I’ve been reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov lately, and came across this little snippet from a portion of the book that sketches the “talks and homilies of the Elder Zosima.” Zosima is of course a fictional character, but some of this section on his talks and homilies is drawn from homilies given by St. Isaac the Syrian, an early Christian ascetic. Here is what caught my eye — actually what struck me to the heart:
One may stand perpelexed before some thought, especially seeing men’s sin, asking oneself: ‘Shall I take it by force, or by humble love?’ Always resolve to take it by humble love. If you so resolve once and for all, you will be able to overcome the whole world. A loving humility is a terrible power, the most powerful of all, nothing compares with it. Keep company with yourself and look to yourself every day and hour, every minute, that your image be ever gracious. See, here you have pased by a small child, passed by in anger, with a foul word, with a wrathful soul; you perhaps did not notice the child, but he saw you, and our unsightly and impious image has remained in his defenseless heart. You did not know it, but you may thereby have planted a bad seed in him, and it may grow, and all because you did not restrain yourself before the child, because you did not nurture in yourself a heedful, active love. Brothers, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire, it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for oune ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time.
The best apologetic is humble love.