By Georgios Trifonopoulos, Theologian from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki | Romfea.news
Love among people is the key element in building a relationship, whatever the form of this relationship is.
Usually the concepts of respect, honour and appreciation of the face of the other are within it.
It is a free choice but also binding, because frequently behind the apparent love, interest, fear, dependence and reward are hiding.
Love is characterized by reciprocity; you can not love someone who treats you bad, you can not give love to people you know that will not give love back and even exceeded it.
As, for example, lenders can not give money to insolvent borrowers because they are sure they will never get it back.
Our love, therefore, always makes calculations and is given where there can be rejoicing.
Deeply, it serves our self-love. Through our relationship we seek to be glorified by others and to make them servants of our selfishness.
People typically say, don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you.
Thus, balance is served within society, since each person thinks of him or herself and acts accordingly, avoiding harming his or her fellow man.
However, Christ gives us another glimpse of love in the Gospel reading of the 2nd Sunday of Luke.
He changes somewhat the philosophy of people on this and characteristically urges, treat others the way you want them to treat you.
Therefore, in a way out of our ego, we are called upon to put the face of the other in our own position, to be open to love without calculations and borrows.
In what way we differ when we show love to all those who love us, when we offer the wealth of our heart to all those who can offer us their own?
This is a phobic love full of insecurities that can not empty itself, become condescending and tolerant to the other, but only is hurt when it does not receive what it gives.
Christ proposes us another way of life, a completely different view of love.
He wants us to become like Him, to imitate the wealth of his self-emptiness that opened the gates of heaven and came to earth to meet the one who betrayed him, who refused His love, who did not hesitate to offend the Creator of life.
Love never provides security and confidence, but it is full of pain, doubt, betrayal and at the end crucifixion.
It is not something easy, and when it does not have all those elements, then it called self-interest and compromise, a simple relationship of exchange and fear.
We, the Christians, the friend of Christ, stand out in the crowd thanks to the love we can offer. It is probably something that makes us alike to God, as He made us in His image, but we are different from Him when we resemble Him.
And this is possible in the apology and the condescension, the emptying of the ego and the passage to you, to every person that surrounds us.
It is difficult, even if you are writing and talking about love or shouting loudly about love, you can not give it, at the time of our crucifixion we easily forget.
The mockery, the derision, the public humiliation is a critical confrontation, a martyrdom.
It seems impossible, if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, to turn to him the other also or if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, to let him have your cloak as well.
And yet it can happen when Christ ceases to be something general and abstract in our lives and becomes our own Life, then love is our experience, the way we live, and we face people and events.
Then we begin to act like Christ, we forgive the thief on the cross, we long for our brothers, we become tolerant of their mistakes, and embrace them with our arms nailed on the cross, like Christ who embraced every person, who gave the cure for every illness.
Besides, let us not forget that this love of Christ on the cross became for the whole world the beginning of Resurrection and Life.
