Orthodox life

In conclusion, I would like to read a few lines from a discourse by Saint Basil the Great: "Let words of consolation leap forward before the rest of your speech, confirming your love for your neighbor."

You who are in the monastery, when you approach your brother; you who are married, when you approach your spouse; you who are a father or a mother, when you approach your child: "Let words of consolation leap forward before the rest of your speech." Whatever you say, whatever you think of saying, say it only after you've said a word or two which will give the others joy, consolation, a breath of life. Make them say, "I feel relief; I feel joy."

Make others... dance for joy when they see you. Because everybody in their life, in their home, in their body, and in their soul, has pain, illness, difficulties, torments, and everybody hides them within the secret purse of his heart and home, so that others won't know about it. I don't know what sort of pain you're in, and you don't know what pain I'm in. I may laugh... and appear happy, but deep down, I'm in pain, and I laugh to cover up my sorrow. And so, before anything else, greet the other person with a smile.

And Saint Basil adds this: "Let your face be bright, in order to give joy to him who speaks with you." Once you've made the other person smile, don't stop smiling. This is what it means to have a "bright face." Let your face be a radiant sun, so that throughout the conversation the other will continue to feel the same happiness. "Take delight in every achievement of your neighbor." With respect to whatever achievement your neighbor has, rejoice along with him. "For his achievements are yours, and yours are his." Let the one share in the joy of the other.

In this way, there can be a meeting, a true social relation, of monks and married people, of all people, saints and sinners, giving is all the right and ability to pray. And when we say, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me," everybody is included: my husband, my wife, my brothers and sisters, my children, the whole world. When God sees such love, when He sees the paradise in my heart, that my heart has room for everybody, then it will be impossible for Him not to find room in His paradise for me and for you.

~Archimandrite Amilianos of Simonopetra, The Church at Prayer, p. 88.