Categories: spiritual-writings
Date: 02 March 2007 08:39:11
From Fr Alexander Schmemann's Great Lent, on the subject of Preparation for Lent and with regard to The Sunday of The Last Judgement (Meat-Fare Sunday):
Christian love is the "possible impossibility" to see Christ in another man, whoever he is, and whom God, in His eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for a "good deed"o r an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God. For, indeed, what is love if not that mysterious power which transcends the accidental and the external in the "other" ... and reaches the soul, the unique and uniquely personal "root" of a human being, truly the part of God in him. If God loves every man it is because He alone knows the priceless and absolutely unique treasure, the "soul" or "person" He gave every man. Christian love then is the participation in that divine knowledge and the gift of that divine love. There is no "impersonal" love because love is the wonderful discovery of the "person" in "man", of the personal and unique in the common and general. It is the discovery in each man of that which is "lovable" in him, of that which is from God.p. 25, 2001, SVS Press