How to love God with all your soul. He is love

And one of them, a lawyer, tempting Him, asked, saying: Teacher! What is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind: this is the first and greatest commandment; the second is similar to it: love your neighbor as yourself; All the law and the prophets are based on these two commandments (Matthew 22:35-40).

So, we must love God first of all. But how to answer the question to yourself: do I love the Lord? By what signs, by what feelings or experiences can a person understand: yes, I love Him. And on the contrary: what features of ours, what manifestations of our inner life indicate the absence or extreme weakness of love for God?

The editor-in-chief of the magazine of the Saratov Metropolis “Orthodoxy and Modernity,” Abbot Nektary (Morozov), answers difficult (as always!) questions.

- Father Nektary, for me, as I think for many others, it is not so difficult to answer the question of what it means to love a person. If I miss being apart from a person, I want to see him, I rejoice when I finally see him, and if this joy of mine is selfless - that is, I don’t expect any material benefits, any practical help from this person, I don’t need help, but he himself - that means I love him. But how can this be applied to God?

— First of all, it’s good when this question arises in principle among today’s Christians. I, like, I suppose, any other priest, very often have to deal with people who, when asked about love for God, answer immediately, without hesitation and with an unequivocal affirmative: “Yes, of course, I love you!” But they cannot answer the second question: what is love for God? At best, a person says: “Well, it’s natural to love God, so I love Him.” And things don't go further than that.

And I immediately remember the dialogue between the Valaam elder and the officers from St. Petersburg who came to the monastery. They began to assure him that they loved Christ very much. And the elder said: “How blessed you are. I left the world, retired here and in the strictest solitude I struggle here all my life in order to at least get a little closer to the love of God. And you live in the noise of the big world, among all possible temptations, you fall into all the sins that you can fall into, and at the same time you manage to love God. What happy people you are!” And then they thought...

In your statement - I know what it means to love a person, but I don’t know what it means to love God - there is some contradiction. After all, everything that you said about love for man also applies to love for God. You say that communication with a person is dear to you, you miss when you don’t see him for a long time, you are happy when you see him; Besides this, you are probably trying to do something nice for this person, help him, take care of him. Knowing this person - and it’s impossible to love a person and not know him - you guess his desires, understand what exactly will bring him joy now, and do exactly that. The same can be said about man’s love for God. The problem is that a person is concrete for us: here he is, here, you can touch him with your hands, our emotions, our reactions are directly connected with him. But the love of God for many people is of a certain abstract nature. And that’s why it seems to people that you can’t say anything concrete here: I love you, that’s all. Meanwhile, the Lord in the Gospel very specifically answers the question of how a person’s love for Him is manifested: if you love Me, keep My commandments (John 14:15). Here it is, evidence of man’s love for God. A person who remembers and fulfills God’s commandments loves God and proves this by his deeds. A person who does not fulfill them, no matter what he says about himself, does not have love for Christ. Because just as faith, if it does not have works, is dead in itself (James 2:17), so love without works is dead. She lives in business.

- These are also matters of love for people?

— Speaking about the Last Judgment, the Savior tells His disciples and all of us something very important: everything that we did in relation to our neighbors, we did in relation to Him, and it is on this basis that each of us will be condemned or acquitted: so just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me (Matthew 25:40).

The Lord paid a terrible price for our salvation: the price of His suffering on the cross and death. He came to save us out of His immeasurable love for us, He suffered for us, and our response to His love is the fulfillment in our lives of that for which He gave us this freedom and the opportunity for rebirth, ascension to Him.

- What if I don’t feel, don’t recognize in myself the love of God as such, but I still try to fulfill the commandments?

