Christian love is not a passing emotion, but life received from God: sacrifice, freedom, patience, forgiveness, and concrete care for the other. This article follows that theme from the Holy Trinity and the Cross to family life, the raising of children, and the parable of the prodigal son.
In the Orthodox Tradition, love does not mean weakness or sentimentalism. It is the sacrificial power by which man becomes like Christ, without abolishing truth, freedom, or repentance.
"God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 John 4:16)
Introduction: The most used and least understood word
No word is spoken today more often than "love" and, paradoxically, no word is more empty of content. We confuse love with affection, with attraction, with sentimental emotion, sometimes even with possession. And, because we do not know it, we cannot give it; and because we cannot give it, entire generations grow up without receiving it.
The Orthodox tradition does not speak of love as a psychological state or a moral virtue among others. The Holy Fathers say something much more radical: love is not only a work of God toward the world, but is one of the deepest discoveries of His way of being — "God is love" (1 John 4:8). To talk about love means, in Orthodoxy, to talk about the Trinity, about the creation of man, about the Incarnation of the Word, about the Cross on Golgotha and about the Resurrection on the third day.
The present article starts from the patristic definitions, goes up to the trinitarian model, descends through the economy of salvation, stops at the testimony of the Fathers and brings everything to the concrete life of the family. Along the way, we will touch on some questions that are troubling the Orthodox world today: is physical punishment a form of love? Why do so many children grow up feeling unloved? How did the saints raise their children?
I. What is love? Patristic definition
The Greek language, in which the New Testament was written and in which the Holy Fathers thought, has several words for love. Above all, the word chosen by the Apostles to speak of God’s love is agápi — sacrificial love, love that gives itself unconditionally, that seeks the good of the other. When Saint John the Evangelist writes "God is love" (1 John 4:8), he uses the word agápi. God is not an emotion, not an attraction, not a sympathy. God is sacrifice, total giving, His movement toward the other. This is the fundamental definition that Tradition lays down: to love is to give, not to receive.
Saint Maximus the Confessor: love as a unifying force
Of all the Fathers, Saint Maximus the Confessor is the one who thought most systematically about love. In the Chapters on Love — preserved in the Philokalia — he defines it as follows: "Love is a good and affectionate disposition of the soul, because of which it does not honor anything more than the knowledge of God" (First Century, chapter 1). True love is not, first of all, a feeling, but a disposition of the soul, a correct hierarchy of values at the top of which stands God.
For Saint Maximus, love is the unifying power of all creation. The fallen world is torn apart: man from God, man from woman, soul from body, nation from nation. The love that comes through Christ is the power that reunites. "He who loves God", he says, "cannot fail to love every human being as himself, although he has no pleasure in the passions of those who have not yet been purified. Therefore, when he sees their return and correction, he rejoices with great and unspeakable joy" (First Century, chapter 13). Love of God and love of neighbor are two sides of the same reality.
Saint Isaac the Syrian: The Merciful Heart
If Maximus gives us the structure, Saint Isaac the Syrian (7th century) gives us the fire. His most famous page, on the merciful heart, describes the heart of man who has reached the measure of Christ’s love: a heart that burns for all creation — for people, birds, animals, enemies and even for demons — and which can no longer see an injury done to any creature without shedding tears. This is the measure: if you can still hate or remain indifferent to the suffering of another, you have not yet known love. It is not a rhetorical exaggeration, but the description of a real spiritual state, attained by those united with God—a universal burning, a participation in His own mercy.
Saint Symeon the New Theologian: love as vision
Saint Symeon the New Theologian († 1022) — one of the three Fathers to whom the Church gave the name "Theologian" — brings another dimension, very useful in everyday life. For him, true love is, above all, a look. Saint Symeon received from God the gift of seeing Christ appearing as light — the same light that shone from the Lord on Mount Tabor before the disciples. And from this experience he learned something that he always confesses in his writings: when God touches the heart of man, this man begins to see others differently.
What does "otherwise" mean? Here is a simple example. Two people look at the same naughty child. The former sees an annoying, disobedient child who bothers him—and treats him as such. The second, if his heart is cleansed by grace, sees the same deed, but sees beyond it: he sees a soul built in the image of God, he sees a turmoil, he sees a need for love that the child cannot express otherwise. See, in short, what God himself sees when he looks at that child. And respond not to the upsetting act, but to the person behind the act. This is love as seeing: the ability to see the other as God sees them, not through the filter of our own hurts, desires, or claims.
From here Saint Symeon draws a crucial teaching for practical life: true love is not learned from books, nor is it obtained through moral effort. You can read all the treatises on love, you can try your best to be "a loving man" — and yet, if your heart has not been purified by repentance, by prayer, by the Holy Mysteries, you will still see in the other what you imagine about him, not what he really is before God. And without this view, "love" easily becomes a feeling, an emotional state, or even a subtle form of projection and possession. Authentic love is a gift — a gift that comes in the purified heart, in the man who has fought to free himself from the passions that darken the sight: pride, anger, judgment, lust, greed. Therefore, in Orthodoxy, the spiritual life (prayer, fasting, confession, communion) and the ability to truly love are inseparable: you cannot have one without the other.
Convergence of testimony
The patristic testimony, beyond the specific accents of each Holy Father, converges on a single point: love is not a feeling, it is a work; it is not nature, it is grace; it is real union with God and, through Him, with every human being. Without it, according to the words of the Apostle, "we are nothing" (1 Cor. 13:2).
