Love is the difference between the Old and New Testament – Father Gavril Galev
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That which distinguishes the life of the New Testament from the Old Testament and that which is why Christ instituted the New Testament is precisely love. Love is the life and the criterion of the New Testament with Christ, and by that we will know who we are more akin to. Whether we are similar to the fallen Adam or to the new Adam – Christ, depending on how much love we have. Christ therefore came to show God’s intent for man, because Adam did not fulfil that intent. Love is what makes us different from everything else, and love is what makes us similar to God.
God is absolute love and He is merciful to us all. Even though we are bad and fallen, He still loves us and grants us everything we have. We are indeed bad because we are ungrateful. Let us reassess. When have we awoken in the morning and been truly grateful for the coming day? When, before laying our head down to sleep, have we been thankful for those things that we received during the day just past? For the air we breathe, for the food we eat and for all the good things in life?
Very rarely. Living this fast and preoccupied lifestyle, we almost never “have” time to thank God. Not to mention other things and benefits in life. Not only do we not thank God, but we attribute those accomplishments as being achieved through our “own” strengths. When we do something good, instead of thanking God, we are full of pride as if we have achieved that with our own strength. And that is why we make life more difficult for ourselves.
But when we are grateful to God, even the greatest difficulty is overcome. Thanking God is what makes life easier for us. Gratitude is effortlessly bearing the weight of life’s difficulties and tribulations. That is the underlying principle when God says that; “His yoke is easy and His burden is light.”
God gave us this most simple and plain commandment; that we should not do unto others that which we do not want to be done to us, as a rule of life. There is no simpler commandment than this one. We do not have to be great Christians, and live who knows how, but it is enough to simply fulfil this rule. Let us not do unto others that which we do not want done unto us.
Quotes
When someone transgresses against us, and more precisely when they hurt our ego, our passions, which have turned into idols, then we become like beasts, and not only that, but we remember it, we keep it in ourselves and we hold a grudge unto the ages of ages. And that. That anger, that hatred, that inability to forgive, and, every evil in us will push us into the hell, because in heaven, that is, where Christ is, there is no place for even an iota of anger, not even an iota of unlove, not even an iota of hatred, resentment, etc.
That is why we should take heed in our life. I’ll say it again, we do not need to do anything more than just fulfil this sentence: it is very simple: Let us not do unto others that which we do not want done unto us.
That is why God puts love as a criterion in our life.
In the Old Testament, God regulated relations according to the saying: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, that is, whatever someone does to you, you will repay him in the same measure. Not more but to the same extent, which was justified in the Old Testament. Unfortunately, we are harsh with others and lenient with ourselves. We do not even fulfil the Old Testament, we return even more fiercely to the one who transgressed us, let alone that we should love our enemies. But only the love for our enemies is our true measure of how much love we have in ourselves.
In fact, our enemies are our greatest friends. They illuminate for us that which we cannot see in the depth of our heart. At that moment, when someone hurts our vanity, when someone hurts our passions, that is to say, that which we are painfully attached to, then we will see if we are free from those passions or those passions have captured us, and those passions to which we are enslaved to are more important to us than love for man, for God, etc.
And the reading last Sunday about the five unruly and the five obedient, wise girls, about the oil-lamps, about the merchants, about the buyers is connected with today’s Gospel reading.
Our lamps are our hearts and they need to burn, they need to be refilled with oil. And that oil is the good deeds that we do. The poor, the sick, the weak, those who need help, and those people who know how to defeat us, who seek to harm us in some way, to whom we unfortunately close our hearts, nevertheless we have to return them with love. It is nothing else, but simply love by deed, nothing more.
The Apostolic readings that we read teach us about another, higher life. The holy Apostle Paul says about himself that he knows a man who 14 years ago without the body or with the body, he does not know, who ascended to the third heaven, who saw what a man can never see here on earth. He heard what cannot be heard and felt in this life. That is our goal, that is our calling, and that is the purpose for which God created man.
Let us be merciful, let us be perfect as our heavenly God is perfect. Amen.
Fr. Gavril Galev
Abbot of the monastery “St. Clement of Ohrid”,
Kinglake, Melbourne, Australia
12 / 11 / 2023
