Sunday B’ Luke
(Luke 6: 31-36)
We should seek for our enemies, find them and
love them
“And just as
you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise” . I wonder how many
christians pay attention to the real essence of these words and delve into it.
And also, how many christians have the intention to lead their lives according
to these words? The Lord is absolute. You can’t be a little bit of a christian,
you can’t believe in God a little bit, you can’t, some how, communicate with
Christ just a little bit. God, who is in us, through the Holy Spirit, wants us
to belong to him in an absolute way. Because not only did he create us, but
also re-created us by surrendering his own self to death, so that by stirring
our conscience he brings us to a state when we eventually give ourselves up to
him. If you feel the love of God, it draws you to him, attracts you and you
move towards God and towards other people. You don’t distinguish yourself from
the others.
To move on,
the Lord asks us not to be influenced by the secular spirit, which is treating
others the way they treat us. This basic principle should reside in our heart:
we shouldn’t seek our comfort, nor should we take care of not losing one
pleasure or being deprived of another. But we should surrender to God, we
should surrender to death. Still, while you think that you have destined to die,
that you are actually dying –that’s how you surrender– on the other hand, you
are truly living. This antinomy should permeate our life. The minute you are
denying yourself, then you really find your true self in Christ. The minute you
are losing this life, this very minute you have found it. You find true life,
which the grace of God creates in man. It’s the very same life which we will
live eternally, which is life according to Christ, and it begings on earth.
Next, the
Lord asks of us something even harder and he asks for it quite firmly, and
gives an explicit mandate: “Love thy enemies”. We should seek for our enemies
and find them very specifically and love them very specifically. We shouldn’t
just do something for shows. Within our hearts, we should feel love for the
other, we should feel strongly about the other finding salvation; our hearts
shouldn’t be affected at all by our “enemy’s” bad attitude.
With these
words, the Lord is urging us to become the same with God and so be the true
children of God.
Transcribed
talks by Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos
From: Holy
Hesychasterion “The Nativity of Theotokos” Publications.
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