One of the foundational elements of authentic Eastern spirituality is, of course, the Eastern Church’s understanding and image of God. For the Eastern Church God incessantly creates anew, whereas man holds fast to what is old, both to his comforts and his distress. You will recall that recently I reminded you that we humans find it extremely hard to change the way we think. We hang onto ways of thinking from our childhood and long after those ways of thinking are effective or meaningful.

God is not afraid of the new. He intervenes. He is ever reaching out and saving. In former times people distrusted the new because they feared their norms might be thrown off balance.

Although our modern society is now engaged in a continual process of innovation – you need only to think about the advances made each day in modern technologies – it is not necessarily a healthy innovation. We are constantly discovering the problems that our modern innovations are causing.

God’s constant renewal is different from man’s innovations. God wills that the creation be ever renewed. Christ embodies the highest moment of God’s renewal of the earth. Christ does not promise world utopias. He comes in the midst of time to renew man and the earth, whom he so deeply loves.

Love is the supreme commandment, the greatest virtue and the ultimate standard by which all humans should judge their union with God’s way of living. Love, in the Christian sense, is not merely tender emotion and warm feeling. Love also means practical action for the good of the other, freely rendered without thought of recompense. We cannot devote our heart to the unseen God without also living the person we see before our eyes. Mystically, every compassionate act done for our neighbor – every drink, of water given to one in need – is offered also to Christ. Loving someone means regarding him and his needs as important, as mattering. It means taking her feelings and her sufferings to heart and doing something about it.

It means loving neighbor as self!