II. The Holy Trinity: Source and Model of All Love
All that I have said finds its ultimate basis in the life of the Holy Trinity. Saint John does not merely say that God loves — he says that God is love. If God were a single isolated person, love could not be understood as an eternal reality in Him, but only as a work that appeared with the world. The revelation of the Holy Trinity shows us that love is eternal, because the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are eternally in communion. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three distinct Persons, but of one being, and the relationship between Them is, from eternity, a relationship of perfect love. The Father begets the Son from eternity and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father from eternity, in one movement of unceasing love; and the Son and the Spirit, each in His peculiar image, return to the Father in the same perfect love. All three Persons love each other perfectly, each preserving their personal characteristics.
Perichoresis: the dance of love
The Greek tradition has a special word: perichóresis — "perichoresis", mutual interpenetration. The three Persons do not stand side by side, as three separate individuals; they interpenetrate perfectly, each inhabiting the other two, without confusion, without mixture, without cancellation. This is perfect love: distinction preserved, total communion. In the Trinity, each Person is fully Himself precisely because He gives Himself totally to the others. To be means, in the Trinity, to love.
This is the foundation of Orthodox anthropology. Man, made in the image of God, is called to exist in the same way: not as an isolated individual, but as a person in communion. "It is not good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18) is not a psychological observation, but an ontological discovery: man becomes fully man only by giving himself to the other, according to the image of the Trinity.
The Trinity as a model of the family
This is also where the Orthodox understanding of the family lies. The Christian family is not a utilitarian institution, nor a social contract — it is an icon of the Trinity. Man, woman and child do not live next to each other, but in each other, intertwined in love, according to the model of the divine Persons. Each is fully himself precisely by giving himself to the other two. And every family crisis, every rupture, is deep down a loss of the Trinitarian model — and it can only be restored by returning to the Source.
III. The Economy of Salvation: Creation and the Incarnation as the Seal of Love
If the Trinity is the eternal source of love, then everything God has done "outside" of Himself—creation and salvation—is an outpouring of that same love over time. The Fathers call this plan iconomia (Gr. oikonomía, "household dispensation"). From the first page of Genesis to the last of Revelation, everything is love.
Creation: The Love That Calls into Being
Why did God make the world? The Fathers answered clearly: not out of necessity, but out of love, as self-giving, as an outpouring of His goodness. Creation is not an act of power, but of love — God, eternally blessed in Himself, did not need creation, but called it into existence so that it too might share in His joy.
And even more the creation of man. To the other creatures, God simply says "let it be". But in man, Genesis shows us a pause, a counsel, an intimacy: "Let us make man in Our image and likeness" (Gen. 1:26). The Fathers saw here the counsel of the Persons of the Trinity. Moreover, man is not made by word, but by touch: God "formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Gen. 2:7). Saint Gregory Palamas will say that this "breath" is uncreated grace itself. Man, from the moment of conception, is placed in communion with God—and communion is love.
Then God does not make man alone. "It is not good that man should be alone" — and He creates woman, not from another dust, but from Adam’s rib: the same shared nature, the foundation of human communion. The family is not a cultural invention, but is placed by God in the very conception of man.
The Fall: Love Rejected
The picture suddenly changes with Chapter 3. Man, instead of receiving God’s gifts with thanksgiving, wants to take them himself, without a Giver. He wants to be "like God", but not by grace and love, but by pretension. He believes the snake who tells him that God is hiding something from him. This is, deep down, the essence of sin: distrust in God’s love. The consequence is the rupture of love on all levels: the man runs away from God, the man blames the woman, in one page Cain kills Abel. The whole story after the fall is the story of a wounded love that seeks to heal itself, but no longer has the strength to do it alone.
The Incarnation: God Comes After Man
Here comes the climax of the revelation. When man’s love had failed, God showed His love in the most amazing way: He Himself came for man. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…" (John 3:16).
The Incarnation is the deepest revelation of divine love. The boundless God was contained in the womb of a Virgin; the Almighty became a helpless infant; the impassible One accepted suffering. Why? Saint Athanasius the Great gave the most concise answer of the Tradition: "God became man so that man could become god (by grace)".
And if the Incarnation is the descent of love, the Cross is its fulfillment. God not only became man—he died for man. Saint Paul: "God shows His love for us in that, for us, Christ died while we were still sinners" (Rom. 5:8). Christ did not die for the righteous, but for the enemies, for those who denied Him, for those who crucified Him. This is perfect agápi: love that doesn’t wait for a response, that doesn’t ask for merit, that gives itself even to those who reject it.
Love Begins with Sacrifice
Here we learn a central law: love does not end with sacrifice, it begins with it. In the contemporary view, sacrifice is the end of love—its culminating, possibly tragic moment. In the Orthodox view, sacrifice is the foundation of love. You can only love to the extent that you are willing to strip yourself of yourself for the other. Love that knows no self-denial is still affection, attraction, sympathy—not love.
This overturns the whole worldly thinking. Today it is said: "I love myself first, so that I can love others". The Fathers say exactly the opposite: you can only truly love to the extent that you forget yourself for the other. "Whoever loses his soul for Me will find it" (Matt. 16:25). Here is the whole secret of Christian love: it is not bought, it is not earned, but it is received through self-denial. "Love your enemies" (Matt. 5:44) is not a requirement added from outside the Gospel, but the direct consequence of the fact that God loved us first, when we were His enemies.
IV. Who Preached Love Most? The Witness of the Fathers and Holy Lives
The whole Tradition is one choir singing love, but some voices rise above others. I have already mentioned, in section I, Saints Maximus the Confessor, Isaac the Syrian and Simeon the New Theologian. Let us add here some testimonies that link theology to concrete life.
