Second Instruction for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday: On Love for One’s Neighbor

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lk 10:27; Mt 22:39).

Beloved brethren! Such is the commandment of our Lord God that the Gospel proclaims to us today. The Gospel adds that in love for God and love for one’s neighbor is concentrated all of God’s Law, because love is that virtue which is derived from the fullness of all other virtues. “Love is the bond of perfection” (Col 3:14), according to the determination of the Apostle.

Clearly, in order to love one’s neighbor as oneself, one must first love oneself correctly.

Do we love ourselves? Despite the strangeness of this question – new and interesting only, as it were, in its apparent superfluity – one must say that very few men love themselves. Most men hate themselves and try to do themselves as much evil as possible. If one were to measure the evil done to a man in his life, one would find that the cruelest enemy did not do him as much harm as he himself has done. Each of you, looking impartially into his conscience, will find this observation just. What could be the reason for this? What is the reason that we almost constantly do ourselves evil, while at the same time we constantly and insatiably desire good for ourselves? The reason lies in the fact that we have replaced true love for ourselves with self-love, which inspires us to strive for indiscriminate fulfillment of our desires, of our fallen will, guided by falsely-named reason and deceitful conscience.

We are drawn away by greed, love of honor, vengeance, grudge-bearing, and all sinful desires! We flatter ourselves and deceive ourselves, thinking we are satisfying love for ourselves, while in fact we are only satisfying our insatiable self-love. By striving to satisfy our self-love, we do evil to ourselves; we destroy ourselves.

True love for oneself consists in fulfilling the life-giving commandments of Christ: “this is love, that we walk according to His commandments”, said the holy John the Theologian (2 Jn 1:6). If you do not become angry and bear no grudges – you love yourself. If you do not swear and do not lie – you love yourself. If you do not injure, do not steal, do not take vengeance; if you are patient with your neighbor, meek and without malice – you love yourself. If you bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who cause you distress and rise up against you in persecution, then you love yourself; you are a son of your heavenly Father, who shines with His sun upon the evil and the good, who sends His rain upon the righteous and unrighteous. If you bring to God earnest and fervent prayers from a contrite and humble heart, then you love yourself. If you are continent, not vainglorious, vigilant, then you love yourself. If through almsgiving to the poor brethren you transfer your wealth from earth to Heaven and make your perishable possession imperishable, and your temporal property – eternal and inalienable property, then you love yourself. If you are so merciful that you share in all the infirmities and shortcomings of your neighbor and abstain from judging and despising your neighbor, then you love yourself. At the time when you forbid yourself to judge and condemn your neighbor, which you have no right to do – the righteous and merciful God removes the righteous judgment and annuls the righteous condemnation deserved by you for your many sins. One who wishes to love himself correctly, not to be deceived and swept away by self-love, that is, by his fallen will guided by false reasoning, must study carefully the Gospel commandments, which contain spiritual wisdom and lead the one who fulfills them to the experiences of the new man. While studying and after studying the Gospel commandments, it is necessary with all vigilance and watchfulness to observe our desires and inclinations of heart. With strict vigilance, it becomes possible for us to discern our desires and inclinations. From habit and from fear of God, this discernment becomes as if a natural exercise. Not only every desire and inclination openly contrary to the Gospel commandments must be rejected, but also all desires and inclinations that disturb the peace of the heart. Everything flowing from the Divine Will is accompanied by holy peace, according to the experiential teaching of the holy Fathers; on the contrary, everything accompanied by turmoil has sin as its source, although outwardly it may appear to be a higher good.

One who has come to love himself correctly can love his neighbor in a way pleasing to God. The sons of the world, languishing from self-love and enslaved by it, express love for their neighbor through indiscriminate fulfillment of all the desires of their neighbor. Disciples of the Gospel express love for their neighbor through the fulfillment toward him of all the most holy commandments of their Lord; they regard the satisfaction of human desires and whims as soul-destroying people-pleasing and fear it as much as they fear and flee self-love. Self-love is a distortion of love with regard to oneself; people-pleasing is a distortion of love with regard to one’s neighbor. The self-lover destroys himself, while the people-pleaser destroys both himself and his neighbor. Self-love is sorrowful self-deception; people-pleasing strives to make one’s neighbor also a partner in this self-deception.

Do not think, brethren, that love acquired through self-denial takes on a harshness foreign to it, or that from the exclusive fulfillment of Gospel commandments it loses warmth, becomes something cold and mechanical. No! The Gospel commandments drive out from the heart the fleshly fire, which very quickly dies out at any, sometimes the smallest, opposition; but they introduce spiritual fire, which cannot be extinguished not only by human evildoings, but even by the very efforts of fallen angels (Rom 8:38-39). With this sacred fire burned the holy protomartyr Stephen. Dragged out of the city by his murderers, beaten with stones, he prayed. Deadly blows followed; from their savagery Stephen fell to his knees half-dead, but the fire of love for his neighbor in the moment of parting with life burned all the more brightly in him, and he cried out “with a loud voice” for his murderers: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” (Acts 7:60). With these words the protomartyr gave his spirit to the Lord. The last movement of his heart was – a movement of love for his neighbors; his last word and deed was prayer for his murderers.

The invisible struggle against self-love and people-pleasing is at first accompanied by labor and intense battle; our hearts, like the hearts of our fathers and forefathers, since the time our forefather fell into the sinful realm, “always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51). They do not acknowledge their fall; with hardness they defend their miserable state, as if it were a state of complete contentment, perfect triumph. But for every victory over self-love and people-pleasing the heart is rewarded with spiritual consolation; having tasted this consolation, it then enters the struggle more courageously and more easily achieves victories over itself, over the fall that has become its own. Frequent victories draw frequent visits and consolation of grace; then a person begins with zeal to trample down self-seeking and self-will, striving along the path of the commandments toward Gospel perfection, confessing and mysteriously singing to the Lord: “I run in the path of Your commandments, when You enlarged my heart” (Ps 118:32).

Brethren! Let us courageously enter into struggle against self-love under the guidance of the Gospel, in which is depicted the will of God, well-pleasing and perfect, in which dwells mystically the New Adam, Christ, and He transmits kinship with Himself to all His children who truly desire this kinship. Let us learn to love ourselves correctly and holily; then we will be able to fulfill toward our neighbor the all-holy commandment of our great God: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. Amen.

Heb 10:22. In the prayer before the “Cherubic Hymn” the hierarch prays for deliverance from an evil conscience, that is, darkened by sin and false understandings, wherein evil is recognized as good and is done as if it were good. With especial clarity an evil conscience is manifested in the activity of barbarous peoples; but for a Christian observer it is equally evident both in human activity generally, and especially in one’s own activity. The Official (Church book)

Venerable Macarius the Great. Homily 4, chapter 13