“The fact of the matter is that fulfilling the commandments of Christ is not only evidence of a person’s love for God, but also the path to this love. The Monk Ambrose of Optina answered a man who complained that he did not know how to love: “In order to learn to love people, do deeds of love. Do you know what works of love are? You know. So do it. And after some time, your heart will open to people: for your work, the Lord will give you the grace of love.” The same thing applies to love for God. When a person works, fulfilling the commandments of Christ, love for Him is born and strengthened in his heart. After all, every gospel commandment confronts our passions, the illnesses of our soul. The commandments are not heavy: My yoke is easy, and My burden is light (Matthew 11:30), says the Lord. It's easy because it's natural for us. Everything that is said in the Gospel is natural for a person.

- Naturally? Why is it so difficult for us to follow this?

- Because we are in an unnatural state. It’s difficult for us, but at the same time this law lives in us - the law by which man, created by God, must live. It would be more accurate to say that two laws live in us: the law of the old man and the law of the new, renewed man. And therefore we are simultaneously inclined to both evil and good. Both evil and good are present in our heart, in our feelings: the desire for good is in me, but I don’t find it to do it. The good that I want, I do not do, but the evil that I do not want, I do - this is how the Apostle Paul wrote about the human condition in his Epistle to the Romans (7, 18-19).

Why does the Monk Abba Dorotheos write that man is a creature that very much depends on skill? When a person gets used to doing good deeds, that is, deeds of love, it becomes, as it were, his nature. Thanks to this, a person changes: a new person begins to win in him. And in the same way, and perhaps to a greater extent, a person is changed by the fulfillment of the commandments of Christ. It changes because there is a cleansing of passions, liberation from the oppression of pride, but where there is pride, there is vanity, pride, and so on.

What prevents us from loving our neighbors? We love ourselves, and our interests collide with the interests of other people. But, as soon as I step on the path of self-sacrifice, at least partially, I have the opportunity to move the huge boulder of pride to the side, and my neighbor is revealed to me, and I can, I want to do something for him. I remove obstacles to loving this person, which means I have freedom - freedom to love. And in the same way, when a person denies himself in order to fulfill the commandments of Christ, when this becomes for him a skill that changes his whole life, then his path is cleared of obstacles to the love of God. Imagine - the Lord says: do this and that, but I don’t want to do it. The Lord says: don’t do this, but I want to do it. Here it is, the obstacle that prevents me from loving God, standing between me and God. When I begin to gradually free myself from these attachments, from this lack of freedom, I have the freedom to love God. And the natural desire for God that lives within me awakens in the same natural way. What can this be compared to? So, they put a stone on a plant, and it dies under this stone. They moved the stone, and it immediately began to straighten: the leaves straightened, the twigs. And now it’s already standing, reaching for the light. Likewise the human soul. When we move the stone of our passions, our sins to the side, when we climb out from under our rubble, we naturally rush upward, towards God. A feeling awakens in us, inherent from our creation - love for Him. And we make sure that it is natural.

“But love for God is also gratitude...

“There are difficult moments in our lives when we are either abandoned or involuntarily abandoned - everyone, even the closest people, simply cannot help us with anything. And we are completely alone. But it is precisely at such moments that a person, if he has at least a little faith, understands: the only one who has not left him and will never leave him is the Lord. There is no one closer, no one dearer. There is no one who loves you more than Him. When you understand this, a response arises in you in a completely natural way: you are grateful, and this is also an awakening of the love for God that was originally inherent in a person.

