11 Quotes on Love by St Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

 

Do not seek or expect love from anyone. With all your might, seek and demand from yourself love and compassion for people.

Love for one’s neighbor is a path leading to love for God, because Christ, who is God, willingly assumed the shape of each of our neighbors. 

Give reverence to your neighbor as an image of God. Bear this reverence in your soul; keep it invisible to others and evident only to your conscience. 

Pay respect to your neighbor without distinguishing between age, gender or class,  and the holy love will gradually begin to appear in your heart. 

Show respect to the blind, leprous, damaged in mind, infants, criminals and pagans,  for they carry an image of God. Care not about their weaknesses or shortcomings! Observe yourself so that you do not have a lack of love. 

If you think that you love God, and there is ill disposition in your heart albeit toward one person, then you are in sorrowful self-delusion.

Keep your conscience in relation to your neighbor: do not be content with the mere speciousness of your behavior. 

Any Orthodox Christian who wants to stir away from carelessness towards an attentive life and his own salvation must first pay attention to his relations with his neighbors. 

Love for God consists in love for one’s neighbor. He who has nurtured in himself love for one’s neighbor, acquires in his heart the invaluable spiritual treasure of love for God.

Christ, revered and loved in our every neighbor, is the only reason for our love.

He who loves his enemies has achieved perfection in love for his neighbor, and the gates of love for God are already open to him.

Do not seek or expect love from anyone. With all your might, seek and demand from yourself love and compassion for people.

Translated by The Catalogue of Good Deeds
Source: https://pravlife.org/ru/content/svt-ignatiy-bryanchaninov-11-fraz-o-lyubvi

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