Mother Gavrilia: Loving difficult people

 Once, seeing her with [a very] "difficult" person, I was wondering how she could stand him! A few days later, I saw them again. He was unrecognizable! Sitting next to her, with a transformed face that looked beautiful, almost angelic, he was like an innocent child with its beloved mother... "How did you do it?" I asked when we were left alone. "What did I do, my child? I did nothing... The Lord does everything - provided we love the other person". "Even the... ill-natured?" I asked. "Even those you consider as such - for in their heart they are not so! You know, the moment you love them something changes. I have told you before that love is like a bomb - it shatters all evil"...

+Nun Gavrilia, spoken of Mother Gavrilia in The Ascetic of Love 

St. Nikolai Velimirovich: Three characteristics of Love

 He who has no patience with us when we sin does not love us. Neither does he love us who does not forgive us when we repent of our sin. And he loves us least of all who does not rejoice at our improvement.

Patience, forgiveness and joy are the three greatest characteristics of divine love. They are characteristic of all real love - if there is such a thing as real love outside divine love. Without these three characteristics, love is not love. If you give the name "love" to anything else, it is as though you were giving the name "sheep" to a goat or a pig.

+St. Nikolai Velimirovich, from Homilies volume 1, #10. Sunday of the Prodigal Son

St. Polycarp of Smyrna: Faith is the Mother of us all

 Faith is the mother of us all; it is the well-spring of hope and it is preceded by love of God, of Christ and of neighbor. Whoever dwells in these virtues has fulfilled the precepts of Righteousness, for whoever has charity is far from all sin.

+St. Polycarp of Smyrna, from Epistle to the Philippians, in Ante Nicene Fathers volume 1.

St. John Cassian: Nothing is to be preferred to love

 Just as nothing is to be preferred to love, then, so also, on the other hand, nothing is to be less esteemed than rage and wrath. For everything, however beneficial and necessary it may appear, should nonetheless be put aside in order to avoid the disturbance of anger, and everything that may seem inimical should be put up with and tolerated in order to maintain unharmed the tranquility of love and peace, for it must be believed that nothing is more destructive than anger and annoyance and nothing more beneficial than love.

+St. John Cassian, from The Conferences, Conference 16; On Friendship #7

St. Euthymius the Great: Make love the source and aim of every good deed.

 Always make sure that sincere love - the bond of all perfection - is the source and aim of every good deed. Every virtue grows in strength through love and humility, with the aid of experience, of time and of grace. But love prevails over humility, for it was through love that the Word of God humbled Himself by making Himself equal to us."

+St. Euthymius the Great, from his last instructions to his disciples, in The Synaxarion Volume 3, in his entry for January 20.

St. Antony the Great: Endeavor to possess only the Kingdom

 Let us endeavor to possess nothing except what we shall take with us to the grave, namely, charity, meekness, righteousness and so on. Virtue, that is to say, the Kingdom of Heaven, needs only our good will, for it is within us. Actually, it consists simply in keeping the spiritual part of our soul in the purity and beauty in which it has been created.

+St. Antony the Great, from The Life of St. Antony, by St. Athanasius.

St. Melania the Roman: The virtues are vain without love

 All the virtues and all ascesis are in vain without love. The Devil can easily imitate all our virtues; he is conquered only by humility and charity.

+St. Melania the Roman, from The Synaxarion, Volume 2, her entry on Dec 21st.

Peter Bouteneff: The criterion of love

 What we learn from the Gospels’ descriptions of Christ and then from St Paul, and the Church Fathers and Mothers - is not only that “Thou shalt not” becomes “You ought to.” The commandments become something that people have to discern for themselves and live into, on the basis of something bigger. The root principle is, “Love God and love one another, including your enemies.” With those, the rest Will fall into place. You could say that there is barely even a need to explicitly prohibit specific misdeeds such as murder (or even anger), fornication (or lust), lying (or stretching the truth), because none of them satisfies the criterion of love.

+Peter Bouteneff, from How to be a Sinner, chapter 2, What is Sin?

St. Nikolai Velimirovich: God is the perfect person

God is the perfect person and therefore He is perfect love. God is the perfect person and therefore He is the perfect truth. God is the perfect person and therefore He is the perfect life. That is why Christ said those powerful words, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6) implying love as the path. That is why love, as the path, is in the first place because it is only through love that one can achieve the truth and the life. This is why it says again in the Holy Scripture, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema" (1 Cor 16:22). How will he not be anathema [cursed] who has no love and consequently no truth or life? He is cursing himself.
+St. Nikolai Velimirovich, from Missionary Letters of Saint Nikolai Velimirovich, part 2, A hundred sayings about Christian teaching on love, #49

Metropolitan Anthony: Consider the lilies of the field...

If we want to live as Christ says, seeking only the Kingdom of Heaven and its righteousness in the hope that everything else will be added thereto, we must radically change our whole attitude to life, and stop living in the way we do. The righteousness of the Kingdom of Heaven consists in loving God with our whole heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, and our neighbour as ourselves. That means that nothing, absolutely nothing, must remain in our lives that cannot be called love of God and love of our neighbour. It means that all our thoughts, all our powers, our whole heart must be devoted not to ourselves but to another — to God and to our neighbour. It means that everything that we possess, which gives us comfort and joy, belongs to God and our neighbour; it means that whatever we make use of over and above strict necessity, we are taking away from God and our neighbour.
+Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom), from a church newsletter dated July 4, 1976.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra: Love and Prayer

Prayer is the transcendence of time and thus an entry into the timelessness, eternity, perfection, and splendor of God. Prayer is our inclusion in the life of God, our perichoresis in God, and, if I may put it this way, our obliteration in God, so that we might become one with Him. This is what happens in prayer; this is what prayer is. And this is why love and prayer are so closely aligned that each can signify the other.
+ Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra, from The Mystical Marriage