that it is hardly possible to start singing in a church choir
in Minsk for a newcomer.
Of
course, we precentors in the capital have the chance to select singers for the
choir. However, there is an alternative, too: for instance, all people can sing
the Akathist to the Pantanassa icon of Theotokos together in our church.
Neither a deacon nor a precentor lead the singing. It’s just a priest and all
parishioners singing together. When all people sing and pray together, it
sounds good, consistent, and prayerful.
People
sing in Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral every Sunday. However, when I hear their
singing, although it does give me an impression of unity and community, I would
still prefer a good choir performing a prayerful ancient chant. It makes me
more inclined towards prayer.
The
majority of our singers are females, and most of them are professional singers.
They cannot always perform znamenny chant or Byzantine chant with voices like
theirs. I have to take it into account when choosing the chants for them to
perform. Ancient chants are great for perception and for prayer, especially
when they are performed by male voices. Our choir does sing one-part chants
with ison (as a rule), though very seldom, mostly during the Great Lent.
You are a
precentor and a teacher with big experience, so I would like to ask for your
opinion: what kinds of chants must be dominant in the church? What kind of
singing will help to make every service a worship pleasing unto God. Can there
be various alternatives?
The Lord
has plenty of everything, and all this diversity is wonderful. The fact that
choirs use various traditions and sing in different styles is good. There is an
emphasis on traditional church singing nowadays, instead of concert-like style.
However, church classics is very diverse and rich. On the one hand, author
chants can be unfit for singing in church. On the other hand, there are
excellent pieces, as well as harmonisations of traditional chants, made by
composers, which are beneficial for prayer. It depends on the precentor: her
taste, her abilities, and her spiritual state. Properly speaking, the tandem of
the parish priest and the precentor determines the chants that will be
performed. Some priest dislike polyphonic singing, while others don’t like
simple or monophonic singing. The precentor should obey the priest because she
together with the choir has to create an atmosphere of prayer so that the
priest could lead the worship.
We must
have love between us. Everyone should be in agreement, like a family, instead
of the choir singing as they want, the sanctuary praying as they please, and
the parishioners left alone. There has to be a dialogue of some kind between
the priests and the choir – without breaks or bellyaching, without haste. It’s
our common worship.
The choir
can help to pray, and it can also hinder the prayer. We must not sing to
attract the parishioners’ attention. When people start whispering or looking at
the choir, it means that they do not pray and instead are listening to the
singing, to the singers’ voices or to a new chant… It means that the choir,
frankly speaking, has failed to meet its purpose.
Alternatively,
if there is a celebration of one of twelve major feasts or a patron saint’s day
in your parish, you can choose a chant that fits the solemn moment well. This
is what church education is for: the precentor must be well-versed to know what
and when to sing. This is even more important when you have a small choir or a
trio. You cannot sing something complex and big because it will sound worse
than intended or just plain bizarre.
How many singers are there in your choir?
Most of
the time, there are eight or nine singers. Our choir is small, like our church,
so there is not enough space for many singers. There is a live broadcast of the
service to the church yard for those parishioners who cannot get into the
church. For instance, there were over 300 people who came to church on our
patron’s day (August 30).
Has your choir participated in any contests?
Has it sung anywhere except church services?
We do not
take part in contests, and it’s our deeply held position. We are a
worship-oriented choir. We sing in the Church in honour of the Pantanassa icon
of the Mother of God, and there are quite a few services in our parish every
week. We also sing during services held for the patients of the Oncology Clinic
of the First Clinical Hospital in a designated chapel three times a week.
We seldom
take part in concerts but when we do, we have a definite purpose, such as
collecting donations or promoting spirituality or supporting the volunteers who
cater to cancer patients. Their movement is very active in our parish. We also
sing for patients who stay in hospitals and hospices…
We have
already mentioned that some services in your parish are sung by the flock.
Couldn’t they sing all the services, like they did in ancient times?
According
to the Canon Law of the Church, there have always been special people who sang
in the choir, even in ancient times. There indeed are invariable chants, which
the parishioners can sing during the service. Nevertheless, there are chants
like stichera, troparia, and irmoses, which are variable. The parishioners will
not be capable of singing them. They simply lack knowledge and skills. We
analyse Church Slavonic texts, translate the words and expressions that we
don’t know into contemporary Russian, and learn the rubrics in the choir. That
is, a precentor must also know Church history…
Isn’t it too much responsibility for a
precentor? Is she really so important?
