In his reflection, Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen) shares a story of an elderly woman who observed that the world has lost its sense of love and compassion, becoming increasingly self-centered. He highlights how people often seek relationships not out of genuine love, but to satisfy their own loneliness, turning relationships into acts of selfishness. As Christians, he urges us to resist this cultural shift by embodying compassion, selflessness, and love for others.
Metropolitan Jonah is a retired American Eastern Orthodox bishop who served as the primate of the Orthodox Church in America until his resignation on July 7, 2012.
Video source: Saint Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church, Stafford, Virginia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AUM4_6VXGw
December 2023
For more resources, check out the website of St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church https://sthermanorthodox.org/ and the bookstore of St. Demetrios Monastery: https://virginiamonks.org/collections/all
Met. Jonah:
A very elderly lady who was on her deathbed, she was in her ’90s… He said to her: “Well, you’ve seen so much in your life, what’s the difference between now and 75 years ago?” And she said: “Oh, that’s very simple, we no longer love one another!”
We no longer love one another because we’re obsessed with stuff, we’re obsessed with possessions, we’re obsessed with relationships, whatever that means, some of some of it for good, and some of it for bad, but usually it doesn’t really mean love, often it means lust, often it means who knows… loneliness, gratifying loneliness, and if you use a relationship to gratify loneliness, it’s still an act of selfishness, because it’s not about the other person, it’s about yourself.
Our culture has become profoundly selfish, even more selfish than it was before, and our task as Christians is is to turn away from that. Think of that Rabbi who upbraided Jesus for healing this poor woman on the Sabbath. She came to the synagogue all bent over and could hardly walk and and he simply went up to her and said: “Woman, you’re loosed from your infirmity!” A profound act of compassion! And this guy had no compassion on her, had no compassion, why? Because he was all locked up in his ego and this was a temptation. This was a temptation which he fell into headlong.
When we have clarity of mind, when we have sobriety in our life, we have space for compassion for other people, we have the space to love other people, we have the space to love them unselfishly, not expecting anything in return. The evil one tries to distract us from this, tries to turn everything towards the gratification of our own selfishness. And so, as Christians, our task I think ultimately is to resist the evil one by loving one another, by having compassion on one another, by not judging one another, by being present to one another, to stand against the evil one and to stand against the tides of the culture which are contrary to the gospel and contrary to Christ.
Ultimately, I think we’ve all seen that what is contrary to Christ is destructive to the soul and destructive to our lives. So St Paul tells us to stand fast and to stand up for Christ, to stand up for love of our neighbor and compassion and not to allow ourselves to fall into the hatred and the criticism and the bitterness and the anger and all of these other things. Because those things are of the devil, but what is of God and with whom we take a stand is our Lord Jesus Christ and his teaching in the Gospel, as a shield, a buckler, the sword of the word of the spirit and the support of our life.
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