St. Augustine said that God created man for Himself. These words contain the meaning of the creation of man. He was created for communication with God. Every living being exists in some order established for it. A predator lives like a predator, a herbivore lives like a herbivore. Here in front of us is a huge anthill, and every ant in it knows absolutely exactly what to do. And only man is some kind of restless creature. For him there is no pre-established order, and his life is constantly under threat of chaos or disaster. We see: the vast majority of people do not know what to do. People are lost, everyone is feverishly looking for at least something that they could cling to in order to somehow realize themselves in this life. And something always happens wrong, and a person feels unhappy. Why do so many slide into alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling addiction, and other terrible vices? Because a person cannot get enough of anything in life. The unbridled desire to kill oneself with drugs and alcohol suggests that in all this a person is trying not to find himself, but an opportunity to fill the abyss that constantly opens up in him. All attempts to treat alcoholism or drug addiction are temporary - physiological dependence can be removed, but teaching a person to live differently is no longer a medical issue. If the abyss that a person feels in himself is not given real filling, he will return to false and destructive filling. And if he still doesn’t return, then he won’t become a full-fledged person anyway. We know people who have stopped drinking or taking drugs, but they look unhappy, depressed, often embittered, because the previous content of their life was taken away from them, and no other one appeared. And many of them break down, lose interest in family life, in work, in everything. Because the most important thing in their life is missing. And while he is not there, until a person feels God’s love for himself, he always remains somehow empty. For the abyss that we are talking about can, again, according to St. Augustine, be filled only by the abyss of Divine love. And as soon as a person returns to his place - and his place is where he is with God, everything else in his life is built properly.

— Accepting the Divine love that you talk about and loving God are the same thing?

- No. We are very selfish in our fallen state. In life, we often see situations where one person loves another recklessly and completely without criticism, and the other takes advantage of this. And in the same way we get used to using God’s love. Yes, we know and learn through experience that the Lord is merciful, loving of mankind, that He easily forgives us, and we unconsciously begin to take advantage of this, to exploit His love. Without realizing, however, that the grace of God, rejected by us in sin, returns each time with greater and greater difficulty; that our hearts are hardening, and we are not changing for the better. A person is likened to an unreasonable animal: now, the mousetrap hasn’t slammed shut, which means you can continue carrying the cheese. And the fact that you cannot live life to the fullest, that your life is not life, but some kind of vegetation, this is no longer so important. The main thing is that you are alive and well. But a person lives a full life only when he fulfills the Gospel commandments, which open up for him the path of love for God.

— Sin is a barrier between us and God, an obstacle in our relationship with Him, right? I feel this very well precisely when repentance for any sin comes to me. Why do I repent? Because I'm afraid of punishment? No, I don’t have that kind of fear. But I feel that I have cut off my own oxygen somewhere and made it impossible to receive the help I need from Him.

- In fact, a person also needs fear, if not punishment, then the inevitable onset of consequences. It was not for nothing that Adam was told: on the day that you eat from it (from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - Ed.), you will die (Gen. 2:17). This is not a threat, this is a statement, this is how we tell the child: if you stick two fingers or your mother’s hairpin into the socket, you will get an electric shock. When we commit a sin, we must know that there will be consequences. It is natural for us to fear these consequences. Yes, this is the lowest level, but it’s good to have at least this. In life, this rarely happens in its pure form: more often in repentance there is also the fear of consequences, and what you are talking about: the feeling that I am creating obstacles for myself for a normal, full, authentic life, that I myself am violating the harmony that I so need .

But, besides this, there is also something that we cannot actually fully understand. For a person, no matter how embittered he is, no matter how distorted he is by evil, it is still natural to strive for good and do good and unnatural to do evil. Silouan of Athos said that a person who does good changes his face, he becomes like an Angel. And the face of a person who does evil changes, he becomes like a demon. We are not good people in everything, but the feeling of goodness, the feeling of what is natural for us, is present in us, and when we do something contrary to it, we feel that we have broken, damaged something very important: that which more than us, which is at the core of everything. And in moments of repentance, we are like a child who has broken something and does not yet understand what and how he broke it, only understands that it was whole, good, and now it is no longer good for anything. What is the child doing? He runs to his dad or mom in the hope that they will fix it. True, there are children who prefer to hide what is broken. This is exactly the psychology of Adam, hiding from God between the trees of paradise (Gen. 3, 8). But if we break something, it’s better for us to be like a child running with a broken thing to his parents. Repenting of what we have done, we seem to say to God: I can’t fix it myself, help me. And the Lord, by His mercy, helps and restores what was destroyed. Thus, the experience of repentance contributes to the ignition of a fire of love for God in a person’s heart.

