One of the first on Paul fulfilled the words of Christ said to Thomas: “blessed are not seen, yet believe.” Blessed and I can be – such as it is, right now. Does the love of God feelings and affection that we desire, or Apostle says something quite different – it reflects the priest Sergei Kruglov.
Photo from azbyka.ru
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- The iconography of the Holy apostles Peter and Paul, mosaic, frescoes, icons, sculpture
- Peter’s faith and the faith of Paul
- Peter or Paul? (test)
- Preeminent? And the rest of it is a little bother?
To love only God and no one else
Priest Sergei Kruglov
How often we hear from someone in the confessional, in the list of sins:
– Sin the absence of love to God…
Is it the same, and no love?
– No, father… That’s another post went through, I like and fasted, and everything as it should be, but that’s for tomorrow – the feast of Peter and Paul, the end of the post, and love all there…
“No love for God” is what you have manifested?
– Well, feeling there, emotion a is not present,… burning heart… Well, that’s how love should be, but to live only one God to choose, and more than anyone or anything.
What can I say…
Feelings as we understand them in the usual earthly sense, of course, it is good and necessary. But in the love of God – a thing far not the only one. And even, perhaps, not the most important…
Sometimes even on the contrary: struggles cultivating “feelings” with the prayer of squeezing a “tenderness”, the believer is able to fall into a strange state (Holy fathers explored it was called “charm”), all the truth which you can detect, as any thing in the world, according to the fruit: hard forcing yourself to “not know anybody, except God” and “warming up” above the senses, focusing on them as a criterion of authenticity of communion with God, man becomes intolerant, arrogant, and then just cruel to your fellow man.
Try the middle, ask him for help or just ask him what time it was, at that time, as he reads his prayer rule is good if remain intact!..
To be intolerant of others, thereby, which were the Christ, in whom He is commanded to find His own way, that is to say, they love God and not love our neighbor – it does not happen, it is a perversion.
Well, that phenomenon with which all Christians are one way or another experienced in the life of the Church, all more or less clear. But very important nuance is this: saying that “neither knows nor sees no one except God” what God sees and knows man?
Pray it to God or the “God” who was created in his image or likeness, who himself is a harsh and punishing (because he does not know how to forgive and pardon), someone- all indulgent and easy to handle, not his Father, and buddy (because he is relaxed and cowardly), someone- meant to first and foremost fulfill the desire (because the petitioner focused only on earthly things), everyone – your…
Not seeing “anyone but God,” but SUCH a “God”, I simply do not see and can’t hear really anyone but himself. Because the walls of my prison does not collapse, and the nightmare of loneliness has never replaced – the awakening…
In the space of freedom
I remember I read in the days of his youth, the story of Vasily Shukshin “the Letter”, the first lines of which struck me then, still quite far from the Church, a tragic truth, seen by the writer in others: “the old Woman Kandaurovo had a dream: if she prays to God, prays, and – an empty corner of the icon in the corner there. And so she prays, and she thinks: “but where is my God?””
Love, including “feelings” and not reducible to them, and in General is not reducible to something one, separately taken, even by myself good: loyalty, duty, and sacrifice, and common interests.
Love is co-existence, the fullness of being together. Co-existence is not conceived only, not just felt; it HAPPENS. Co-existence with God means that what had been said by many saints that was once expressed by Pascal: God is not the God of philosophers (or the God of Kostennikov, or the God of patriots, or the God of ascetics, and so forth) – He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because He with them – a real and authentic RELATIONSHIP WITH BEING.
These relationships can only be built in the space of freedom, because God Himself is free. He is a genuine living Person that I can not restrict, determine, embrace and “sokrovischami”, but which can be together in love – learning and knowing Him, and allowing Him to know me, in the sense in which the word “to know” uses the Bible.
How often do I actively did the opposite – tried to avoid this knowledge and these relationships, avoiding them, and therefore from Him, placing some other goal, the most that neither is “spiritual”, he searched for different other Zadel’e, the most that neither is Orthodox… and again And again with anguish and bitterness of knowing if It is not – I in all of this is good, why all this? If Christ is not in heaven, why should I aspire to?..
Photo from orthphoto.net
If there is no love everything will be past God
All this for a long time and stunningly simply and precisely told by the Apostle Paul, in the famous “hymn of love”, in the 13th Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. I myself have reread it multiple times that way and that admired his literary quality, imagery and the like, until suddenly I didn’t realize how strict, uncompromising and at the same time, these words gently rebuke me, read them, ridiculous, garbage, pathetic as what I deep down modestly called “my life in Christ”:
“Even if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but if I lack love, I’m just rattling copper, ringing cymbals. Even possess the gift of prophecy, may I know all mysteries and all knowledge, and my faith is such that it can move mountains, but if I lack love I am nothing. Let him give away all his possessions and even the body will give a sacrifice to praise me, but if I lack love, I will not go it on advantage.
Love is patient, love is benevolent. It does not envy, does not boast and is not proud, not rude, not asserting itself, is not resentful, does not remember evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but shares the joy of the truth. She endures all things, believes all hopes all endures.
Love never runs out, even if prophecies will be abolished and tongues will cease, and knowledge will be no more. We now know only in part and prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, nothing will remain partial.
When I was a child, spoke as a child, thought as a child and as a child I reasoned. But when I became an adult, left infant habits. And we see now in the murky mirror, but one day will see face to face. Now I know It only in part but one day I shall know as He has known me.
And stay with us faith, hope and love, three of them, but more than other – love.”
Translated By A. Desnitsky
If there is no love, then all the best will in the world BY God.
The Apostle Paul had known what he was talking about in the letter to the Corinthians. So it’s a variety of talents, mentioned above, was not to occupy: and he that believeth, and ascetic, and scholar, theologian and apologist, and the people were converted, and healed the sick and raised the dead, and if you read the Apocrypha, it is still and not get up, in a word, such mountains are moved!.. Of course, we read of the Apostle Paul, and commend him as one of the “preeminent”, we sing the exaltation at the Vigil on the feast of Peter and Paul and never shuts the king’s Gate when reading to him the new Testament Proverbs. All the way.
But I, for one, love most of Paul because he was one of the first revealed to the world: even if you have not lived in the days of the earthly life of Christ, walked with Him along the roads of Judea, did not touch His hands, not sitting with Him at the table were not on the same day at the cross at Calvary, never met Him, just risen, who came “door closed” you will still always be able to meet Him, to love and to learn, in all real and unique completeness to be with Him, like His first disciples.
Nikolay Komarov. The Apostle Paul
One of the first on Paul fulfilled the words of Christ said to Thomas: “blessed are not seen, yet believe.” Such blissful after Paul began thousands of Christians, of different tribes and time periods. Blessed and I can be – such as it is, right now. Of course, if you want it.
And as you want to?
If loving God means to know Him as He is, then how to do it, where to start, what to continue?
The Apostle Paul has this live life with Christ. And I think if these questions to ask him, if you sincerely, with all infirmities, and all your heart, ask for his help in this – he never fails.