Chrysostom
Beloved of All
Your anxious heart clings too tightly to what is not in your power. God weaves the life of the righteous from both hardship and refreshment, never leaving you in one state alone. When you cleave to spiritual things and learn to overlook the worldly, you will be freed from this turmoil and find earth with heaven.
Love is not a fleeting emotion to be sought by control, but a debt you owe through your spiritual kinship. We are members one of another; if love departs, the whole body is rent in pieces. Do not let love remain a name only, with the reality nowhere. Put away the things that subvert it: resentment, envy, rejoicing in another’s misfortune, and the treacherous wound of reproach. Instead, make room for him in your heart, desiring his true good, for when the beloved sees that the lover longs earnestly for his love, it awakens love in return.
The disciples, not knowing the way, asked Christ with great love and anxiety, and He did not spurn them. So let your own cry rise not from fear but from that same love, trusting the Way Himself. God is not unrighteous to forget your love and the zeal you have shown. Persevere in prayer, not to bend circumstances to your will, but to commend both yourself and this man entirely into God’s hands.
Love is not a fleeting emotion to be sought by control, but a debt you owe through your spiritual kinship. We are members one of another; if love departs, the whole body is rent in pieces. Do not let love remain a name only, with the reality nowhere. Put away the things that subvert it: resentment, envy, rejoicing in another’s misfortune, and the treacherous wound of reproach. Instead, make room for him in your heart, desiring his true good, for when the beloved sees that the lover longs earnestly for his love, it awakens love in return.
The disciples, not knowing the way, asked Christ with great love and anxiety, and He did not spurn them. So let your own cry rise not from fear but from that same love, trusting the Way Himself. God is not unrighteous to forget your love and the zeal you have shown. Persevere in prayer, not to bend circumstances to your will, but to commend both yourself and this man entirely into God’s hands.