Saint John the Evangelist: "Little Children, Love One Another"
Before any Father we must mention the "beloved disciple", Saint John the Evangelist — Theologos, the Theologian. The three Catholic Epistles and the Fourth Gospel are the densest pages on love in all of Holy Scripture. The word with which Saint John addresses his readers in the First Epistle is teknía (τεκνία) — affectionate diminutive of the Greek word for "child", rendered in the synodal translation of the Romanian Orthodox Church by "my children". It is the form of address of an old spiritual father to his sons in the faith.
Tradition preserves an emotional incident, transmitted by Blessed Jerome in the Commentary on the Galatians: at the end of his life, Saint John, having reached a very old age in Ephesus, could no longer preach long sermons. The disciples brought him in their arms to the gathering of Christians, and he, instead of speeches, repeated only this: "Little children, love one another!". When they asked him why he kept repeating the same word, he answered: "Because this is the Lord’s commandment. If you fulfill it, it is enough". All the Gospel, all the dogmas, all the Christian life are summed up in one word — agápi.
Saint John Chrysostom: conjugal love as an icon
Saint John Chrysostom († 407) is perhaps the most prolific preacher of family love in all patristics. In the Homilies to the Ephesians, he develops the Pauline analogy Christ-Church / man-woman. For him, marriage is not a concession to weakness, but an icon of Christ’s love for His Church. The man must love his wife not as the pagans loved her – with a possessive and authoritarian love – but as Christ loved the Church: with a self-sacrificing, patient, forgiving love.
Whole pages of Saint John are devoted to raising children and should be read today, when parents are more lost than ever. He insists: the child is not raised by fear, but by love; not by blows, but by example; not by harsh words, but by the lives of the parents themselves. His synthetic teaching is that the example of the Christian parent counts more than all the words spoken to the child. Teaching sixteen centuries old, yet strikingly up to date.
The Fathers of the Egyptian Patericon: Love in the Desert
It might seem that the hermits of 4th-5th century Egypt were people who ran away from the love of the world. The reality is exactly the opposite. Abba Anthony, Abba Macarius, Abba Poemen, Abba Sisoes — all left words of a gentleness that cuts the heart.
One of the most famous stories: Abba Moses the Ethiopian, called to judge a monk who had fallen into sin at a gathering of brothers, came carrying on his back an old basket full of holes, through which the sand was leaking out. The brothers asked him: "Abba, what is this?". And he answered: "Behold, my sins flow behind me and I do not see them, and I have come today to judge the sins of another". The brothers understood and forgave the fallen one. Here is love in action: the humility that first sees its own helplessness.
Late Hesychast Witness: Saint Silouan the Athonite
The twentieth century gave the Church a perfect confessor of love: Saint Silouan the Athonite († 1938), Russian monk from the Monastery of Saint Panteleimon in Athos. The word that runs like a red thread through all his writings — preserved by his disciple, Saint Sophrony of Essex — is "love for enemies". For Saint Silouan, this is the supreme measure of Christianity: "He who does not love his enemies does not know God". In the spirit of Saint Silouan, the criterion of the true spiritual life is neither the sight of angels nor the working of miracles, but the love of our enemies and the prayer with tears for those who hate us.
We will talk about Saint Silouan and his father right away, in an incident that will help us understand how a saint grows up.
V. Family and the Raising of Children: How a Saint Is Formed
Looking carefully at the lives of the saints, we discover a fact that overturns many contemporary prejudices: in many of the lives of the great saints we see the same pattern — they did not grow up in violent or abusive families. On the contrary, they grew up in families where they encountered faith, gentleness, patience. Where there was harshness, there was the balanced harshness of love, never the soul-crushing violence. It is a spiritual law: holiness is born in the land of love, not of fear.
The Example of Saint Silouan’s Father
One of the most stirring stories is the one that Saint Silouan himself related about his father, a simple, uneducated Russian peasant, but with an amazing depth of spiritual wisdom. The event happened in the saint’s youth, when he was still in the world. On a fast day, the parents and siblings were at work in the fields, and the young Simion (the lay name of Saint Silouan) stayed at home to cook for them. He prepared food with meat and took it to the field. They all ate without saying anything to him.
Only after six months, on a holiday, the father said to him, gently: "Son, do you remember the meal of meat that you brought to the field then? It was a fast day and we all ate it, without saying anything". Simion, amazed, asked him why he didn’t tell him then, on the spot, that it was a fast day. To which the father simply replied: "Son, I didn’t want to make you sad".
Saint Silouan kept this incident as a key teaching of his whole life. "I have not reached the measure of my father", he used to say later, being a monk at Athos. The father, a simple man, did not shout at his son on the spot, did not make a scandal, did not crush a young soul with reprimands—he received the mistake in silence, bore the consequence without complaint, and only after six months, when the time was right, gently showed him the mistake. This helped form a saint: not punishment, not harsh correction, but gentleness that does not grieve, humility that does not accuse, love that waits for the right hour. Most contemporary parents would have reacted exactly the other way around. This is why the lives of the saints are a school: they show us that the sanctity of the child is conceived in the patience of the parent.
Saint Emmelia and Other Parents of Saints
Saint Emmelia († ca. 375), the mother of a family that gave the Church five saints — Saint Basil the Great, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Peter of Sevastia, Saint Macrina the Younger and Saint Theosevia — is one of the most luminous maternal icons of Christianity. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, in The Life of Saint Macrina, tenderly describes the family atmosphere: prayer, reading the Scriptures, singing psalms, work combined with study. Children were taught not by fear, but by example. All five holy children testified that what made them what they were was first of all the house they grew up in.
