sin_vladimirov
15th June 2005, 06:04 AM
And now remain faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (St.Paul)
Why is love the greatest?
The answer is in the words of St. Chrysostom, "for all others pass, and love remains forever".
Many a person in this age of ours, age of divided respect and lack of it, divided faith and lack of it, divided hope and lack of it and truly divided love and lack of it can not understand that love is the fulfillment of cosmos.
Love is the nucleus of all existence. It is the meaning behind irrationalism. It is the unchangeable value in all of this deflation of standards and inflation of moral decadence.
In our apophatic realization of God, we can not say what God is but rather what He is not. This is the rule, but like all rules of our knowledge and beyond it, this one has an exemption.
The exemption is that we do know that God IS Love.
I can not but get tears in my eyes when hearing words of the “Doubting Thomas” who, on his knees, admits all and everything, killing his pride for the better things. (Jn. XX, 28.)
Lord is love.
THE Love; and who is comparable to Him?
How wonderful is to know that God loves us.
We as people of God are from time to time ready to say that St. Thomas was a doubting disciple and to affirm that we might not have been if we were in his place. Oh, how wrong we are! We are doing even worse things. St. Thomas admits his doubt and so lovingly, on his knees cries the confession of the ages, My Lord and my God. He is a truly happy (makarios, same word used in Mt. V) for he have fought the good fight; he has finished the race and kept the faith (II Tim IV,7.).
Or what to say of St. Peter who denounced the Lord three times.
Oh, you Peter! How dare you, weakling!
No! How dare I?
Who am I to judge the person who lived and died for His Lord. Crucified up-side down, he made the biggest statement, the biggest confession, even bigger than the one in Mt. XVI, 18.
That not one of us, not one, is worth to even die the same way the Lord did.
Now, why not be like St. Peter and with strength of conviction admit to Him, YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU! (Jn. XXI, 17.).
Lord, you know that I love you!
Many people of our age ask why did God create world and then gave us the free will?
Why did he let us use the free will to such devastating results?
Why did He not make us robots? Or, maybe computers.
Well, that is where venerable St. Paul comes in.
The person that has been doing my head in of late.
Deep, deep man.
He writes about foolishness of our faith (I Cor. I,17-II,5.).
To this St. Chrysostom cries from his chair in Constantinople:
“Which sort of philosopher who has studied logic… has known the truth? Which scientist has gave the answer? Which man of this world has come close? NONE I tell you, none!”
And he would continue to say that:
It was the wisdom of this world that is its undoing.
For them (people of this world) being so wise have not see something so simple. And it was left to fishermen, and poor, and ugly to deliver the salvation.
The smart of this world have missed it. Blinded by their "wisdom" What kind of wisdom is that?!
Why did then, God choose to give us free will?
Well, if God wanted us to be computers we would have been.
But we all know that our computers, no matter how fast and how big of a hard-drive they might have, are just not capable of loving us.
So, by our honest affirmation, which we say together with St. Peter, Lord You know we love you, we are proving the God right.
We need not be robots, we need not be computers.
We choose by our own free will to love Him as He loves us.
That is why God died for His people.
He died because He knew, that no matter what, some "fools" will love Him. Same fools that believed foolish teaching of the Apostles.
Love is the nucleus of the cosmos.
Thank you, Lord, for making us those fools.
Thank You, for everything!
Now, that was my blah-blah for the evening.
Sorry, I am just venting some love!
Why is love the greatest?
The answer is in the words of St. Chrysostom, "for all others pass, and love remains forever".
Many a person in this age of ours, age of divided respect and lack of it, divided faith and lack of it, divided hope and lack of it and truly divided love and lack of it can not understand that love is the fulfillment of cosmos.
Love is the nucleus of all existence. It is the meaning behind irrationalism. It is the unchangeable value in all of this deflation of standards and inflation of moral decadence.
In our apophatic realization of God, we can not say what God is but rather what He is not. This is the rule, but like all rules of our knowledge and beyond it, this one has an exemption.
The exemption is that we do know that God IS Love.
I can not but get tears in my eyes when hearing words of the “Doubting Thomas” who, on his knees, admits all and everything, killing his pride for the better things. (Jn. XX, 28.)
Lord is love.
THE Love; and who is comparable to Him?
How wonderful is to know that God loves us.
We as people of God are from time to time ready to say that St. Thomas was a doubting disciple and to affirm that we might not have been if we were in his place. Oh, how wrong we are! We are doing even worse things. St. Thomas admits his doubt and so lovingly, on his knees cries the confession of the ages, My Lord and my God. He is a truly happy (makarios, same word used in Mt. V) for he have fought the good fight; he has finished the race and kept the faith (II Tim IV,7.).
Or what to say of St. Peter who denounced the Lord three times.
Oh, you Peter! How dare you, weakling!
No! How dare I?
Who am I to judge the person who lived and died for His Lord. Crucified up-side down, he made the biggest statement, the biggest confession, even bigger than the one in Mt. XVI, 18.
That not one of us, not one, is worth to even die the same way the Lord did.
Now, why not be like St. Peter and with strength of conviction admit to Him, YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU! (Jn. XXI, 17.).
Lord, you know that I love you!
Many people of our age ask why did God create world and then gave us the free will?
Why did he let us use the free will to such devastating results?
Why did He not make us robots? Or, maybe computers.
Well, that is where venerable St. Paul comes in.
The person that has been doing my head in of late.
Deep, deep man.
He writes about foolishness of our faith (I Cor. I,17-II,5.).
To this St. Chrysostom cries from his chair in Constantinople:
“Which sort of philosopher who has studied logic… has known the truth? Which scientist has gave the answer? Which man of this world has come close? NONE I tell you, none!”
And he would continue to say that:
It was the wisdom of this world that is its undoing.
For them (people of this world) being so wise have not see something so simple. And it was left to fishermen, and poor, and ugly to deliver the salvation.
The smart of this world have missed it. Blinded by their "wisdom" What kind of wisdom is that?!
Why did then, God choose to give us free will?
Well, if God wanted us to be computers we would have been.
But we all know that our computers, no matter how fast and how big of a hard-drive they might have, are just not capable of loving us.
So, by our honest affirmation, which we say together with St. Peter, Lord You know we love you, we are proving the God right.
We need not be robots, we need not be computers.
We choose by our own free will to love Him as He loves us.
That is why God died for His people.
He died because He knew, that no matter what, some "fools" will love Him. Same fools that believed foolish teaching of the Apostles.
Love is the nucleus of the cosmos.
Thank you, Lord, for making us those fools.
Thank You, for everything!
Now, that was my blah-blah for the evening.
Sorry, I am just venting some love!