“If you want perfect love…

“If you want perfect love, go sell all your belongings, give them as charity and go where you find a master and sell yourself as a slave. Can you do this and be perfect? Seems heavy…”
“You cannot do this? Do something else. Don’t sell yourself as slave. Just sell your
belongings. Give them all as charity. Can you do it? Still it looks heavy…”
“Let’s go further on. You cannot give all your belongings. Give half. Give one of the three.
Give one of five. Even this looks heavy.”
“Do something else. Give one out of ten. Can you do it? It still looks heavy.”
“Do something else. Don’t give charity. Don’t sell yourself as slave. Let’s move further on;
don’t take your brother’s coat, don’t take his bread. Don’t persecute him; don’t eat him with your tongue. Can you not do this either?”
“Let us go even further: You found your brother in the mud and do not want to get him out. OK, you don’t want to do him good. DON’T HARM HIM. Leave him there.”
“How do we want to be saved, brothers, if one looks heavy and the other looks heavy. Where shall we go further down? We have no place even to descend. God is merciful. Yes, but he is also fair. And he has an iron rod.”

St. Cosmas of Aetolia