The pattern is repeated in examples closer to us. The parents of Saint Anthony the Great († 356), the father of monasticism, were wealthy Egyptian peasants, Christians with deep piety, who raised him by going to church with him and teaching him the Scriptures since childhood; after their death, following the evangelical call (Matt. 19:21), Anthony distributed the wealth to the poor and neighbors, leaving a part for the care of his sister, whom he entrusted to a community of virgins. The parents of Saint Sergius of Radonezh († 1392) — Cyril and Mary — were free noble landowners, people of unusual humility, canonized as well. The parents of Saint Seraphim of Sarov († 1833) were pious merchants, his mother Agafia distinguished herself by her charity. The parents of Saint Paisios the Athonite († 1994) — Prodromos and Eulogia — were simple peasants from Cappadocia, with a deep faith and a gentleness that their son inherited to the heights of holiness.
In none of these lives will we find a tyrannical father, a hysterical mother, an atmosphere of fear. We will find: prayer, moderate fasting, reading the Scriptures, hospitality to the poor, gentleness in speech, honor in work, patience in suffering. This is the culture that begets saints — not the academic one, but the culture of the heart, the culture of the virtues lived day by day.
When the saints left home
But there is also another picture: saints who left home young, sometimes against the will of the family. The Holy Great Martyr Varvara hid from her father, who wanted to marry her to a pagan. The pious Cosmas the Aetolian went to Athos against the will of the family.
There is also an intermediate, more delicate category: children raised with love by pious parents, who, however, by grace, have surpassed their parents’ measure. Saint Paraskeva of Iași was born in Epivata to Christian parents "of good and faithful descent, zealous for holy things", who raised her in faith and charity. But at ten years old, hearing the Gospel "whoever wants to come after me, let him deny himself" (Mark 8:34), shared her rich clothes with a poor man. Her parents, when they found out, reprimanded her harshly, even beat her, and forbade her to repeat the gesture. But she, ignoring the reprimands, continued. Only after the death of her parents, together with her brother (the future bishop Eftimie de Madit), did she give her part of the inheritance to the poor and retire from the world.
The picture is nuanced and pedagogically very instructive: good parents, but not yet equal to the Gospel that their daughter was already living; a child who, by grace, surpassed the formation she had received – not by running away from home, but by quietly disobeying at the point where her parents opposed the very word of Christ. Moreover, the beating she received, although it came from pious parents, did no good. It did not stop the saint – she continued anyway, by grace – but it remained in the memory of the Church as a testimony to real parental weakness. Even good Christians, when they feel surpassed by their child, may resort to blows out of helplessness, not malice. This incident prepares us for the next question: is beating really a form of love?
And the lesson for parents is twofold: not to put their children in the situation of running away to save their souls, but also not to lose themselves when the child surpasses, by grace, their own measure. Those who actually left (Varvara, Cosma) went to God, not from a bad house. Those who run away from home today wounded, broken, bleeding, are running from a bad house — and they need to be helped, not praised for running.
VI. Beating, Quarreling, Punishment: Are These Forms of Love?
In the traditional Romanian space, the saying still circulates: "beating is torn from heaven". This saying is not patristic, it is not holy scripture, it is not even ancient in this form—it is a late popular expression, used as justification for a pedagogy of fear that many generations have considered normal. We must say openly: it does not reflect the teaching of the Church.
Holy Scripture speaks, indeed, about the "parental rod" in several Old Testament proverbs (Proverbs 13:24; 22:15; 23:13). But the cultural context of those texts is thousands of years old, in which moderate physical punishment was the only known form of discipline. And, above all, those texts were never raised to the rank of pedagogical program by the Holy Fathers. On the contrary, the great majority of the Fathers recommend gentleness, patience, the kind word, the example—and very rarely punishment, never crushing violence.
Saint John Chrysostom on disciplining children
Saint John Chrysostom has a small treatise — On the Raising of Children — which should be read by every Orthodox parent. He says clearly: the child must be brought up through a mixture of gentleness and seriousness. Corporal punishment is reserved for extreme cases and should never be used in anger. Furthermore, Saint John warns that a parent who strikes in anger does not teach the child obedience, but fear and hatred. And the child raised in fear, when it grows older than the parent, will either turn its fear into open hatred, or drown its sorrows in passions. Saint John insists that any correction be made after it has been proven that the good word did not work, moderately, without anger, and — essentially — accompanied by the explanation of the mistake and the confession of love. The child must feel that he is loved even when he is scolded—so that he does not confuse scolding with rejection.
Quarrel between parents: a hidden wound
Many parents believe that the quarrel between them does not affect the children, especially if it happens "in private" at night. Pastoral reality shows exactly the opposite: children feel everything. The child’s soul is of extraordinary sensitivity; he senses the tension, the harsh word, the mother’s pain, the father’s withdrawal, even if he doesn’t hear the argument.
Worse, repeated fighting teaches children a pattern: love is conflict, love is noise, love is pain. Then, when they grow up, they will unconsciously reproduce this pattern in their own marriages. And hostile, resentful silence is sometimes even more destructive than open argument.
The solution is not to never have a disagreement, but for spouses to learn to resolve their disagreements in Christ: in humility, in forgiveness, in asking for mutual forgiveness. When children see that father and mother, after an upset, ask for each other’s forgiveness and reconcile, they learn the most precious lesson of life: love is strong not because it knows no wrong, but because it knows how to heal.
