How can we love our neighbor? Who is our neighbor? Can we
love our enemies? Bishop Panteleimon (Shatov) of Smolensk and Vyazma,
chairman of the Synodal Department for Church Charity and Social
Ministry of the Russian Orthodox Church, replies to these questions for
our readers.
This question troubles many people, myself included. Before
responding to it, we need to understand who our neighbor is. The Lord
explains in the Gospel that our neighbor is anyone who stands in need of
our help – even if he’s a complete stranger to us, of a different
nationality, or a member of another religion. This person might be
unpleasant in appearance and we might not feel anything positive towards
him, but anyone who needs help is our neighbor. It’s this very person
that the Lord commands us to love.
There’s another commandment in the Gospel: to love our enemies. Wise
people have said that this commandment is not about the enemies of our
country, but about personal enemies. If we are to love our enemies, then
shouldn’t it be easier to love our neighbor? But in actual fact, even
this is very difficult for us – to say nothing of loving our enemies,
which strikes us as impossible.
But if the Lord has given us this commandment, it means that He’s
placed the ability to love in us. We probably find it difficult to love
not because it’s beyond our strength, but because we’ve been corrupted
by sin and because we love ourselves too much. In order to love our
neighbor, we need to do something. But before we begin to do anything,
we need to understand why we don’t have the love that should be in us.
God placed loved in our nature. But why doesn’t a husband love his
wife, or parents love their children? Why don’t children love their
parents? Why do infidelity and betrayal take place? Why has natural love
for others become unnatural? If it’s difficult for us to love our own
families, then what can be said about people who are different from us:
the homeless, whom we contemptuously call bums, or guest workers and
migrants?
Love has been placed in our nature; we were created by God for love.
But for some reason this love isn’t in me! We might say that human
nature, having been corrupted by sin, has lost this ability. This is in
fact the case. We have been created in God’s likeness. God, in His
essence, is Love. We were created by God in His image and likeness, with
the ability to love placed in us. This is our nature, too. Just as the
divine nature is love, so too is human nature love.
Therefore it isn’t strange that we should love our neighbors, but
rather that we don’t love them. How has this happened? It’s because our
nature has been corrupted by sin and our love has turned into self-love.
We’ve turned in on ourselves, and therefore we’re unable to love.
But this raises another problem. The site “Orthodox and the World” is
addressed to Orthodox readers. But Orthodox people, apart from having
natural love, also have the gift of supernatural love. Every Orthodox
Christian has been baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit – in the name of the Trinity, Which in essence is
love. And every baptized person has been anointed with holy myrrh, and
the gift of the Holy Spirit – the gift of love, the gift of knowing the
will of God, of participating in the sacred rites – has been given to
him in this anointing. Why hasn’t this gift been realized in us?
Why do we think it’s difficult to love our neighbor? After all, this
should be natural and joyful for us. I think the answer is clear: it’s
because we’re sinful and because sin is active in us. Because we’ve
trampled on the gifts given to us in Baptism and Chrismation and are
unable to stir up this love in ourselves. We don’t live the way we
should, instead we live like everyone around us.
Christians are part a certain twenty-first century arrangement in
which there’s no room for love. In our lives we have career, money,
pleasure, certain contractual relationships, politics, art, psychology
(when things get bad, we can go to a psychologist), medicine to live
longer, and entertainment – but there’s no room for love. For us, love
comes in second place – or third, or fourth, or tenth. There’s no room
for God in this arrangement, either.
Therefore, in order to learn to love our neighbor, we need to leave
this world. This is what the Lord calls us to do: to leave this downward
course that can ultimately carry us to the depths of hell; to get off
this track upon which people are moving, people who look more like
streetcars than people.
In order to love our neighbor, we need first of all to fulfill the
first commandment. We need to love God with our whole heart, with our
whole soul, and with all our thoughts and feelings. Without this, we
can’t learn to love our neighbor, we can’t fix our nature that’s been
corrupted by sin, we can’t be transformed, and we can’t accept God’s
gifts in all their fullness.
A small seed of eternal life and heavenly joy has been planted in us,
but it hasn’t flowered or grown. But this very seed can become a tree
in which the birds of the air can lodge. But our lives get in the way of
this.
We need to remember God, to remember Him always. We need to seek God,
to seek unity with Christ. Through heartfelt and constant prayer,
through reading our prayer rules, but not limiting ourselves to them. We
need to seek Him by participating in the Mysteries of the Church,
repenting of our sins, and participating in the Mystery of Holy
Communion. Without this it’s impossible to learn to love God and
neighbor. We need to read the Gospel not just like an ordinary book, but
with faith that the Lord, through these words, can reveal His will to
us, letting each person know what he should be doing. Because love is
joy. If we don’t learn this joy, we’ll go through life for nothing.
After all, we can only fulfill the commandment to love our neighbor
here on earth. In the Heavenly Kingdom love will be granted to all.
There one won’t have to exert oneself or make an effort to love those
whom one finds unpleasant. This can only be done only here on earth.
It’s only here that we can deprive ourselves of something in order to
show love to another by giving it to him. In the Heavenly Kingdom
everybody will have enough of everything. There one won’t need to care
for the sick, look after the homeless, or give part of our money to a
widow with child – there the Lord will fill everything.
We can love our neighbor only here on earth. If we don’t do this, it
means that we’re not alive, because we’re not fulfilling the purpose
that God has placed before us; it means that we’ve deviated from the
right path. I think that by thinking about all this, we can learn how to
love.
Transcribed by Alisa Orlova.
Translated from the Russian
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