Mother Siluana Vlad: How is love manifested practically?

Love is being patient with what is seen, while believing in the wonder of what is not seen.

Question:

Mother Siluana, you said we need to love people and that God will give us the strength to do it. How is this love manifested practically in our daily lives?

Mother Siluana:

Patience! What we call love is a swelling of our affectivity or sometimes an ascension to higher levels of feeling. But that is not love. Love is being patient with what is seen, while believing in the wonder of what is not seen - in people around us, in ourselves, in what happens to us.

If we believe in God, we know from Him, from His pedagogy, and the Holy Fathers that He works in secret. We know from the Holy Apostle Paul that our life is hidden with Christ in God. Our life is beyond what is seen. And love means doing what you don’t feel like doing but what you need to do for the other. 

Love is not something you feel like doing. These are temptations, impulses - some good, some selfish, some petty, some generous - but they are transient. Love is composed of small things that we do for the sake of the other.

Love means using God’s power to do what you need to do. If you pray when doing the dishes, when shopping for groceries, or when your husband or wife scolds you - that is love. To bless the other while he or she scolds you.

I received a lovely message from a lady; she told me that she started to go astray at some point. She had lived a life of faith in the Church, she used to pray, and at some point, she thought that her life may be backward, that she needed to change her life; and she started to talk online to other more “emancipated” people. Her husband didn’t use to go to Church but seeing her behavior, he told her: “I feel like you are going astray, that you are not at the helm anymore, pay attention to what you do!” And her child asked her: “Mommy, why is our vigil light not burning anymore? And where is the headkerchief you used to wear when praying?” That is when she came to her senses. She wrote to me: “Great is the mystery of marriage!” And she believed that the grace received at the wedding ceremony caused her husband, who was not a believer, to bring her back on the right path and her child to yearn for the vigil light and the prayer headkerchief. This is love. 

Sometimes love is nothing but willingness. Everything in us is against the other. What we feel, what we think - nothing is love except the stubbornness to say, “Lord, have mercy on him and me! Lord, bless him! Lord, put love into my heart!” And He will put it there today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. We will think He hasn’t put it there yet, but the fact that we haven’t left home yet, we haven’t slammed the door, we have forgiven each other so we can take Communion - all this is proof of love.

This is where you need to be, those of you who love each other now passionately.