There’s a lot of confusion today about the meaning of love. While everyone recognizes that
love is good, what often passes for love is not necessarily what we as Orthodox (right-believing)
Christians would define as such. We learn true love from God, Who is the Author of love, or not
at all. The word used in the Greek New Testament to describe His love is ‘agape.’ It’s always a
selfless kind of 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 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).
In today’s Gospel, Christ shows us how we are to practice this kind of self-denying love and
humility 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 our enemies or being generous in our lending seem
almost ‘quaint,’ something that surely cannot be expected of Christians today. We know how to
love those who love 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 Church history, we have an
opportunity here to wrestle with their application in our own lives today.
Our biggest impediment to loving as God loves, as God calls us, in turn, to love, is pride. It was
pride that caused our first parents to reject God’s love; it was pride that caused Cain to murder
his brother Able; it’s pride that causes us to be self-focused and indifferent to the need of others;
it’s pride that makes us easily offended. It’s pride that keeps us from using our gifts and talents
to God’s glory; it’s pride that keeps us from seeing the good in others. It’s pride that makes
us dependent on ourselves rather than on God and causes us to neglect the divine services and
Sacraments God gives us to grow in His love.
Our self-examinations for confession ask us some of these questions regarding pride head-
on: “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?” —just to name a few of the great many ways that pride snares us and robs us of
loving and serving God and our fellow man as a Christian does.
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.”
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 our hearts through
confession, we have an opportunity to confess it and begin praying against it, so that step by step,
we may allow God to chip away at it and bring us the healing that will free us to love and serve.
While pride is hard to defeat, humility, conversely, is hard to come by. 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, 6 who… made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a
bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8…He humbled Himself and became obedient
to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” As we grow in communion with Christ, 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
will work 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 of 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 have wronged us and this forgiveness is part of God’s love and
may be an ongoing and daily struggle met through prayer.
Many Orthodox have it so much harder than us: We 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 in the name of the so-called ‘Arab Spring.’ I ran into a Syrian Orthodox man
the other week, who had this to say: “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.”
Humility exercised through love in this way is powerful, it is courageous, it is 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 by the power of 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.
We’re warned that in the end times, love will grow cold, but that we, those in the Body of Christ,
must persevere to the end. We do not know the time or the day, but we live now with eternity
before our eyes, in the fear and love of the Lord, lest we remove ourselves from life with Him
We cannot afford to put off the hard work that is demanded of us if we are to come outside of
ourselves, our egos, our pridefulness, and learn to love God and others with humility—and yes,
even to the point of loving those around us even when they don’t love us back. On our own,
this is impossible; with God’s help and our continued growth in His divine grace, it’s not only
possible, but it’s inevitable—the fruit of our life in Christ God and, through Him, with one
another, and the world around us.
It’s not our circumstances, but our attitudes, our open hearts and minds toward God and the life
that is only in Him, that makes the difference between our experiencing the blessings of life
with God now and in the future, or living for ourselves and missing out on all that God in His
goodness and love for us has promised those who put their trust in Him.
And so, we daily struggle against the passions, our pride, praying to love as He loves. We
continue daily to strive to submit ourselves to His way, not giving preference to our own ideas.
We courageously speak the truth in love to our culture. 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, agape—the love God
wishes to give us in abundance so we can, in turn, give it to others.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Epistle: II Cor. 6:16-17:1
Gospel: Luke 6:31-36