Christ was crucified for us all - such, and that, and others: He loved us as we are. St. Nicholas of Serbia has this idea: imagine, villains, robbers, harlots, tax collectors, people with completely burned consciences are walking along the roads of Palestine. They walk and suddenly see Christ. And at once they drop everything and rush after Him. And How! One climbs a tree, the other buys ointment with what may be her last money and is not afraid to approach Him in front of everyone, does not think about what they can do to her now (see: Luke 7, 37-50; 19, 1-10). What is happening to them? But this is what: they see Christ, and meet Him, and their gazes meet. And suddenly they see in Him the best that is in themselves, that, despite everything, remains in them. And they awaken to life.

And when we experience something similar at the moment of our repentance, then, of course, we have a completely personal, direct relationship with God. After all, the most terrible misfortune of modern Christianity, and in general, the most terrible vice that reduces Christianity in a person to nothing, is the lack of a feeling that God is a Person, an attitude towards Him as a Person. After all, faith is not just faith that there is a God, that there will be Judgment and eternal life. All this is just the periphery of faith. And faith is that God is a reality, that He called me to life, and that there is no other reason for me to exist except His will and His love. Faith presupposes a personal relationship between a person and God. Only when these personal relationships exist does everything else exist. Without this there is nothing.

- We tend to think about the people we love - all the time or not all the time, more often or less often, it depends on the strength of the attachment. To think, in essence, means to remember about this person. But how can we learn to think and remember about God?

- Of course, a person must think, because it is not for nothing that he was given this amazing ability of thinking. As St. Barsanuphius the Great says, your brain, your mind works like a millstone: you can throw some dust at them in the morning, and they will grind this dust all day, or you can pour in good grain, and you will have flour and then bread . We need to put into the millstones of our mind those grains that can nourish our soul, our heart and grow us. The grains in this case are those thoughts that can kindle, strengthen, and strengthen our love for God.

After all, how are we made? Until we remember some things, they seem to not exist for us. We forgot about something, and it was as if it never happened in our lives. We remembered - and it came to life for us. What if they not only remembered, but kept their attention on it?.. An example that can be given here is the thought of death: but I’m going to die, and I’m going to die soon, but this is inevitable, but I don’t know at all, what will happen next. A minute ago the man didn’t think about it, but now he thought about it, and everything changed for him.

And this, of course, should be the case with the thought of God and what connects and unites us with Him. To do this, everyone must think: where did I come from, why do I exist? Because God gave me this life. How many situations have there been in my life when my life could have been interrupted?.. But the Lord saved me. There were so many situations when I deserved punishment, but was not subjected to any punishment. And he was pardoned a hundred times, and a thousand times. And how many times in difficult moments did help come - something that I couldn’t even hope for. And how many times something hidden happened in my heart - something that no one knows except me and Him... Let us remember the Apostle Nathanael (see: John 1:45-50): he comes to Christ, full of doubts, skepticism: ... from Nazareth can there be anything good? (46). And the Lord says to him: when you were under the fig tree, I saw you (48). What was there under that fig tree? Unknown. However, it is clear that Nathanael was alone under the fig tree, alone with his own thoughts, and something very important to him happened there. And, having heard the words of Christ, Nathanael understands: here is the One who was with him under the fig tree, Who knew him there, and before, and before his birth - always. And then Nathanael says: Rabbi! You are the Son of God, You are the King of Israel! (John 1:49). This is a meeting, this is a delight that cannot be described. Have there been such moments in your life? They probably were. But all this needs to be remembered regularly. And just as Tsar Koschey languishes over his gold and sorts through it, sorts it out, so a Christian must regularly sort through this treasure, this gold, and examine it: this is what I have! But not to languish over it, of course, but, on the contrary, to come to life in your heart, to be filled with a living feeling of gratitude to God. When we have this feeling, all temptations and trials are experienced completely differently. And every temptation in which we have remained faithful to Christ brings us closer to Him and strengthens our love for Him.

