My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.
THE ORTHODOX MIND OR SPIRIT (Part IV)
By Reverend Father Anthony Alevizopoulos, PhD. of Theology, PhD. Philosophy
It is indicative that Christ, speaking about the "limits" of love, which is the love for our enemies, characterizes them as "perfection and puts forth as a model the love of the Heavenly Father: "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you: that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven" (Saint Matthew 5:44). The "mind" of love which includes one's enemies is the mind "according to the likeness" of the heavenly Father. It is not offered forcibly or out of necessity, but freely.
The idea that to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, and to do good to those who hate us, and indeed with all the strength of our souls, goes against human nature, is a warped and distorted idea. For that which goes against man's true nature is not loving one's enemies, but to hate them. Not to bless, but to curse.
God loves, blesses, does good. This is why the believer who loves God desires to be like Him; this moreover is the meaning of his life. In this way man overcomes his apostasy and returns to the mind of Adam before the fall. Adam was possessed by the conviction that Eve, the other person, was not something strange, but his very self; "this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh". In Christ Jesus we are no longer egoistical beings, "a thousand pieces"; we regain the feeling and awareness of the oneness of mankind, of the one man, and we understand the meaning of divine dispensation in Christ; Christ came to gather God's scattered children "into one" and He desires to incorporate all into the unity of "one Christ." In this sense does the believer understand the words of Holy Scripture: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God all thy heart, and with all thy soul with all they mind. This is the first and great Commandment. And the second is like unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Saint Matthew 22:37-38).
Referring to this love, Christ emphasized that on this the fulfillment of the entire law depends; this constitutes the Orthodox "mind". Do not differentiate the other; understand him to be your member, and consider yourself and all others as one body and members of one another.
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FOR CONSIDERATION
Submit yourself to the will of God, and do not pry too closely into His judgments, for that can send you out of your mind. The judgments of God are innumerable and unfathomable. A monk in the desert, thinking he had achieved perfection, prayed to God that He would reveal to him His various judgments in the lives of men. God put the thought into his head to go a long way to visit an aged spiritual guide and ask him about this. While the monk was on the way, he met an Angel of God, in the semblance of an ordinary man, who accompanied him and told him that he, too, wanted to visit the elder. Travelling thus together, they came upon the house of a God fearing man, who welcomed them warmly, giving them food on a silver platter. When they had eaten, the Angel took the plate and threw it into the sea. This was something strange and wrong in the monk's eyes, and he asked the Angel why he had done such a thing. The Angel answered him gently: "The man was pleasing to God in all things, and had nothing in his house that he had acquired unjustly except that silver plate. By God's judgment, I threw away that stolen plate, that the man might be righteous in all things before God. Such things are the mysterious and unfathomable judgments of God. And you, old man, go back to your cell and don't exercise yourself foolishly in trying to examine that which is in the power of the one God." (Source: The Prologue from Ochrid)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"--Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George