What Do We Love Best and Most?

Saint Herman of Alaska was once invited aboard a ship by a well-educated naval captain who was a convert to the Orthodox Faith. He sat at table with twenty-five of the most elite officers in the fleet -- all Orthodox Christians. He was completely out of place, a small, uneducated, simple monk in worn-out clothing among finely-dressed intelligentsia; and yet in his wisdom, he asked them questions that they struggled to answer. The captain said later, “We had no answers, we were like fools in front of him!” 

At one point in the evening, he asked them, “What do you love most and dearest of all? What would make you happy?” Their answers were what one might expect, wealth, fame, to marry a beautiful wife, to sail the finest ship. In response, Saint Herman asked, “Is it not true that of all your answers and desires one thing may be concluded: each of you gentlemen requires that which he thinks best and loves most?”

They agreed that this was true. So he asked them, ‘What could be better, higher, more worthy of love and more splendid than Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who created the firmament, and adorned everything, gave life to everything, who keeps everything, feeds everything and loves everything -- who is Himself love, more splendid than all men! Should you not love God above all things, wish for Him and seek Him?”

Take notice of how often we speak of material things as disconnected from spiritual things. Hearing the words of this holy monk, and no doubt being ashamed to have only considered what would benefit them materially, they quickly replied: ‘Of course we love God; how can one not love God!’

Saint Herrman let out a deep sigh, and with a tear rolling down his cheek, said: “I, a poor sinner, have been trying to learn to love God for more than forty years, and I cannot say even now that I love him properly.” He then spoke to them about how we should love God: “If we love someone, then we think of him always. We try to please him day and night, our heart and mind are full of the object of our love. So then, gentlemen, do you love God? Do you turn to Him often? Do you remember Him always, always pray and perform His will?”

Every one of them admitted that by this standard, they didn’t love God. To believe in God, to have feelings about Him is not enough, we must act, we must live in a way that is loving.

In the gospel this morning, a rich, young man came to Christ calling Him “Good Teacher” and asking Him what he had to do so that he might have eternal life. He at least gave lip service to Christ as being from God and a teacher of good things, and he seemed to have in mind that eternal life was something to be sought. The Lord told him,  “if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” Notice that Christ didn’t say “Just believe in me,” nor did he say “try to keep the commandments, but you’ll surely fail.” Christ is telling him to do something that is possible for him to do -- love God and love your fellow man -- this is the way to the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The young man sought clarification, after all there were hundreds and hundreds of commandments that had been given, and the Pharisees had only added to them as a means of clarifying how exactly they were supposed to live. So he asks, “which ones?” Jesus said to him, "You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and your mother, and, you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

What a simple calling this is. How attainable it is for us, and yet how often we fail at keeping these commandments. This young man, whether because he could not see his sins, or because he really was trying to live a life pleasing to God said, "All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?"

In response to this question our Lord spoke words that have inspired and challenged every generation of Christians since, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me." The early Church in Jerusalem seems to have taken this to heart literally and shared everything in common, taking care of the poor and widows in their midst. The great monastic saints like Saint Anthony the Great did just as Christ said and rid themselves of their possessions to go into the deserts and forests to follow Christ as closely as they could. 

Hear again the words of Saint Herman, “each of you requires that which he thinks best and loves most.” Hear also the words of the Lord, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” This is when most of us start to get really uncomfortable as did the rich young man. Do I really need to get rid of everything and go live as a monk in the wilderness? And the answer if we look at the history of the Church is clearly no. We can be Christians and have possessions, even wealth, but we can’t be kept by them.They cannot be allowed to have a hold over us, because they will keep us focused on the material and not on the spiritual. 

Everything that we have is a gift from God, and while we have stewardship over it, it is still His. And it has been given to us in order to work out our salvation. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons said that God is “above everything that has come into being and everything is subjected to HIm, and that which subject to Him is all made by Him, so that God does not rule nor is Lord over what is another’s, but over His own, and all things are God’s: and therefore God is Almighty and everything is from God.” 

We love God and we love our fellow man materially so that our possessions become the means of our salvation. We draw near to the one who gave us all good things in the first place, and we receive even greater riches. 

The loss of anything temporal that we have not given away as gift is counted by us as theft. We need to hold on so loosely to our possessions that we are willing to give freely and generously or we will treat others as robbers trying to steal everything from us. This is why the Lord was directing this rich young man to get rid of it all, it was holding him hostage. 

This young man reacted as if the Lord was trying to steal his money from him by asking him to give it away, and so he went away sad and comforted himself with his wealth, with his perishable things, with those things which would not benefit him in the grave.  

To make yourself poor, or maybe just a little poorer, for Christ’s sake is to have great riches in the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet we often treat giving like a yard sale, we only get rid of the stuff we don’t want or need anyway, so if I have a few extra bucks I can let that go; but we should give in a way that teaches us not to give in to our wants and to rely on God to supply our needs. 

This is why the Church has always emphasized sacrificial giving both to the Church and to the people we encounter who are in need. If we don’t ever feel the sting of going against our desires, and if we don’t ever wonder how we will do without those things that we hold dear, we will remain tied to them, and they will weigh us down, and they will make us like that camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle. 

When we give, we are not giving to an organization nor to an individual, rather we are placing our treasures into the hands of God Himself, who multiplies those riches in the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are all beset by selfish wishes, we have desires that threaten to take us down into the grave, to bury us, and keep us from rising up again. When we indulge them, we ensure that they keep their power over us; but we can break this hold by choosing God’s desires, His will for us and our salvation, and by dying to ourselves, that we might rise with Him. This is how we love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds, and our neighbor as our selves. This is how we find eternal life in Christ, the greatest object of our desires. 

“For our good, for our happiness,” Saint Herman suggested to those elite men, “let us make a vow: at least that from this day, this hour, this very minute, we should try to love God above all else and carry out His teachings.”