Of Some Reasons from Holy Scripture Binding Us to Keep Charity and Union with Our Brethren

DEARLY beloved, if God hath so loved us, so we ought to love one another (I John iv. 11). The glorious Evangelist St. John, having declared the great love that God has borne us and shown us in giving us’His only-begotten Son, infers and concludes from thence that we also ought to love one another. Here one might raise a doubt and ask with reason how from the fact of God’s having loved us so much the apostle draws an inference and conclusion to the love of our neighbor, since it seems that he ought only to have inferred and concluded that we should love God for having loved us so much. To this there are many good answers. The first is that the apostle did this to show us the excellence of the love of our neighbor and the esteem that God has of it; as also it is said (Matt. xxii. 36-39) that when a doctor of the law asked Christ our Redeemer: Master, what is the greatest commandment of the law? He answered: Thou shalt love God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength: this is the greatest and first of the commandments; and He immediately adds: And the second is like to this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. They were asking Thee, O Lord, only about the first; why dost Thou speak of the second?

All to show the excellence of the love of our neighbor and the great regard God has for it.

The second answer is that the love of God and the love of our neighbor are as two rings linked together and put upon the finger so that it is impossible to leave off one without drawing off the other; they must go together. So the love of God and the love of our neighbor are always conjoined; the one cannot be without the other, because it is by one and the same love of charity that we love God and our neighbor for love of God. Thus we cannot love God without loving our neighbor and we cannot love our neighbor with the love of charity without loving God at the same time, since God is our reason for loving our neighbor. And so to show that in loving our neighbor we also love God, the apostle immediately goes on: If we love one another, God also is in us by love, and his charity is perfect im us (I John iv. 12). And to show us that in the love of God there is included also the love of our neighbor, he said: This commandment we have of God, that he who loveth God must also love his brother (I John iv. 12). The love that God bears to men and the desire that He has and the store that He sets by our also loving Him, is shown in a strong light by the fact that we cannot love God without loving our neighbor nor offend our neighbor without offending God.

If a king were to love a courtier of his so much as always to put himself in front of him when any sought to injure or murder him, so that they could not touch nor hurt the courtier, nor attack him with musket or sword, without wounding and hurting the king first, would not that be an extraordinary love? Now this is what God does for men; He puts Himself ever in front of them, so that you cannot offend your neighbor without offending Him, to the end that you may beware of offending your brother for fear of offending God. He who toucheth you, says the Lord, toucheth the apple of mine eye (Zach. ii. 8). Thus, offending our neighbor, we offend God; and loving our neighbor, we love God; and loving God, we love our neighbor. Since, then, the love of God and the love of our neighbor always go together and the one is included in the other and they never can be divided or separated, St. John was able to infer and conclude to either of these loves because, in asking that, he asked the other. But the reason why he inferred and concluded expressly to the love of our neighbor and not to the love of God, was that the debt of loving God is a principle per se notum, manifest and known of itself, and principles are known and not proved, only conclusions. And so he landed in the conclusion of love of our neighbor and stated it expressly, because one would not be certain to draw it.

The third reason is because St. John in his epistle is not speaking of a love bare and dry, but of a fruitful and profitable love, accompanied with benefits and good works. So he says: My little children, let us not love in word or tongue only, but in deed and truth (I John iii. 18), for that is true love. And to give us to understand that God requires these good works on behalf of our neighbors and brethren according to that saying of Osee quoted in the holy Gospel: J would have mercy and not sacrifice (Osee vi. 6; Matt. xii. 7), for this reason did he draw expressly the conclusion of loving our neighbor. Thus an absent creditor writes a letter to his debtor: “What you owe me, I shall be glad if you will give it to So-and-So, who is there with you, for it is one thing whether you give it to him or me, and I take it as received.” In this way St. John says in the name of God, our creditor, to Whom we are indebted for so much love and soc many benefits: If God hath so much loved us, we also ought to love one another (I John iv. 11). Since God has loved us so much and we owe Him so much, let us love our neighbors and brethren, since God has transferred to their credit the debt that we owe Him.

The charity and good work which you do to your neighbor, you do it to God, and He takes it as done to Himself.

Verily I say to you, that when ye have done this thing to one of these my least brethren, ye have done it to me, says Christ Himself (Matt. xxv. 40). This is another motive, and a very powerful one, for loving and doing good to our brethren, since in this way it will come about that, though looking at them we seem to owe nothing to any of them, yet looking at God and the great debt we owe Him, wherein He has yielded and made over His right to our neighbor, we shall recognize ourselves as bound to that neighbor even to being his bond slaves. And so Father Master Avila says very well: “When your flesh uses this language to you: ‘What do I owe to that man to do him any good, and how ever shall I love him, seeing he has done evil to me?’ answer that perhaps you would listen if the motive of your love was your neighbor himself; but since it is Christ, Who takes as done to Himself the good or evil done to your neighbor, on what side can there be anything to bar the course of love and good works, be my neighbor whoever he may be or do me whatever evil he will, since I keep no account with him, but with Christ?” Hence that is quite a good inference of the apostle, putting in the premise the great love that God has borne us and thence concluding to our duty of loving our neighbor. And to move us and persuade us more to this love, he puts into the same premise the mystery of the Incarnation: Because God hath sent His only Son into the world (I John iv. 9) to remind us and make us reflect that God has allied Himself with mankind, and so we should look upon our fellow men as akin to God and brothers of Jesus Christ, and love them as such.