Weekday

OUR NEIGHBOUR IS THE IMAGE OF GOD

From the writing of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov 3

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Holy monks constantly remembered Christ’s words: Truly I tell you, when you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me. They did not stop to consider whether their neighbour deserved their respect or not; they paid no attention to his numerous and obvious defects. Their attention was taken up with seeing that they did not somehow fail to realize that our neighbour is the image of God, and that Christ accepts what we do to our neighbour as if it were done to Him…

It requires considerable spiritual effort and it requires the co-operation of divine grace for the heart damaged by sin to grasp this notion so as to have it constantly in mind,” in our relations with our brethren. But when by the mercy of God we grasp this notion, it becomes a source of the purest love for our neighbour, a love for all equally. Such love has a single cause — the Christ Who is honoured and loved in every neighbour.

The realization of this truth becomes a source of the sweetest compunction, of the most fervent, undistracted, most concentrated prayer. Holy Abba Dorotheus used to say to his disciple, St. Dositheus, whenever he was overcome by anger: ‘Dositheus! You get angry, and are you not ashamed that you get angry and offend your brother? Do you not realize that he is Christ and that you offend Christ?’

The great Saint Apollos often used to tell his disciples regarding the reception of who came to him that they must be given honour with a prostration to the earth. In bowing to them we bow not to them but to God… And that we must welcome and show hospitality to the brethren we have learnt from Lot who urged the Angels to spend the night at his house.

This way of thought and behaviour was adopted by all the monks of Egypt… St. Cassian the Roman… of the fourth century, relates the following: “When we…wishing to learn the rules of the elders, arrived from the region of Syria in the province of Egypt, we were astonished to find that they received us there with extraordinary kindness. Moreover they never observed the rule for the use of food, for which a fixed hour is appointed, contrary to what we had learnt in the Palestinian monasteries. Wherever we went the regular fast for that day was relaxed, with the exception of the canonical fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. We asked one of the elders: “Why do you all without distinction disregard the daily fasting?” He replied: “Fasting is always with me, but you I must send away eventually and I cannot always have you with me. Although fasting is beneficial and constantly necessary, yet it is a gift and a voluntary sacrifice, whereas the observance of love…is an invariable duty required by the commandment. I receive Christ in your person, and I must show Him wholehearted hospitality… Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? But when the bridegroom is taken away from them, then they will fast lawfully”…

Through humility in your dealings with your neighbour, and through love for your neighbour, hardness and callousness is expelled from the heart. It is rolled away like a heavy rock from the entrance to a tomb, and the heart revives for spiritual relations with God.

3 Brianchaninov, Ignatius. The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism. Trans. from the Russian. Madras, 1970. 62-65.