Love means firmness, not hardness
The Orthodox tradition, however, does not identify love with a lack of demands. The parent who asks nothing of the child, who lets him do anything, who runs away from any reprimand "so as not to traumatize him"—he does not love him, but doubts his own parental authority. True love knows how to say "no", to correct, to set limits. But he sets them gently, with explanation, with patience — and never confuses authority with aggressiveness, firmness with harshness. This is the Orthodox pedagogy inherited from the Fathers of the desert: the word little, but heavy with truth; the rare but penetrating rebuke; constant love, evident in all things.
The wound that never forgets
There is a pastoral truth that every parent must always keep before their eyes: a slap received from parents, a harsh word spoken in anger, a humiliation in front of others — they never forget. The child, later, can say that he "forgave", that "he realized that the parents did well", that "those were the times". But under these words of filial obedience there remains, in the depths of the soul, a wound that he himself may no longer see, but which works silently: a hidden mistrust, a fear of rejection, a difficulty to receive love — sometimes even the difficulty to love God as a Father, because the image of the earthly parent has intervened between him and the heavenly Father. In the spirit of the teaching of Saint John Chrysostom, the child struck in anger does not learn free obedience, but fear, resentment, and the closing of the heart. And fear and hatred, once planted in the child’s heart, turn into lifelong wounds.
And here is a question that every Orthodox parent must place before his conscience: who are we to be aggressive, verbally or physically, with our children? Because the truth, in the Tradition of the Church, is this: the child is not ours. It is a creation of God, a unique person built in His image, a soul for which Christ died on the Cross. We only have him as stewards — for a short time, to raise him, to guide him, to help him grow toward God. "Behold, sons are the heritage of the Lord" (Ps. 126:3).
And if we will be asked at the Fearful Judgment how we cared for this gift – how we treated the person whom God entrusted to us – what will we answer? That we struck that child? That we humiliated that soul? That we shouted, closed the door, and acted as if the child were our property? No Christian parent who has seriously meditated on this reality can raise his hand lightly against his child. He realizes that he is raising his hand against God’s creation, against a soul that does not belong to him but has been entrusted to him for a time, for care and growth. The same humility we have, or ought to have, when we enter church in the presence of the Holy Mysteries should also accompany us when we enter our child’s room. There too is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), a living being for whom Christ shed His blood.
This does not mean that we cannot correct, rebuke, teach. We can and we must. But we do it as stewards, not as owners; with reverent fear, not with the forceful claim of a master; with prayer before and after, not with the impulse of anger. Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia sums up the entire Orthodox pedagogy in one sentence: "you must not make war on your children, but on Satan who makes war on your children. Say few words to them and pray much". And if we’ve ever made a mistake—because we all make mistakes—let us go to the spiritual father, repent, and correct our behavior. Because the greatest blessing a parent can leave to his child is not wealth, or advice, or even love expressed in words—but his own sanctification. Saint Porphyrios taught that the holiness of the parents works deeply on the children.
Why many children do not feel loved
Moving from the principles to the pastoral observation, it is hard not to notice a painful reality: very many children—and then young people and adults—confess that they did not feel loved by their parents. I’m not saying they weren’t loved; they often admit that their parents loved them "in their own way". I’m saying they didn’t feel loved. Pastoral tragedy with enormous consequences. Some causes:
- Confusing love with material care. Many parents think that if they have provided food, clothes, school and toys for their child, they have loved them. The child, however, does not feed on things — it feeds on presence, attention, a warm word, a hug. The parent who works day and night "for the child" and never really sees him, loves him only in imagination.
- The permanent critical tone. The child always corrected, always compared, always scolded for not being enough, hears only one message: I am not enough, I am not loved. This message takes root deep in the heart and accompanies him throughout his life.
- Lack of expression. Many families in the traditional Orthodox space have no words for love. Parents do not say "I love you", they don’t hug, they don’t caress. They think love is "understood". It is not understood. The child needs to hear it, see it, touch it.
- Injustice among children. The parable of Jacob, who loved Joseph more than the other sons and thus aroused their murderous envy, is a very serious biblical warning. Parents who make distinctions dig deep wounds.
- Parents themselves wounded. And, perhaps most important: very many parents were not loved by their own parents, and they cannot give what they did not receive. The chain of wounds is passed down from generation to generation. Only the grace of Christ can break this chain—by first healing the parents so that they can then truly love.
VII. The Parable of the Prodigal Son: Icon of Parental Love
Of all the pages of Holy Scripture that talk about love, none makes it more heartbreaking than the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). Christ spoke it to show us what the heavenly Father’s love is like—and, by extension, what any parent’s love should be like.
The youngest son asked his father for his share of the fortune. And the father, instead of getting angry, instead of reprimanding him or stopping him, "divided the wealth between them". Here begins the mystery of the parable — and here is, according to the Holy Fathers, one of the deepest discoveries about how God loves.
The father did not force obedience. He did not use his authority to lock his son in the house. He didn’t lecture him, he didn’t scold him, he didn’t pressure him to change his mind. Why? Because, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, human freedom is the very place where love is born — and without freedom there can be no love. Saint John of Damascus, in his Dogmatica, says clearly: "God made man by nature without sin and endowed him with free will… [man] had the power to remain and progress in good by being helped by the divine gift, just as he also had the power to turn from good and reach evil, which God allowed, for the reason that man was endowed with free will. Virtue is not what is done by force". And Saint Maximus the Confessor, in his entire anthropology, teaches that man was built with two powers that work together for salvation: the grace of God and the freedom of the human will. Neither cancels out the other. Grace does not force freedom, and freedom without grace cannot reach theosis. And God, Who gave us these two powers precisely so that we can truly love, does not come to break one of them Himself.