Musicians
are accustomed to criticising each other. They are eager to criticise other
musicians and the conductors and judge if they are good or bad. It is
inappropriate to do so in the Church because the precentor is the main figure
in the church choir and he is responsible for everything: for the selection of
pieces to be performed, for the performance style, and for the overall
character of the service. He is fully responsible before God for the worship
and for the singers. No one must look at someone else with criticism and rebuke
others. Everyone must do what they do to the best of their abilities and with
love but in the end, it’s the precentor who carries the burden of
responsibility for the service. If the choir members aren’t obedient, proper
church singing is impossible. The choir might sound very nice and correct; the
choir may consist of professionals and perform concert-like pieces, but there
will never be a true prayerful singing the way it must be in the Church.
In fact,
singing in a church choir is special. If singers in the choir consider
performance clarity and quality to be more important than the interaction of
the entire choir, than singing “with one mouth”, that’s bad. In my opinion,
peace within the choir is more important than professionalism. The
relationships in the choir are special: one should make concessions and tune
down his selfishness and pride. You can’t have prayer without peace. You cannot
sing in the choir without real Christian relationships. It will be a deception,
and there is no place for deception and trickery in the Church!
St. Elisabeth
Convent
October 13, 2017
A Long Journey but a Heartwarming Stay: Personal Reflections of the 62nd International Book Fair in Serbia
After a
three days long journey to the southeast of Europe, we arrived at the Serbian
border. We handed our passports to a border officer, greeting him with the
phrase we had learned in advance, “Dobar dan!” He doesn't even look at our
documents, stamps them, and here we are in Serbia at last. On our way to
Belgrade we see endless fields and farms… almost like back at home in Belarus.
One can easily see that the people here are hard-working and diligent.
Belgrade
welcomed us with sunny weather and… traffic jams: we “dobrodošli” (entered) the
city precisely at peak hour. Busy traffic, crowded buses, crowded bus stops —
what else could you expect from the capital and the largest Serbian city?
Our
destination was the 62nd International Book Fair in Belgrade. We’ll mount our
equipment and arrange our shelf tomorrow, and now we have some time to look
around.
It’s the
first time I get to know Belgrade so close. This city is situated in the
central region of the Republic of Serbia, at the confluence of the Sava and
Danube rivers. Belgrade is not only one of the most ancient European cities and
the largest city in Serbia (which I have already mentioned) but also the
largest city of the former Yugoslavia.
Some people
may be repelled at the sight of old dilapidated buildings, painted with
graffiti, in the centre of the city. However, you can look at it from a
different angle: Belgrade, our old friend from the Balkans, does not keep a
skeleton in her closet. She is so open and sincere that she does not hide
anything from you. She is also very hospitable and magnanimous. Ten minutes
after you’ve started a conversation with a Serb, you will get to know all his
relatives and be treated to plenty of national specialty foods, and they may
even invite you on a sightseeing tour around the city.
You
cannot judge Belgrade by its demolished houses and dumpsites. It must be noted
that it is a very picturesque city with monumental bridges, complex
roundabouts, bakeries, florist and newsagent shops at every corner. There is a
neighbourhood of detached houses and villas, as well as residential areas
consisting of tenement buildings like Novi Beograd. There is also a
breathtakingly beautiful historical centre with one of the oldest parks in
Europe, Belgrade Fortress, and one of the biggest Orthodox churches in the
world, St Sava Cathedral — and these were the only places that we managed to
visit during our stay in the city. We spent most of our time from 9am to 9pm in
the Belgrade Fair complex.
Belgrade
International Book Fair is a really outstanding event in the life of the city.
Publishing houses from Serbia and other countries, e.g., Russia, Romania,
Ukraine, Belarus, Germany, India, Japan, etc., present their publications at
the Fair. Meetings and presentations featuring famous authors and new
contemporary authors alike are organised during the Book Fair.
The Serbs
are avid readers! I saw with my own eyes how many books in Serbian and in
English they buy, and I was astonished. It’s only natural that Belgrade has
been nominated for the cultural capital of Europe in 2020.
The Serbs
are very easygoing and sincere. They don’t think it’s enough to just buy
something; they will always share their impressions from what they see by
exclaiming “Yayyy!” — a Balkan equivalent of “Wow” — and ask you where you are
from and what you think of Serbia and Belgrade.
I made a
pleasant discovery: Serbs are a remarkable nation that knows how to be really
happy and curious like children. You should have seen how interested and
enthusiastic they were when they attended workshop sessions on calligraphy and
powdered stone icons, organised by the sisters of our Convent.
