19th Sunday after Pentecost, Octoechos Tone 2; Holy Great-Martyr Artemius (360-363)
Read
2 Corinthians 11:31-12:9; Luke 6:31-36
Thomas Merton writes in The New Seeds of Contemplation, “When we love God’s will we find Him and own His joy in all things. But when we are against God, that is when we love ourselves more than Him, all things become our enemies.” When is it that I love myself more the Lord and everyone? It is when I place my will as supreme. It is when I choose selfishness over unselfishness, especially the complete self-outpouring of the Lord (kenosis). It is when I choose hard-heartedness over opening my heart to the Lord and to others. Our world so often teaches and desires that I live in my own little teacup where I really never encounter another. It is a dark world of everything being self-referential and self-serving. The only time I will scratch the back of another is if I get my back scratched.
The Gospel is clear—as a Christian, I must do better than the world. I must learn that love is not an emotion, not a reaction, not a feeling. It is a decision of offering self to an other, whether that other be a fellow human being, or that Other be the Lord God Himself. I am to go beyond selfishness and be oriented toward not just friends but enemies, and offer the gift of my self to them, and to do this without expecting a return. I am to gaze not at my own belly-button but to lift my gaze upward and realize the countenance of the Lord in everyone I meet. In the words of a great woman, Catherine Doherty, a contemporary of Thomas Merton, from her Little Mandate, I must “Love… love… love, never counting the cost.”