Here one discovers the key to the whole parable — and, deep down, the core of the entire Orthodox Tradition about love. The father made his son for relationship, for communion — to be with him, in the image of the Holy Trinity. And now, at the moment of the son’s request, the father is faced with a choice: to oppose by authority and keep the son in the house by force, or to let him go. If he had resisted by force, he would have become the first to break the relationship — he would have transformed it from love into domination, from communion into submission, from a living bond into forced confinement. The son would have remained physically in the house, but with a lost heart. And the relationship preserved by force is no longer a relationship, according to Tradition — it is a chain, it is a dungeon, it is a simulacrum of communion. The father therefore chooses not to break the relationship, but to leave it open on his part, no matter how much he suffers seeing his son leave.
Saint Ambrose of Milan confirms this reading: "See how the divine inheritance is given to those who ask for it. Do not think that the father was guilty because he gave the young son what he asked for" (Interpretation of Luke 7, 213). And about the son who leaves, Saint Ambrose also says a significant word: "He who separates himself from Christ is an outcast from his homeland". It is the Son who separates, not the Father. The Father remains always the Father—and the return, when it comes, finds a relationship that had not been killed on His part. For this reason, when the son returns, "His running is foreknowledge, and His embrace is the mercy and nature of parental love" (Saint Ambrose, Commentary on Luke 7, 229-230). The father runs to the returned son precisely because, deep down, he had never broken the bond.
This is the first feature of parental love in the image of the heavenly Father: it respects the freedom of the other in order not to break the relationship, even when this freedom will bring him suffering. Because, in the Orthodox Tradition, freedom is not just some gift — it is the very condition of true love, the condition of living relationship. Forced love is no longer love, and a relationship preserved by force is no longer a relationship, but a prison.
The son went to a distant country and squandered everything. The father could have sent for him, brought him by force "for his own good". He didn’t do anything. He waited. The second feature: love knows how to wait, with pain, but without forcing.
Then, when the son, having come to want and hunger, "came to himself" — a deep evangelical word, which shows that any return to God begins with the coming of man to himself, with the awakening of conscience — comes the most impressive passage: "And while he was still far away, his father saw him and had pity, and running fell on his neck and kissed him".
Let’s weigh every word. "While he was still far off" — the father had seen him from afar; he looked toward the road, scanning the horizon, year after year. "He had pity" — the Greek verb esplagchnísthi means "his inward parts were moved with compassion". "Running" — in the old culture, a respectable man never ran; running was considered undignified. But love knows no dignity when it comes to the lost son. "He fell on his neck" — total embrace, no reproach. "He kissed him" — the verb katefíleisen means "he kissed him many times, with intensity". This is the Father’s love: not words, not reproaches, not "I told you so" — but kisses.
The picture becomes even more striking. The son begins the prepared speech: "Father, I have sinned in heaven and before you, I am no longer worthy…". The father does not let him finish. He speaks to the servants: "Bring the first garment and clothe him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet…". Forgiveness is unconditional, total, instant. The son is restored to his sonship with no probationary period, no penance required. God’s love for the returning sinner is not measured or calculated, but unleashed like a river broken from its banks.
The Fathers see in this parable the program of all parental love. When the child makes a mistake – and especially when he runs away, when he collapses – the Christian parent is not called to shut him out, to distance himself, "to teach him a lesson". He is called to remain with the gate open, with his eyes on the road, with his heart ready to run at the first movement of the child to return. This does not mean tolerating sin: the father in the parable does not tell his son "it was good what you did", but receives the person back without justifying the mistake. To love the sinner is not to love the sin — but the reception is stronger than the suffering, because this is the measure of divine love.
Love is relationship: the central lesson of the parable
Here, however, is hidden a deeper key to the entire Gospel, which deserves to be looked at carefully. The Holy Fathers have always understood that love, in the truest sense of the word, is a living relationship between people. Saint Maximus the Confessor, in the Chapters on Love, asks his disciples with a reminder that shows how central this is in the spiritual life: "The things that dissolve love between friends are these: to envy or to be envied; to harm or to be harmed; to dishonor or to be dishonored; suspicious thoughts. Therefore take heed, lest you have done or suffered one of these things, and for this reason you are separated from the love of your friend." (Fourth Century, chapter 21). For Saint Maximus, love is not an inner state of a single person — it is a bond that can be broken, damaged, or, on the contrary, cultivated. It presupposes mutual respect, trust, lack of material pretensions, lack of suspicion. Love, to exist, needs undefiled relationship; and the relationship, to be undefiled, demands from the lover a constant vigilance against what might undo it.
In the same Hundred, Saint Maximus adds an observation that overturns the entire modern psychology of love: "Love edifies because it neither envies nor grows angry at those who envy us; neither does it boast of the thing envied, nor does it reckon itself to have reached the goal" (Fourth Century, chapter 60). Love builds up; it does not build itself into an idol. It does not feed on the other person’s response, it does not boast of the gifts it has received, and it does not imagine itself already perfected — because humility is the very condition of love. It is precisely here that we see why love cannot be forced: it requires a deep inner work of the one who loves, a cleansing of the passions that otherwise creep into the relationship and divide it from within.
In this light we can look at the parable again. Why didn’t the father stop the son, reprimand him, lock him in the house with his authority? Not because he was weak, not because he didn’t feel the pain. The father knew that a compulsion—even a moral one—would have broken the relationship with his son, perhaps permanently. The son would have left anyway, later, but he would have left with a closed heart; and the return, if he came again, would not have been possible, because the door had been closed with the harsh word.
