Our life and our death is with our neighbor.
For if we gain a brother,we have gained God
but if we scandalize our brother,
we have sinned against Christ.
St. Anthony the Great
To describe interpersonal relations in the modern world, it would be fair to use the word “catastrophic”. This applies to a wide range of relations: between acquaintances and friends, within a community, family, business, romantic, and other kinds of relations.
If we have such relations with each other, then what is our relationship with God? The apostle of love, St. John, gives a discouraging answer:
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God Whom he hath not seen? (1 Jn. 4:20).
The words of the epigraph at the beginning of the article are a verdict on our selfish world, focused on our dear selves and our desires, in confirmation of the Apostle Paul’s prophecy:
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God (2 Tim. 3:2-4).
Christianity is not a religion of individualism. In fact, two millennia ago, the formation of a new “ethnic community” began: But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people (1 Pet. 2:9).
And at the same time, we who are called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Mt. 5:13-14), are doomed to facing each other’s imperfections continuously.
The instructions of the early desert fathers, these “men who attained the angelic life and contemplation”, as St. Theophan the Recluse wrote about them, are permeated with a reverent attitude towards their neighbor. Their sayings that have come down to us are imbued with the spirit of sensitivity, delicacy, and prudence.
The modern world, which lieth in wickedness (1 Jn. 5:19), is imbued with a different spirit: selfishness, pride, greed, the desire to have your own way and not to let pass whatever benefits, and to prosper in the world.
But both then and now, we are to guided by the Patristic principle: “Cover the sin of another, and God will cover you in your weakness.”1
Speaking about the fulfillment of the law of Christ—love—the Apostle Paul, who was enlightened by God, gives us instructions regarding the way it is fulfilled: Bear ye one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2).
The “burden” is what makes up our cross, from the most insignificant to the fateful—our illnesses, loss of our loved ones, loss of a job, lack of housing or money, fear of the future, our own personalities, and circumstances of life.
According to the explanation by St. Basil the Great:
“Sin is a burden that drags the soul to the bottom of hell. We take it from each other and remove it from one another, leading sinners to conversion.”
If the command, Let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me (Mk. 8:34), concerns every Christian personally, then bearing one another’s burdens means helping your neighbor in bearing his cross.
The pricelessness of such help, even if by compulsion, is evidenced by the Gospel events: And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear His cross (Mt. 27:32).
How much more invaluable then is the voluntary desire to share in the heavy burden of another: to empathize in sorrow, to bear someone else’s infirmities, to help others in difficult circumstances. Bearing this burden testifies to the fulfillment of the law of love for God (as the Creator of all people) and your neighbor (as the best of His creations).
Sometimes even for the desire and willingness alone to bear your brother’s infirmities, the Lord gives special grace to both.
In vain do we think that we can spoil someone with a kind attitude and empathy. Only our selfishness spoils everything, while sincerity and purity of intentions are crowned with enlightenment and unexpected help from above.
Is there a limit to patience? Let everyone decide for himself. But, concluding his hymn of love with the disarming words, Charity never faileth (1 Cor. 13:8), the Apostle Paul leaves little room for our self-justification.
And bearing one another’s burdens as a genuine manifestation of love makes us co-partakers of the promise:
If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth (Jer. 15:19).
