From SAILING IN THE WINTER SUN: JOURNAL OF AN OLD MAN.
1. We should take the love of everyone seriously as genuine love, even if it is different than our own; and we should accept that every human and even every creature needs love as they need blood in order to live.
2. We must validate in our hearts the humanity of every other person, even those who seem to be "enemies," are outcast and disenfranchised, otherwise we cannot validate our own humanity.
3. The Orthodox faith must be seperated in our minds from nationality, and we must come to understand that for each one of us who believe, Orthodoxy is our nationality and Paradise is our homeland.
4. We must be careful that we shed the true light of Orthodoxy upon the world, and not some re-cycled scholasticism.
5. The "models of reality" from the past are not all valid, and we must see the creative power of the faith to help us shape new models of reality based upon genuine advances in knowledge about the universe and about mankind. To demand obedience to disproved models of reality is simply to demand that people accept and try to live a lie.
6. The faith is dynamic, not static. We cannot just "ritualise" our way through life and into Paradise. The faith is a dynamic transformation of the human conscience and person, not just a series of rituals to be done correctly and nothing else, and not just a series of catchism "facts."
7. Neither priest nor bishop is "above the people," rather we are "of the people," and if we are to be true to our calling, then we must have an open-hearted co-suffering love for the people and find a way to embrace everyone with that love. Otherwise we cannot truly proclaim Jesus Christ and the heavenly kingdom. We must accept into our hearts every person just as they are and trust in the grace of the Holy Spirit to express Itself in each of them if we minister to them with co-suffering love, without judgment or condemnation, without condescension or contempt. We must not look down to anyone, but look directly across at them, eye to eye.
This is the only way that we can minister to the world we live in, and to the people around us - everyone of them beloved by Jesus Christ.
Powerful. Concise. Compelling. The greatness of compassion. I needed to read this.
Posted by: Jessica C | January 06, 2019 at 11:01 AM