— The Creator manifests itself in creation, and if we see, feel Him in the created world and respond to this, it means we love Him, isn’t it? If you think about it, why do we love nature? Why do we need communication with her so much, why are we so tired without her? Why do we love springs, rivers and seas, mountains, trees, animals? Someone will say: we like it because it’s beautiful. But what does “beautiful” mean? I read somewhere that the impossibility of defining beauty is proof of the existence of God. God, after all, also cannot be defined, explained, you cannot look at Him from the outside - you can only meet Him face to face.

“Beautiful” is actually a very limited definition. Of course, there is beauty of the world around us, beauty and greatness. But besides this, there are things even more interesting. You look at some little animal - it may not be very beautiful (shall we call a hedgehog beautiful, for example? Hardly), but it is so attractive, it occupies us so much, it is so interesting for us to watch it: it is both funny and touching. You look, and your heart rejoices, and you understand: after all, the Lord created this creature as it is... And this really brings a person closer to God.

But there are other ways. And the paths of the saints were different. Some of them looked at the world around them and saw in it the perfection of the Divine plan, the wisdom of God. For example, the Great Martyr Barbara comprehended God in exactly this way. It is no coincidence that in many church hymns the Lord is called “A Fair Artist.” But there were other saints who, on the contrary, moved away from all this and lived, for example, in the Sinai desert, and there there was nothing to console the eye at all, there were only bare rocks, sometimes heat, sometimes cold, and practically nothing living. And there God taught them and revealed himself to them. But this is the next step. There is a time when the world around us should tell us about God, and there is a time when even this world needs to be forgotten, we need to remember only about Him. In the first stages of our formation, God constantly guides us with the help of concrete, directly experienced things. And then everything can happen differently. The same is evidenced by the presence of two theologies: cataphatic and apophatic. First, a person, as it were, characterizes God, telling himself something necessary about Him: that He is omnipotent, that He is Love; and then a person simply says that God exists and cannot be defined by any human characteristics, and a person no longer needs any supports, any concepts or images - he directly ascends to the knowledge of God. But this is a different measure.

“However, you look at another person and see that he can no longer love anything - neither nature, nor people, nor God - and is hardly able to accept God’s love for himself.

- Barsanuphius the Great has this idea: the softer you make your heart, the more grace it will be able to accept. And when a person lives in grace, when his heart accepts grace, then this is both a feeling of God’s love and love for God, because only through the grace of God is it possible to love. Therefore, hardness of heart is precisely what prevents us from loving both God and our neighbor, and simply living a full, real life. Hardness of heart is indicated not only by the fact that we are angry with someone, hold a grudge, want to take revenge on someone, hate someone. Hardening of the heart is when we deliberately allow our heart to harden, because supposedly it’s impossible to do otherwise in this life, you won’t survive. The world lies in evil, people in their fallen state are rude, cruel, and treacherous. And our reaction to all this is expressed in the fact that we often stand in some kind of fighting stance all our lives. This can be observed all the time - in transport, on the street... One person touched another, and this other immediately responds as if he had been preparing for this the entire previous day. He has everything ready! What does this mean? About how hard the heart is. Not only in relation to people - just in bitterness.

— Bitterness is a very common disease, it is not only observed in transport, many suffer from it, and, by the way, in the Church too. Moreover, I’m afraid that none of us can be called completely healthy. But how to deal with this?

“It’s very difficult to deal with this.” It is very difficult, scary to decide to live without defending yourself, to give up this constant self-defense. Yes, aggression is a manifestation of fear. But sometimes a person may not be aggressive, but may simply be afraid. Just hide, live in your house like a snail, not seeing anything, not hearing anything around, not participating in anything, only saving yourself. But such a life in a shell also hardens the heart. No matter how difficult it is, you should never harden your heart. Every time we want to defend ourselves or simply slam our door and not let anyone or anything into our house, we must remember that the Lord exists, that He is everywhere, including between me and this threat, me and this person. I have a Witness who will justify me if someone slanders me; I have a Defender of my whole life. And when you trust Him, then you no longer need to close yourself, and your heart is open to both God and people, and nothing stops you from loving God. There are no barriers.

