St. Kyrillos VI with Fr. Boles El Baramousi who’d later become H.G. Bishop Makarios of Qena
This letter from St. Kyrillos VI is phenomenal; I shared it before in parts back when I had Instagram and decided to record it. It was “written in March 1928 in the first year of his monastic life. It demonstrates his long and deep experience in the practice of love and his benefit from its fruits”. My favorite part is when he starts to speak to “Love” in the second-person. There’s always something very unique about an abstract concept taking on the second-person. It becomes alive, alive in the sense that the idea itself is more significant than we are, almost transcendent. “You are the builder of the saints, the mother of the pure and the selected. Will the miracle strengthen the destitute’s tongue to describe your extent and measure your infinite length and breadth? You are the foundation of all virtue and the domain of the holy. Whoever owns you owns all things, and whoever is your student learns all things.” That last line is so powerful. He speaks of love in such a paradoxical way that blows my mind; love as something possessed yet also possesses me. To be a student of something is to subject oneself to the tutelage, or guidance, of that person or object. To be a student of love, or preferably agape, is to expose oneself to God’s agape, to learn how God loves me, and then to measure my agape towards others while looking at them through the eyes of God’s agape.
Below I recorded the letter. Comment below if there are other writings you’d want to hear recorded!