Fr. Barnabas Iankos: True love liberates us
Love does not depend on who the other is and what the other does. Such love inspires people; it liberates them.
This is love that saves: when you know the other, and you don’t stop from considering the other as a member of the same Body - but he or she continues to be for you a member of the same Body. This is the knowledge of the saints: they see our sins and love us the same. God knows the same things about us; His love is unwavering and unchanging. If my mood changes because the other is volatile, that is not love. Because I see how difficult he is or how wrong her position is, I become angry and upset: “I can’t stand him!” or “I’ll put her out of my mind!” No!
This is the most important thing: to understand how different the other is compared to what you imagined and to continue to give him the same place in your heart. Then you love the other, but not his actions. It’s not what we hear in couples: “Father, I don’t know this other person! I loved another person, a different person who is changed now! I am getting a divorce!” No! These are worldly things. Spiritual love is this: I understand that she is different from what I thought she was, but my attitude toward her doesn’t change; she continues to have the same place in my heart.
Only this way can you change the other. If your mood changes because you have seen the other acting “differently,” that is not love. People come to me and tell themselves: “How am I going to see Father? Will he understand me?” If I believe I need to be righteous so my spiritual father can accept me, and if he has conveyed this to me, then this Father is a priest who missed out on his calling. This Father is successful when people are not afraid, with all their wretchedness, and they feel he loves them the same. Only then can love and the relationship with the spiritual father heal us. That is why people are afraid: “How will I be able to tell him? Will he understand me? I will need to justify myself.” There is no justification in true love.
Love does not depend on who the other is and what the other does. Such love inspires people; it liberates them. If you go to a spiritual father and you feel that whatever you tell him, whoever you might be, whatever things you might reveal about yourself, he understands you, he loves you the same - this is healing and a correct spiritual “prescription.” And then the spiritual father is “successful” - that is to say, he imparts Christ’s love, not his own love, which might be insincere, egotistical, or fallen. We need to give Christ’s love, not our love, as a gift. Then people become free. But this way, you can also free up a child: if children feel they have the same place in their parents’ hearts, whatever they might have done. This way, you can also save your spouse (if anyone can do that). Whoever it might be, that person continues to have the same place in your heart.
How many people do this? This is the measure of holiness. The holiness of a monastic is one thing, and the holiness of a married person is this: to understand that the other is not who you were imagining he or she to be, that the other is lacking in many respects compared to your expectations, but continues to have the same place in your heart. This is grace; this is true love! It is not the neurotic or ideological love described in various texts but the true love of Christ. It is not whether I judge the other not; it is how I relate internally to the other.
We live in society and in Church in a state of fear: “Do the other people love me or not? Do they accept me or not?” And everyone tries to show an image outwardly, even to their spiritual father. Everyone does this, unfortunately, and it is wrong! True love means conveying to others that we love with the love of Christ, that for us, the other is a member of the same Body, and that the other continues to have the same place in our hearts, whether he is a saint or a criminal.
If we feel this true love from other people, we feel liberated. Whoever feels this love becomes a free person. This is the beginning of healing.
Translated from Romanian subtitles to the Greek original: