Abbess Thaisia (+1915) was a spiritual mother to Holy Russia and spiritual daughter of St. John Kronstadt (+1909).  In the first of her Letters to a Beginner, she talks about “the first condition of our salvation”:

Here is the word: Strive to love everyone!  The commandment is not difficult but is proper to our very nature…If you will view your neighbor as a person close to you, not foreign, as your brother who has been redeemed by the priceless blood of the God-Man and through Him adopted by the Heavenly Father, then, if there burns in your heart even a small spark of love towards the Lord, you certainly will love your neighbor also, for He who loves God should love his brother also (1 John 4:21).  If you will remember more often the words of the Lord, most full of love, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me’ (Mt. 25-40), then you will never grudge them anything—neither material alms nor spiritual labors.  If you will more often pay heed to your own faults and offenses, then you will neither speak nor even think badly about anyone, for you won’t see the errors of others when your attention is focused on your own sins.  But even if you should happen to see your sisters or brothers sinning, then think that they can immediately repent, correct themselves, and blot out their sins, for God is able to make them stand (cf. Romans 14:4);  but that you who are judging can at any minute sin far worse than they, and you don’t know whether you will be given time to correct and blot out your sins.

Therefore, guard yourself against judging, serve all, consider yourself worse than all, preserve love for all in your heart and express it in deed; then you will be at peace and will save yourself.

This is my first advice to you (pp. 25-26).

Funny, isn’t it?  And strange, that even though we keep getting the same “first advice”, we rarely take it to heart. We do not see others as persons close to us. Our relationships are flawed because we are self-centered, and so we forget that love of neighbor is tantamount to love of God.  It is a slippery slope, this forgetfulness. Loving ourselves, living for ourselves—doing “our own thing” and looking down on others—we become gods after our own image. We forget that we are made in the image of God, made to become like God who is Love (John 4:16). And being oblivious of this, we become oblivious of God.

If love of neighbor is “the first condition of our salvation,” such forgetfulness is certainly the first condition of our slavery.

Fr. Paul Martin
Annunciation & St. Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Church
New Buffalo, MI