By His Eminence Metropolitan Paul
of Sisaniou and Siatista
"I love you because you are you." Have you ever thought about the message this sentence conveys? I love you, and I am able to love you because you aren't me. This is the first interpretation.
Essentially I do not love you, if I want you to be like me.
Through the diversity of each person, with love, there is achieved a constant enrichment of a relationship. Otherwise, as they say in the world and society: "Relationships and marriage get old."
But it gets old because we allow it to get old.
If you do not consider the possibility of each human being to be sanctified and to share more and more in the glory of God and His Grace, then we can never have a new man.
But we try to correct the works of God, thinking that we know how to do things better. We will even see the tragedy of this issue when we get to another very basic and daily relationship.
The relationship of children with their parents. The relationship of parents with their children. It is a difficult relationship. Many times it is without freedom, in the name of love. The majority of times our ego replaces love, and it is easy to come into conflict.
Truly, when we raise our children, what vision do we have for our lives?
Do we raise children to live freely and stand on their own feet, or do we "praise" them because they listen to us?
If we rejoice because they listen to us about everything, in actuality we have recognized and pronounced ourselves infallible, and we believe we are always right, and we are pleased that our children listen to us. Meanwhile, we should be concerned if they always listen to us, especially at the time of puberty, at which time a young child makes an effort to gain their freedom.
They want our love, but not at the expense of their freedom. And there is no freedom without responsibility. And we know this from experience.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.