Christ challenges us today to examine how we love. And this challenge comes to us in the context of a culture that’s confused about what love is. While everyone recognizes that love is good, what often passes for love is not necessarily what God, as the Author of love, has revealed to His Church. We learn true love from God or not at all. Love isn’t our creation, but the gift of the Creator. The word used in the Greek New Testament to describe God’s divine love is ‘agape.’ It’s a selfless kind of love, a love which puts the needs of others before ourselves, and which is manifest in humility, service to others, and self-emptying—the same kind of self-emptying that Christ God demonstrates to us through His incarnation and on the cross in His willingness to lay down His life to defeat sin and death on our behalf. It’s the same kind of love that He, in turn, calls us to if we are to live with Him and commune with Him, saying, “He who would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matt. 16:24) and which has so recently been re-emphasized to us through the Feast of the cross.
In today’s Gospel, Christ shows us how we are to practice this kind of self-denying love in our own lives: He admonishes us to “love our enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return,” and He promises us great spiritual reward if we let our hearts put this kind of active love into practice, saying that we will be His sons and daughters, co-heirs with Christ and fellow victors through Christ over sin and death.
In our world today, the idea of loving one’s enemies or being generous in our lending seem almost ‘quaint,’ something that surely cannot isn’t expected of Christians today. We know how to love those who love us and are good to us, but how do we love those who dislike or hate us, or oppose us? What’s the obstacle to us loving with such grace-filled and humble love? Rather than putting these commands of Christ away, relegating them to a by-gone era of Orthodox Church history, we’re presented today with an opportunity to apply them to our own daily lives.
So what’s the challenge? Perhaps our biggest impediment to loving as God loves, as God calls us, in turn, to love, is pride. Pride is the opposite of what Christ admonishes us to do when He says that in order to follow Him, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross (Matt. 16:24, Lk. 9:23). Pride, as opposed to love, insists on self, ego; the prideful person puts himself before all others in his puffed-up over-confidence.
It’s pride that caused our first parents to reject God’s love; it’s pride that brought Cain to murder his brother Able in envy; it’s pride that causes us to be self-focused and indifferent to the need of others for healing and salvation in Christ’s holy Church; it’s pride that makes us easily offended; it’s pride that keeps us from using our gifts, talents, and treasure to God’s glory, desiring to hold onto them ourselves; it’s pride that gives us the false impression that we’re in control and don’t need God; it’s pride that causes us to neglect the divine services and Sacraments God gives us to grow us in His love through communion with Him so we can love others as He loves them.
Our self-examinations for sacramental Confession ask us head-on some of the following questions concerning pride: “Have you been dependent on yourself rather than on God, with the consequent negligence of the Sacraments and prayer? Have you been satisfied or complacent over your spiritual achievements? Have you preferred your own ideas, customs, schemes or techniques to those of the Church? Have you been unwilling to surrender to and abide in Christ, to let him act in and through you?”
Fourth-century St. John Cassian says of the prideful man, “He is not to be appeased when one admonishes him; he is weak in curtailing his own wishes, very stubborn when asked to yield to those of others… he is always more ready to trust to his own judgment than to that of the elders.”
Yes, pride is a great challenge to overcome. And so, when we discover a foothold of pride in us, either through our own deducing or through the Holy Spirit working in us through Christ’s gift of confession, we have an opportunity to give it over to God and begin battling it, so that step by step, we allow God to chip away at it and bring us the healing that frees us to love and to serve.
While pride is hard to defeat, humility, conversely, is hard to come by because it’s a sign, a virtue, of the Kingdom, of the eschaton—eternity with God in His near presence. But again, Christ shows us the way: He Himself is humble: we remember St. Paul’s words, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who… made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. …He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” As we grow in communion with Christ and are deified, we grow in humility, and, therefore, in love for others.
And so, as we pray against pride, we pray for humility, assured that God hears such prayers and works through them for our good. As we grow in humility, we grow in love and service to others, not just those whom we love, but yes, even for those who make our lives difficult, even for our enemies. As we grow in humility, we grow in our communion with God since by grace we come to share more and more in this attribute of His divine nature.
Christ asks us, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them?” The true test of our love is whether we are willing, with and only with, God’s help, to forgive those who’ve wronged us. This forgiveness is part of God’s divine love and may be an ongoing and daily struggle met through prayer.
Many Orthodox have it much harder than us: Think of our Syrian brothers and sisters during this time of persecution. Many of them face being literally wiped out by the Islamists taking over Syria. I met a Syrian Orthodox brother in the past year who had this to say about the situation: “You know, Father, we Christians cannot take revenge, we cannot fight like the Muslims do. We are called to love our enemies, to live at peace, to love, and so, we become martyrs.”
Humility exercised through love in this way is powerful, it’s courageous, a true witness of the truth of Christ in a world of enmity, hatred, and pride. Exercising agape love in our own lives is a uniquely Christian practice that comes from the Holy Spirit working in us and through us. With God working through us in our striving to model humility in love in our own lives, those around us will be touched, encouraged, in the life in Christ as well.
And so, we struggle daily, moment by moment, against the passions, our pride, praying to grow in Christ’s love. We continue daily to strive to submit ourselves to His way as He’s revealed it in His Church, not giving preference to our own ideas. We courageously speak the truth in love to our culture, knowing that this Truth is Christ Himself, is liberating and healing for all. We avail ourselves of the deifying worship of Christ’s Church and the Sacraments—and make time for them. We give to the support of the Church, we pray, we repent and make Confession. We struggle with our focus on Christ so that we may grow in what it means to be His beloved sons and daughters and experience more of His love in our lives. This is the love the world needs—the love God wishes to give us in abundance so we can, in turn, share it with others.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 29 September 2013
Epistle: II Cor. 1:21-2:4
Gospel: Luke 6:31-36