This is the quality that a person also needs in order to love God - defenselessness. After all, when you are your own defense, you don’t need a Protector.

- In fact, this is very understandable and tangible - when defending ourselves (at least internally, painfully experiencing our offense and arguing with the offender), each time we oppose ourselves to God, as if we are abandoning Him or demonstrating distrust of Him.

- Certainly. At the same time, we seem to say to God: Lord, I, of course, trust in You, but here I am. This refusal of God by us happens completely unnoticeably, very subtly. Why did St. Seraphim give up and allow himself to be maimed by the robbers who attacked him? This is the reason. Did he want to be crippled, did he want these people to take sin upon their souls? Of course he didn't want to. But he wanted something else - to be defenseless for the love of God.

My soul, Lord, is occupied with You: all day and all night I search for You. Your Spirit draws me to seek You, and the memory of You gladdens my mind. My soul has loved You and rejoices that You are my God and Lord, and I miss You to the point of tears. And although everything in the world is beautiful, nothing earthly occupies me, and my soul desires only the Lord.

A soul that has come to know God cannot be satisfied with anything on earth, but everything strives for the Lord and cries out like a little child who has lost its mother: “My soul misses You, and I seek You with tears.”

From the notes of St. Silouan of Athos

Journal "Orthodoxy and Modernity" No. 35 (51)

A person who sincerely loves God will not blame or dislike those who love God but serve Him differently than he does.

We must learn to distinguish where the place is empty and where the place is holy. People who do not believe in God are empty, they have nothing sacred, nothing genuine. They may be serious about achieving success in business, but when you start talking to them about something lofty, you will not find any warmth, kindness, or simplicity in them. You will find vulgarity, rudeness, hypocrisy, business acumen, but this will not increase your love. And if a person is engaged in business, but at the same time loves God, then he has money, and he is endowed with all the virtues, and for his subordinates he is like a father.

However, not all so simple. Often people who have embarked on the path of searching for God behave incorrectly. Many of us have such a negative trait as duality - a selfish understanding of truth. And the wrong behavior of a person who has embarked on the spiritual path is that he thinks: “Since I love God, that means I shouldn’t love everyone else.” This is what is called duality. And people, when embarking on the spiritual path, most often make just such a mistake. The wife tells her husband: “You are a materialist, I don’t want to have anything to do with you anymore. You eat meat, which means you are a meat eater.” Or: “I don’t want to have anything to do with you, I don’t like this kind of work, only materialists work in it. I’m quitting my job, I’ll communicate with spiritual people, I want to live separately, I want this, I want that.” In other words, a person begins to adapt his egoism to spiritual relationships.

If he behaves like this, he can mess up a lot of things. And only then, having come to his senses, will he begin to think: “So I strived for God, and what did I achieve as a result? I lost my job, my wife, my family. I lost everything and I have nothing left. What kind of love for God is this when there is nothing left? There is less happiness in life, although more was promised.” But it was not love for God that broke all his relationships with people. The fact is that he even tried to love God selfishly, for himself. For himself, he left his family, for himself he left his job - he left everything for himself. For what? To love God for yourself.

There is such a phenomenon: when a person prays to God sincerely, he feels God’s love for himself, and with it a true sense of self-worth appears in him. Self-esteem makes a person independent of the manifestations of other people's shortcomings, and he will no longer be nervous when faced with them. For this reason, a person who sincerely loves God will not blame or dislike those who love God but serve Him differently than he does. Anyone who is hostile to representatives of other spiritual traditions is actually a closet materialist. They do not feel the mercy of God within themselves and therefore they are angry with everyone. Those who do not respect believers of other religious traditions actually lack true self-worth. Because true self-esteem is always selfless.