Finally,
it was time to say goodbye. The Fair was over. Anyway, I hope that we will meet
again. There are no accidental meetings; this meeting with our Serbian friends
wasn’t accidental, either. They are amazing people who honour their history,
their traditions, and their Orthodox faith. They respect and revere their
parents, grandparents, their families. They are so loving and warm. Serbian
land has had a lot to endure but its Orthodox soul did not become insensitive,
its people did not become angry — no, they meet their guests with a smile and
good words again and again, and they never let the guests go without gifts and
a promise of return.
St.
Elisabeth Convent
November
21, 2017
How to See the Image of God in a World of Social Networking
When the
semester begins, I can tell that my students have trouble going for a few hours
without checking their phones to see who’s texted them or posted on their
Facebook status. In fact, I now put on
my syllabus that they cannot text while class is in session. One would think
this to be common sense, but in fact, if I don’t state this up front, they will
try to text. Some of them have become so skilled, they can text from the inside
depths of their pockets. Their desperate attempt at feeding their addictions of
texting and checking Facebook status is a symptom of a much larger problem in
our society.
Never
before in the history of civilization, have people been able to be present in
one place, while connecting somewhere else. Sitting in Jazmines Café at the
University where I teach, I always notice that hardly anyone is talking. They
are plugged into something that takes them somewhere else, whether they are
texting, on Facebook, watching Youtube, googling information, or plugged into
their Ipods. They are often completely oblivious to what’s happening around
them.
If we
think of one of the primary functions of the Divine Liturgy as a means to
engage in a more meaningful experience that transcends the Chronos of everyday
life, cyber social networking does the complete opposite. Kairos, a more
personal and meaningful use of time is the Greek term used for the time spent
at the Divine Liturgy. Cyber social networking then, has become the epitome of
Chronos, the ordinary and the mundane use of time. It removes us from the
present moment. It is a communication that
involves our superficial faculties: the eyes, ears and hands, as opposed to our
deeper abilities as human beings such as creativity and intuition, skills that
involve not only our brains but also our hearts and souls, which we require for
prayer life and worship.
And of
course, the ultimate form of
communication we can engage in as human beings is the Eucharist, which requires
the body, the heart and the soul
simultaneously.
Unfortunately,
the reason people are so strangely addicted to Facebook, Twitter and other
forms of cyber social networking is because it gives them a sense of connection
to a community. We often don’t know our neighbors or town officials and our
close relatives and friends usually do not live near us. Hence, we substitute
that lack of physical community with cyber community. Belonging to these cyber
communities isolate us even more, since the more friends we have on Facebook or
Twitter, the more time we will spend on these sites alone at home, often
ignoring our spouses, parents, children and siblings. Ironically, cyber communities
cause the very thing we hope to avoid.
It
worries me to think of the future of prayer life and connection to not only
God, but to one another, which we know as Orthodox Christians is essential to
our salvation. The beauty of our faith is that our salvation very much depends
on what we do in this lifetime including our relationships with others, which
is exactly why church life is so important.
When we participate in the Eucharist, we are not only concelebrants with
God, but also with one another.
Moreover,
if we are all created in the Image of God, than how can we see this image in a
person’s face, or hear it in his or her voice when communicating through
texting or Facebook? The answer is simple. We can’t. If we are all icons, as
the church fathers tell us, then the image of that icon remains unseen through
a cyber connection. Can you imagine walking into an Orthodox Church with no
icons? The soul of that church would
seem quite empty.
The
Divine Liturgy and the liturgy after the liturgy, as St. John Chrysostom calls
it, teaches us communion with God, but also with one another. It also teaches
us to be in the here and now, the beautiful mystery of living in the Kairos,
rather than only in the Chronos.
Source: http://pemptousia.com/2017/01/the-image-of-god-in-a-world-of-social-networking/
The Orthodox View on Sabbath and Sunday
Q: Is the Orthodox
view that Sabbath has been transferred to Sunday? What is an Orthodox view on Sabbath?
A: The Orthodox believe that Sabbath is Saturday
(to this day, the Greek word for Saturday is pronounced ‘sabbado’ – as is the
case in many other languages). Hence, Saturday is the old Sabbath and Sunday is
the Lord’s Day or the Day of Resurrection. In the Orthodox tradition, Saturday
always has the feastly character of the Jewish sabbath; it is never a strict
fasting day. Moreover, it has always been the liturgical practice to serve
Divine Liturgy both on Sabbath and the Lord’s Day, and this remains the case in
Orthodox monasteries.
However,
Christians are not under the Law and they are not subjects of the Old Creation.
