Chapter 86

Pure Love—the Crown of Perfection in Pleasing God

Love of God is natural to our nature. I believe that it does not completely fade even in sinners, acts in them, calling them to repentance, until they become hardened and despair. But properly speaking, love is conceived from the moment when as a result of repentance the decision arises to serve the Lord, not sparing one’s life. The labors that follow in pleasing God develop it ever stronger and stronger, until it becomes a flame and embraces his entire nature. In these degrees of love there are so many shades that it is impossible even to enumerate them. Some love God because they receive much good from Him; some love God because they expect some good from Him; some love God because they expect all good from Him; some love God because He is God. Love is revealed in deed in such a way that some do only part for God, leaving part for themselves; another does all for God; and another offers both himself and all his own as a sacrifice to God unconditionally. To love God as God, with complete self-sacrifice, without any ulterior motive, is pure love. The Ladder-bearer speaks of himself, that even if God were to send him to hell, he would love Him with his whole soul just the same unwaveringly. Clearly, pure love is the crown of perfection in pleasing God and appears in strength only at the end of the labors undertaken on this path. At the beginning, in the first manifestations of the Kingdom of God in us, it cannot be required: it may be in the goal, but not in deed; it reigns when God has already consumed all that is ours. (16, 46–47)