So the father chooses to lose his fortune and see his son collapse, to keep the relationship open. And precisely because the relationship remains untainted by harsh words or coercion, the son has somewhere to turn. If the father had forced obedience, there would have been no free return. And repentance that comes from force is not true repentance. This is the divine pedagogy: God Himself, having all the authority, does not force anyone to salvation, but waits for the free return of each one.
This observation opens up a valid key of interpretation for Christ’s entire teaching on human relationships. "Whoever asks for your coat, give him your shirt" (Matt. 5:40); "and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back" (Luke 6:30); "lend without expecting anything in return" (Luke 6:35); "forgive and you will be forgiven" (Luke 6:37). Why does Christ say all this? Not because it would be just — it would often be profoundly unjust by the world’s standards. He tells them so as not to break the relationship.
There is a profound proverb: "if you lend money to a friend, you have lost a friend". Why? Precisely because the relationship becomes conditional: you expect the return of the money, you have a claim, a decrease in trust, possibly a reproach. "To damage or to be damaged" — Saint Maximus called exactly this as one of the things that break love. Claiming—even when it’s fair—undermines the relationship. Christ teaches us the opposite: give without waiting; lend without expecting anything back. Not because the other’s moral obligation would disappear — the other remains indebted to God — but so that, on your part, the thread of love is not broken by pretension.
This is also the deep key of the commandment "love your enemies" (Matt. 5:44). Christ does not require us to agree with our enemies, nor to justify their evil, nor to deny that they have done us harm. He asks something else: do not close the door on a possible future relationship. Enmity is the death of relationship; loving enemies is leaving a door open — even if, at the moment, the relationship is torn apart, even if the other doesn’t want to, even if it’s impossible to talk. You, for your part, hold the door ajar. Christ Himself, on the Cross, prayed for those who were crucifying Him: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34) — and through this prayer, through His Passion and Resurrection, He opened the way to salvation for us.
Application to the Example of Saint Silouan’s Father
Now we can reread the story of Saint Silouan’s father in this light. Why, when asked by his son, did he answer "I didn’t want to make you sad"? Why didn’t he say anything to him at the time of the mistake, when it was a fast day? Because an immediate reprimand—even a justified one—would have broken the relationship, or at least put a shadow on it that would be hard to erase. The son would have understood with his mind that he was wrong, but his heart would have closed. The father, a simple man, but enlightened by grace, understood something that many parents "with much learning" never understand: that the relationship is more precious than the justice of the moment, and that, keeping the relationship, comes at the right time the understanding of the mistake.
And so it happened: because the father did not hurt the relationship, the son was able, six months later, to receive the word with an open heart. And that word — "I didn’t want to make you sad" — bore fruit in him deeply, to the extent of holiness. If the father had reprimanded on the spot, perhaps that word would not have borne fruit in him with the same depth.
Application in everyday life
From here we learn an extremely subtle pastoral pedagogy. There is no family, no friendship, no marriage in which there are no injustices — small or large, intentional or careless. The question that decides the fate of the relationship is not "who is right?", but "is this right worth breaking the relationship?". Often the answer is no. Love often requires that we endure an injustice in order to keep the relationship alive — knowing that if the relationship lives, the time comes when even the wrongdoer can see the error and turn around. And if the relationship dies, there is no longer the framework in which the return becomes possible.
This is not cowardice, it is not condoning abuse, it is not condoning chronic evil. There are times when justice must be spoken and the line must be drawn—but even then, how it is said determines whether the relationship survives. "Let your word always be pleasant, seasoned with salt" (Col. 4:6): the truth, yes, but in a form that does not crush the relationship. And for the little things, for the inevitable insults of life together, for the small wounds received from loved ones — for all these, the measure is that of the Father in the parable: silence, reception, waiting, kisses on return.
This is perhaps the most profound teaching of the Gospel about human relationships: that love demands the freedom of the other and the patience of the one who loves. God Himself, having all authority, does not force anyone to salvation. The cross is the supreme icon of this love: Christ, the Son of God, "humbled Himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, and even the death of the cross" (Phil. 2:8) — overcoming death through death and opening the way to Resurrection and deification for man. The cross is not loss, but victory; it is not a renunciation of justice, but its perfect fulfillment through sacrificial love.
And we, His disciples, are called to live in the same logic: to value the relationship more than "being right", to endure small injustices in order to keep open the possibility of communion – in the family, in the Church, in friendship, in society – and to always leave a door open, even for the one who makes us an enemy, so that the grace of God can work where human justice would have closed the door forever.
VIII. How Love Manifests Itself in Practical Life
All that said, the practical question remains: how do we love? Tradition gives us some directions.
1. Prayer for the other. The first form of love, and the highest. Saint Silouan: "He who does not pray for his enemies does not know God". To pray for someone means to place him before God, it means to want his eternal good.
2. Attention — prosokhí. The Philokalic Fathers use the word prosokhí — watchfulness, attentiveness. Applied to love, it means being truly present with the other: not body present and mind elsewhere, but collected, attentive, listening. The spouse who speaks, the child who asks, the old man who remembers — all need our attention first. Contemporary love most often dies not of hate, but of carelessness.
3. The good word. "Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21). Words build or tear down. The Fathers teach: "don’t say a word without first asking yourself: is it true? is it useful? is it spoken with love?". And especially the words "I love you", "thank you", "forgive me", "I’m praying for you" must be said, not just thought.
4. Forgiveness. Love without forgiveness is not love, but illusion. There is no human relationship in which the other does not make mistakes. Saint Mark the Ascetic, in On the spiritual law, gives the measure: "The proof of sincere love is the forgiveness of wrongs" (chapter 48); "You will not lose anything of everything you forgive for the Lord’s sake’s sake’s sake, because at the right time they will come to you in abundance" (chapter 50). Forgiveness is not forgetting, nor approving, but freeing the heart from the burden of painful memory — resemblance to Christ, who from the Cross said: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do".