The old Sabbath was the seal of the old creation, whereas Sunday is seal of the
New Creation, the first or eighth day. For this reason, Gentile Christians have
never been bound by Sabbatical laws on the old Sabbath.
Source: https://www.orthodoxanswers.org/is-it-the-orthodox-view-that-sabbath-has-been-transferred-to-sunday-what-is-the-orthodox-view-on-sabbath/
What Is the Greatest Commandment of God?
What is
the greatest commandment of God? This is the question posed to Jesus by the
lawyer in today’s
Gospel from the 15th Sunday of Matthew (22:35-46). Is this
passage familiar? It should be. We also read it on the Eighth Sunday of Luke
which typically occurs about mid-November. And Jesus responds by saying that we
should love God with everything we got. 100 percent. This commandment to love
God we will take has a given because Jesus Himself affirms it in today’s passage. Thus, the question I
would like to address is this: How do I love God? The answer, if I want to put
it simply, loving God is all about keeping His commandments. Jesus affirms this
directly no less than four times in the Gospel of John.
15If you love Me, keep
My commandments. (John 14:15)
21He who has My commandments and
keeps them, it is he who loves Me. 23Jesus answered
[Judas] and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will
keep My word”. (John 14)
24He who does not love Me does
not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who
sent Me. (John 14)
This
directly contradicts much of today’s
prevailing attitudes about love that thinks it is all about feeling good or
having a caring thought about someone. Keeping God’s commandments is all about
choices, decisions and actions.
However,
Jesus is not introducing a new concept here. The Old Testament has numerous
references about how to love God. The Ten Commandments were written on tablets
by God Himself and given to the great prophet Moses to give to the Israelites.
The first four tell us how to love God: 1) do not have other gods before Him,
2) do not make carved images and idols, nor bow down and serve them, 3) do not
take the name of the Lord in vain, 4) remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. In
other words, to love God He must be first and foremost guiding person in our life,
no material, man-made things can be more important than Him, whenever we use
His name it must be to glorify and praise Him and not to curse Him or others,
and we must not work and we must worship Him on His holy day, which for
Christians is Sunday, Kyriake - the Day of the Lord, the Day of Resurrection.
When
the lawyer tried to test Jesus in today’s passage by asking Him which is the
great commandment in the law (v.36), he is referring to this same Law given to
Moses. And Jesus replies, You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind (v.37)
which is a quote, not from the Ten Commandments, but from elsewhere in the Law.
It is from Deuteronomy 6:5. The passage that contains this verse also talks
about keeping the commandments of God and teaching them to our children:
1Now this is the commandment, and
these are the statutes and judgments which the LORD your God has commanded to
teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to
possess, 2that you may fear the LORD your God, to keep all His
statutes and His commandments which I command you, 3Therefore hear,
O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that
you may multiply greatly as the LORD God of your fathers has promised you. 7You
shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you
sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you
rise up.
Loving
the Lord with all our heart and soul is repeated in Deuteronomy 10:
12And now, Israel, what does the
LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His
ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your
heart and with all your soul, 13and to keep the commandments of
the LORD and His statutes which I command you today for your good?
In
Deuteronomy 30, this same language is repeated but changed slightly to say:
2and you return to the LORD your
God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your
children, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3that the
LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you. 6And
the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants,
to love the LORD your God with all your heart
and with all your soul, that you may live. 9For the LORD will again rejoice
over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers, 10if you
obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes
which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the LORD your God
with all your heart and with all your soul.
In
other words, God understands that we will inevitably fail to love Him, and that
turning and returning towards Him are also ways of loving Him.
The
love of God as learned in the Law and the Prophets is exemplified in the
persons of the Righteous Symeon and the Prophetess Anna, whom we commemorate
today February 3rd because they are integral figures in the Feast
of the Meeting of the Lord which we celebrated yesterday. In the Gospel account
(Luke 2:22-40) we learn that Symeon was just and devout and the Holy Spirit was
upon him (v.25). And because of this He was granted to meeting the baby Jesus
and hold Him in his arms when Jesus was brought into the temple by Joseph and
Mary at forty days of age. (vv.27-28) We learn that Anna was a prophetess and
that she did not depart from the temple, but served God with fasting and prayer
night and day (v.37). Thus, she also was granted to be one of the first to meet
Christ. No doubt, Symeon and Anna loved God.
