Abbess Thaisia: Strive to Love everyone!

I can tell you this first time only one word, but a word of such importance that all your further success will depend on how you fulfill it, as well as your personal calmness and peace of soul, which is precisely the first condition of our salvation. Here is the word: Strive to love everyone! the commandment is not difficult, but is proper to our very nature; and besides, it is so sweet and pleasant that its fulfillment fills the heart which loves its neighbor with a certain wonderful peace. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matt 19:19) says the Gospel.
The same circumstances in life which give you an occasion to fulfill this, also give you the opportunity to train your heart towards love with all the multifarious virtues which are contained in it, such as humility, forgetfulness of wrongs, forgiveness of offences, and readiness for any service towards your neighbor, even though it demands self-sacrifice. If you will view your neighbor as a person close to you, not foreign, as your brother who has been redeemed by the priceless blood of the God-Man and through Him adopted by the Heavenly Father, then, if there burns in your heart even a small spark of love towards the Lord, you certainly will love your neighbor also, for "He who loves God should love his brother also" (1 John 4:21).
+Abbess Thaisia, from Letters to a Beginner on Giving One's Life to God, Letter 1, Upon Entering the Monastery