When people lose their self-esteem, they develop a herd instinct. Many people who lived under Soviet rule had no self-esteem. Why wasn't he there? Because the belief in happiness, in a bright future for most people was unformed and was based on slogans and propaganda. And faith must always be based on pure knowledge, proven by the experience of many generations. The depth and purity of faith gives rise to pure love, which enhances the true sense of human dignity. Even worldly love enhances self-esteem, let alone spiritual love.

So, for example, a young guy who falls in love with a girl develops a sense of self-esteem, and he stops obeying his parents. If parents see that their son has stopped obeying them and is behaving too independently, it means that he most likely has fallen in love with someone. Having fallen in love with a girl, he, without realizing it, begins to ignore other people, declaring: “I don’t need all of you, I’m fine without you.”

A person is always bound by the bonds of his love. Why is a small child so attached to his parents? He loves them, that's why he is attached to them. Puberty separates children from their parents. After the son has matured, he breaks away from his parents, and his love switches to the girl. If, before he matured, his parents raised him to be unselfish, then, despite his attachment to the girl, the adult son will retain his attachment to his parents on the basis of unselfish love. Only selfless affection is preserved between people.

If a person who has been an egoist all his life tries to love God, then his feeling of love for God will remain selfish for some time. As a result, he will leave everyone, try to give up on everyone, and will not care about anyone. This does not speak of love for God, but of increased self-esteem, and in the direction of selfishness: “I’m so religious!” Such external religiosity should be avoided.

A person who has truly loved God becomes imbued with love for all living beings, because he sees in them a manifestation of the Lord. Therefore, he is not going to refuse anyone, but, on the contrary, strives to help everyone. He has compassion for his unfortunate relatives who do not feel the love of God. He has compassion for everyone, even the dog living in his house; He will not kick her out, although he understands that because of her he may become attached to an animal form of life. He thinks: “Let the dog live, I will feed it with blessed food, and in the future it will receive a human body.” About other people he thinks: “Each person feels happiness in his own way, and he should not be deprived of this. Let him live as best he can. We must try to give him more happiness, but a negative attitude towards him will not do this.”

True love for God is not a cheap thing. The Vedas explain that a person who has not learned to fulfill his duties to others, often, even striving for God, goes astray because he still remains an egoist. If we truly strive honestly for God, we must learn to fulfill our responsibilities to the people around us. We must learn to act selflessly both in relationships with relatives and with other people who surround us. Otherwise, selfish feelings will overwhelm our consciousness, and we will have no chance to progress in spiritual life.

A person must learn to fulfill his responsibilities to loved ones. This is not the main thing in life, but it is necessary to do it in order to cleanse the heart of selfishness and remnants of self-interest. The Bhagavad-gita says that even sages who have realized the truth should not renounce their duties.

How do the remnants of self-interest manifest themselves? A person wants to get away from everyone, he doesn’t need anyone. But self-interest can appear even if we become somewhat responsible. There is another extreme - while fulfilling our responsibilities to the people around us, we can inadvertently become attached to material happiness.

Let's say I fulfill my duties, work well, with love, and receive money for my work. The Vedas say that if I become attached to this money, then the material taste for happiness overtakes me, and love for God begins to melt.

When fulfilling duties to the people around him, a person must do it in the name of the Lord. Work not for a salary, but in the name of God. As a result, we become attached to what helps us obtain the highest taste of happiness. This does not mean that we stop loving our loved ones; we love them, but with selfless love, we do not expect obligatory reciprocal love from them. What do we want in the depths of our consciousness? We want to achieve love of God.

Oleg Torsunov from the book “Strength of Character - Your Success”

Photos from open Internet sources

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

(Luke 10:27).

Do not love the world, nor the things in the world: whoever loves the world does not have the Father’s love in him.(1 John 2:15).

The love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.

(Rom 5:5).

You cannot take spiritual life from above, but you need to take it from below: first cleanse your soul of passions, acquire patience, humility, etc., then love your neighbor, and then God.