We know
that loving God is only have the equation. The other half is to, as Jesus says
also in today’s
Gospel, love your neighbor as yourself (v.39). Again, we take it as a
given because Jesus reaffirms the commandment, but how do we love our neighbor
as ourselves? Of course, we are familiar with the Parable of Judgment that
Jesus tells in Matthew 25 that tells us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
visit the sick and the prisoners. But what are some other guidelines. Again, we
return to the Old Testament and specifically to Leviticus 19 because this is
the passage Jesus is quoting from when He says, Love your neighbor as
yourself (vv.18, 34) and it contains several instructions about how to love
our neighbor. Some are familiar because they were spelled out also in the Ten
Commandments, numbers 5 - 10 (honor father & mother, you shall not murder,
commit adultery, steal, lie, covet).
3Every one of you shall
revere his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths: I am
the LORD your God.
5And if you offer a
sacrifice of a peace offering to the LORD, you shall offer it
of your own free will.
9When you reap the harvest of your land, you
shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, nor shall
you gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10And you
shall not glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather every
grape of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the
stranger: I am the LORD your God. 11You shall not steal,
nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. 12And you
shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God:
I am the LORD. 13You shall not cheat your neighbor, nor rob
him. The wages of him who is hired shall not remain with you all night
until morning. 14You shall not curse the deaf,
nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear
your God: I am the LORD. 15You shall do no injustice in
judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the
mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. 16You
shall not go about as a talebearer among your people; nor shall you
take a stand against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD. 17You
shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your
neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. 18You shall not
take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your
people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the
LORD.
20Whoever lies carnally with a
woman who is
betrothed to a man as a concubine, and who has not at all been redeemed nor
given her freedom, for this there shall be scourging; but they
shall not be put to death, because she was not free.
26You shall not eat anything with
the blood, nor
shall you practice divination or soothsaying. 27You
shall not shave around the sides of your head, nor shall you disfigure the
edges of your beard. 28You shall not make any cuttings in your
flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the
LORD. 29Do not prostitute your daughter, to cause her to
be a harlot, lest the land fall into harlotry, and the land become full of
wickedness.
31Give no regard to mediums and
familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the
LORD your God. 32You shall rise before the gray headed
and honor the presence of an old man, and fear your God:
I am the LORD. 33And if a stranger dwells
with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. 34The
stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you,
and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers
in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. 35You
shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length,
weight, or volume. 36You shall have honest
scales, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin: I am the LORD
your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 37Therefore you
shall observe all My statutes and all My judgments, and perform them: I am
the LORD.
As we
can see, loving God and loving our neighbor, go hand in hand. They are interdependent.
Jesus said in Matt.25, As much as you did it, or did not do it, to the least
of these My brethren, you did (did not) do it to Me. This is demonstrated
further in the following Scriptural passages.
15So when they had eaten breakfast,
Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love
Me more than these?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You
know that I love You." He said to him, "Feed My lambs." 16 He
said to him again a second time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you
love Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love
You." He said to him, "Tend My sheep." 17 He
said to him the third time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love
Me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third
time, "Do you love Me?" And he said to Him, "Lord, You
know all things; You know that I love You." Jesus said to him, "Feed
My sheep. (John
21:15-17)
17But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts
up his heart from him, how does the love of
God abide in him? (1 John 3:17)
20If someone says, "I love
God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his
brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not
seen? 21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he
who loves God must love his brother also. (1
John 4:20-21)
2By this we know that we love the
children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. (1 John 5:2)
In
conclusion, what are the benefits of loving God? Not that we do it for a
payback but loving God has its own rewards. Mainly, that is God will love us.
Not that He does not love us until we love Him but that in loving Him, we
become more aware of His love for us and we allow God’s love to penetrate our heart,
mind and soul and understand how tangible and powerful it is.
5Now hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by
the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
(Romans 5:5)
23Oh, love the LORD,
all you His saints! For the LORD preserves the
faithful, And fully repays the proud person.(Psalm 31:23)
10You who love the LORD,
hate evil! He preserves the souls of His saints; He delivers them out
of the hand of the wicked. (Psalm
97:10)
17I love those who love
me, And those who seek me diligently will find me. (Proverbs 8:17)
21He who has My commandments and
keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be
loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." (John 14)
23Jesus answered [Judas] and said to
him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My
Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. (John 14)
27for the Father Himself loves you,
because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from
God. (John
16)
28And we know that all things work
together for good to those who love God, to those who are the
called according to His purpose.
(Romans 8:28)
Source: http://stgeorgegoc.org/pastors-corner/fr-ricks-sermons/how-to-love-god-neighbor
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