The basis for real and deep love is free will. It is not possible for someone to love another person if forced to do so by some need or compulsion.
The Holy Monastery of Saint Gregorios : Mount Athos
When love establishes its throne in the soul, it bestows the most beautiful spiritual springtime. Everything glistens with the breeze of love’s refreshing fragrance, for it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endure’s all things, thinks no evil, does not act wickedly, sees all things simply: love covers everything. For this reason it earned the crowing achievement: Love covers everything.
“Three things that are necessary and soul saving I want to tell you my beloved children that you should watch and guard always. They are great patience, True Orthodox faith and above all love for God and your neighbors, even for your enemies.
Do these things and keep the commandments of the Lord and as many times as you sin, repent and confess. Thus in this way you will be saved and inherit the kingdom. Without the sacrament of confession, very few will be saved.
Our whole life is a time of preparation, a time for repentance and salvation.
Blessed and joyful is he who dies in repentance.
I pray that the Lord will save us all. Amen.”
“Spiritual Advice of the Elder Philotheos Zervakos” Translated by Archimandrite Polycarpos Rameras
Let us have confidence in God, remembrance and love toward Him The Holy Mountain has shown us that the Grace of God is active everywhere Do you know what Saint John Damascene calls Divine Grace : a vault of God
There where you are sitting, where for years you have been expecting God and not found Him… He all of a sudden leaps and enters you, embraces you, kisses you and fills you with the breath of His nostrils, with His love, His being, His Trinity!!
It is as easy for God to leap and come into our lives as it is for anyone to jump.
just as He leaps on the peaks of Athos, as Ge gets into the boats, the caves, the crannies… everywhere comprehending the tears and the pains of Athonites, so He comprehends the least cry of your soul, of the souls of all of us.
Elder Aemilianos
of Simonopetra Monastery
For love does not seek its own, it labors, sweats, watches to build up the brother: nothing is inconvenient to love, and by the help of God it turns the impossible into the possible.
+
Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk
gladsomelife.com 