Sin and Love

About Bishop St. Theophane the Recluse

About "old" and "new" calendar

September 2 (15)

ICor. 4:17-5:5; Mt. 24:1-13

"Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" [Mt. 24:12]. Love waxes cold because of iniquity: more sins, less love. Seeking love in the midst of sins is useless. Thus, if you look for more love and less hate, think how to reduce sins and shrink the domain of vice.

Such is the principle of genuine humanism! Accept it, together with all the ways and means of resistance to sin. External sins are fruits of inner vice, while inner vice is fully rooted in selfishness and its ugly progeny. Hence, humanists ought to pursue such an order of things whereby selfishness is suppressed, and selfishness is best suppressed by self-restraint.

Restrain your indulgence, and defeat your selfishness. And, conversely, no matter how hard you fight selfishness, it's all in vain without self-restraint. Thus, increase in indulgence means more selfishness and less love, less good and more evil. Nonetheless, such is the spirit of our age - and evil is on the rise.

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