5. Service. "Whoever would be first among you must be servant of all" (Mark 10:44). Husband and wife serve one another; parents serve children; children, in their own time, serve their elderly parents. And, highest of all, we all serve Christ by serving the little ones (Matt. 25:40).
6. Patience. Saint Paul: love "suffers long" (1 Cor. 13:4) — the first trait he places in the hymn of love, because it is the most necessary. Spouses break up, parents lose their children, friendships break up precisely because they have no patience. Patience is the practical form of faith that God works in time and that we are called to wait like the Father in the parable, with our eyes on the road.
7. Bodily and spiritual works of mercy. Love is concretely manifested in bodily mercy (feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, looking after the sick, welcoming the stranger, burying the dead) and spiritual mercy (teaching the ignorant, advising the doubting, comforting the sorrowful, correcting the erring, forgiving from the heart, to endure injustices patiently, to pray for all). He who fulfills them loves; whoever does not fulfill them, no matter how much he declares that he loves, is deceiving himself.
IX. Saint Gavrilia: A Contemporary Icon of Love
The twentieth century, with all its horrors, was not without testimonies of holy love. One of the most luminous is Saint Gavrilia (Papayannis) († 1992), a Greek nun whose life was a ceaseless obedience to a single commandment: love. On October 3, 2023, the Ecumenical Patriarchate canonized her, thus confirming the piety that already existed for her life of service and love.
Born in 1897, Aurelia Papayanis studied physiotherapy in England, worked for many years with patients in clinics in Athens and Ethiopia, then, at over 50 years old, she received monastic tonsure. She traveled in India, working with lepers, ministered to the poor in Africa, taught orphans, and finally founded, in the island of Leros, a small hermitage significantly named "Hermitage of Angels". She died in 1992, leaving behind, through her disciples, a book that became emblematic: "Asceticism of love" (gr. I Askisis tis Agápis).
The keyword in the title is crucial: for Saint Gavrilia, love itself is an asceticism. Not a feeling that comes or goes, but a daily work, a struggle with one’s own selfishness, a conscious placing of oneself on the other’s side. Mother Gavrilia used to say: "There is only one question in life: how much have I given myself?". And again: "Everything we do without love is like water flowing in a holed vessel". Many other words of hers became guides: "Enjoy all people as they are"; "The greatest sin is not realizing God’s love"; "If you want to help those around you, don’t change them yourself – change yourself, and they will change".
What made Saint Gavrilia a universal witness — received with joy by the Greeks, Romanians, Russians, English — is a discreet holiness, without controversies, without polemics, which shows that the holiness of love is still possible today, and not only in distant monasteries, but in full modernity. For today’s Christian, reading The Asceticism of Love is healing: Saint Gavrilia doesn’t teach you theology, doesn’t argue with you, doesn’t pressure you with rules — she simply puts you face to face with a life that loved, and makes you ask yourself honestly: "and I… how much have I loved?".
X. Conclusion: Love, the Only Thing That Remains
I started from the Holy Trinity and arrived at a twentieth-century Greek nun, passing through the creation of man, through the Incarnation of the Word, through the Cross on Golgotha, through the parable of the prodigal son, through the lives of the saints and through the painful questions of the contemporary family. All this is, deep down, one story: the story of God’s love for man and man’s call to respond to this love.
A few essentials remain to be pieced together. True love is God Himself — not an attribute among others, but His name; whoever wants to truly love must go to the Source: to Christ, to the Holy Mysteries, to prayer, to the Church. Love is perichóresis, it is communion: its model is not the isolated individual, but the Trinity that exists as mutual giving, and the family, as an icon of the Trinity, is the fundamental school of this communion. Love begins with sacrifice, it does not end with it: where there is no self-denial, love is not yet born.
Love in the family begets holiness: the lives of the saints invariably show the same pattern — children raised in gentle and firm love, in an atmosphere of prayer and good example, become saints. Parents who want holiness for their children give it to them first of all through their own holiness. Words teach, but example forms. And beating is not love, strife is not love, hostile silence is not love, indifference is not love — love is gentleness that knows how to be firm, attentive presence, warm word, ready forgiveness, joyful service, unceasing prayer for the beloved. Love is an asceticism, not an emotion you depend on; it is conquered day by day, by fighting its own selfishness, but it is easy, because love itself makes it easy.
Love is, at its core, relationship — and it demands freedom, patience, sacrifice. God Himself loved us with a love that went as far as the Cross: Christ, the Son of God, gave Himself for us, defeating death by death and opening the way to the Resurrection. And we, His disciples, are called to live in the same logic: to respect the freedom of the other as God respects ours, to be patient, to forgive and to wait for the return of the distant one – because love shows itself especially where human justice would have closed the door.
In the end, love is the only thing left. Saint Paul: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13). When we die, we will take with us neither wealth, nor knowledge, nor achievements. We will only take as much as we loved. And the final judgment, according to Saint Matthew chapter 25, will be the judgment of love: "as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me".
Let us love as we have been loved by God—without measure, without calculation, without reserve. Let us first love those in the house, because if we do not love those whom we see, how will we love God Whom we do not see (1 John 4:20)? Let us love the unlovable, because this is the measure of Christ’s love. Let us love our enemies, because, according to Saint Silouan, without this we do not know God. And let us love Christ above all, because He is the Source of all love.
Amen.