Holy Righteous Alexy Mechev (1859-1923).

The increase in the fear of God is the beginning of love.

Venerable John Climacus(+ 649).

No one can love God with all his heart without first warming the fear of God in his heart; for the soul comes into active love after it has already been cleansed and softened by the action of the fear of God.

Blessed Diadochos of Photicus (5th century).).

Love is born from dispassion; dispassion - from trust in God; hope comes from patience and generosity; these latter - from abstinence in everything; abstinence - from the fear of God; fear comes from faith in the Lord.

Venerable Maximus the Confessor(+ 662).

In era there is a benevolent gift; it gives birth to the fear of God in us; the fear of God teaches the observance of the commandments or the organization of a good active life; from active life grows true dispassion; and the product of dispassion is love, which is the fulfillment of all commandments, connecting and holding them all within itself.

Saint Theodore, Bishop of Edessa (+ 848 ) .

Love for God is born without teaching, naturally, as gratitude for God’s blessings, for we see that dogs, oxen, and donkeys love those who feed them.

Saint Basil the Great (330-379 ).

Love for God is born from conversation with Him. Conversation with Him comes from silence; silence - from non-covetousness; non-covetousness comes from patience; patience - from hating lusts; hatred of lusts - from the fear of Gehenna and the aspiration of bliss.

Venerable Isaac the Syrian (VII century).

He who is always in prayer is kindled with the most ardent love for God and receives the grace of the Spirit, which sanctifies the soul.

Venerable Macarius the Great (IV century).

When we hear that someone loves us, even if he were humble and poor, we are inflamed with special love for him and show him great respect, then we love him; and our Lord loves us so much - and we remain insensitive?

Saint John Chrysostom (+ 407) .

If you want to kindle divine zeal in your heart and acquire love for Christ, and with it acquire all the other virtues, approach Holy Communion often.

Venerable Nicodemus the Holy Mountain (1749-1809), and St. Macarius of Corinth (1731-1805).

We must fervently pray to the Lord that He would give love for Him into the hearts of all of us.

Venerable Ephraim the Syrian (IV century).

The feeling of love for the Lord comes as we fulfill His commandments.

Venerable Nikon of Optina (1888-1931 ).

God turns away from this unclean sacrifice. He demands love from a person, but true, spiritual, holy love, and not dreamy, carnal love, defiled by pride and voluptuousness. It is impossible to love God otherwise than with a heart purified and sanctified by Divine grace...

A premature desire to develop in oneself a feeling of love for God is already self-delusion. It immediately removes one from correct service to God, immediately leads into various errors, and ends in damage and death of the soul..

Repentance for a sinful life, sadness about voluntary and involuntary sins, the struggle against sinful habits, the effort to defeat them and sadness about their forced defeat, forcing ourselves to fulfill all the Gospel commandments - this is our lot. We must ask God for forgiveness, reconcile with Him, make amends for infidelity with faithfulness to Him, and replace friendship with sin with hatred of sin. Those who are reconciled are characterized by holy love.

Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) (1807-1867).

To love God with all your heart, you must certainly consider everything earthly as rubbish and not be deceived by anything.

It has been proven by torture that one who does not love his neighbor cannot love God, and one who is ungrateful to people cannot be grateful to God. A limited, small, insignificant being, such as a person, needs to start from the limited, small and, with God's help, go to the less limited, to the highest. Do you have a wife, friends, relatives? Learn to give them their due first and then you will be able to give due to all people and to God Himself.

In order to properly honor the Mother of God, learn first how to honor your mother. And in order to properly honor the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, learn to honor your father according to the flesh. He who is faithful in a little is also faithful in much, and he who is unfaithful in a little is also unfaithful in much.(Luke 16:10).

Saint righteous John of Kronstadt (1829-1908) .

You cannot love God if you treat even one person badly. This is quite understandable. Love and hostility cannot exist in the same soul: either one or the other.

Hegumen Nikon (Vorobiev) (1894-1963).