On the love of God and of neighbour. I. Moses wrote in the law: God made man after his own image and likeness (Gen. 1:26). Consider, I beg you, the dignity of this saying. Almighty God, invisible, incomprehensible, unutterable, beyond all reckoning, fashioning man out of clay, ennobled him with the dignity of his own image. What is man in relation to God? What is the man of clay to the Spirit? For God is a Spirit (John 4:24). Great is the condescension, that God bestowed upon man the image of his eternity and the likeness of his own character. Great is man's dignity, the likeness of God, if it be preserved; but great again is the condemnation, the violation of God's image.
For what man has received from God's breath, if he turns it to a perverse use and defiles the gift of his nature, then he corrupts the likeness of God and, so far as in him lies, blots it out; but if he uses for good the virtues implanted in his soul, then he will be like to God. Whatever virtues, therefore, God sowed in us at our first creation, he taught us by his precepts to render back to him. This is the first: to love the Lord our God with all our heart (Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:30), for he himself first loved us (1 John 4:10) from the beginning and before we existed. For the love of God is the renewal of his image. And he loves God who keeps his commandments; for he said: If you love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15);
this is his commandment, that we love one another, according to that saying: This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I also have loved you (John 13:34). But true love is not in word only, but in deed and in truth (1 John 3:18). Let us therefore render to our God, our Father, his image unviolated in holiness, for he is holy, according to that saying: Be holy, for I am holy (Lev. 11:44; 1 Pet. 1:16); in charity, for he is charity, according to that saying of John: God is charity (1 John 4:8); in piety and truth, for he is loving and truthful. II. Let us not be painters of an alien image; for he is a painter of a tyrant's image who is cruel, who is wrathful, who is proud.
For just as we read of false knowledge, so too a false image is detected as a mere shadow. For truth is divided from falsehood, justice from iniquity, charity from malice, diligence from carelessness, equity from depravity, love from pretence; and each set of these paints in us certain images, contrary to one another. For piety and impiety, peace and discord, are contrary to one another. Lest then we bring into ourselves tyrannical images, may Christ paint in us his own image, who painted it by saying: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you (John 14:27). But what does it profit us to know that peace is good, if it be not well kept? For it is wont that whatever is best becomes most fragile;
and all precious things need greater caution and more careful keeping; for that is too fragile which is lost by a light word and perishes by the smallest hurt to a brother. For you hurt no one when you flatter him; and you flatter no one when you despise him. For say but 'Thou fool' (Matt. 5:22), and you have violated peace and become guilty of hell-fire. Therefore those who are zealous to fulfil brotherly love must beware of speaking as they please and of moving the tongue according to the impulse of the mind; since we shall render an account not only of injurious words but even of idle ones (Matt. 12:36). Wherefore we must be zealous not to linger in many words, but to speak only what is necessary.
For nothing is sweeter to men than to talk of others' affairs and to busy themselves with others' concerns, and to utter idle words everywhere, and to detract from those who are absent; and therefore let those who cannot say: The Lord has given me a learned tongue, that I may know how to sustain by a word him who is weary (Isa. 50:4), keep silence, and if they say anything, let it be peaceable. For although a wise man offends less by few words than by many; for whenever anyone lies, curses, detracts, he cuts his own throat with his own sword. And what else would our enemies have wished for us than that we should fall by our own weapons? Detract not, says the Scripture, lest you be rooted up (Ps. 36:8-9 [Vulg.]). See what labour is spent on the works of impiety:
the dwelling and the planting which we plant only by great and godly labours is rooted up by one word of detraction; and what can scarcely be established by long toil is undermined by the onset of a single utterance. Let everyone therefore beware lest his root be rooted up out of the land of the living because of the detraction of hatred. For no one ever detracts from him whom he loves; for detraction is the firstborn of hatred, and therefore the son of such a father deserves to be rooted up. III. Perilous, beloved, is the dwelling in which these things are not avoided. For if, as the Apostle says, you envy one another and bite one another, you detract from one another, I say, take heed lest you be consumed one by another (Gal. 5:15). For if he who loves not is in death (1 John
3:14), where shall he be who detracts? In these matters there is need of tears rather than of words. For what has the law of God commanded more carefully or more abundantly than love? And yet you rarely find anyone so doing. What shall we say in excuse? Can we say: it is laborious? it is hard? Love is no labour: love is more sweet, more healing, more wholesome to the heart. For if the heart be not sickly with vices, love is its very health, and is that which is dear to God; for nothing is more dear to God than love, especially spiritual love; since it is the sum of his law and of all his commandments, according to that saying of the Apostle: He who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law (Rom. 13:8).
And he who has fulfilled the law by the zeal of love has eternal life, as John also says: Brethren, we know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren: for he who loves not abides in death. And whosoever hates is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him (1 John 3:14-15). Either therefore nothing is to be done save love; or nothing is to be hoped for save punishment: For charity is the fulfilling of the law (Rom. 13:8), which may that loving One, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, deign abundantly to inspire in us, who deigned to give it, the author of peace and the God of charity, to whom be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.