Chapter 15 — The perfection of love of our neighbor considered as a matter of counsel

We devoted the last chapter to the consideration of the perfection of brotherly love as exhibited in the degree necessary to salvation. We will now treat of the same virtue as manifested in a degree exceeding common perfection and thus forming a matter of counsel. This perfection of fraternal charity may be regarded from a triple point of view. First, we may consider its comprehensiveness; for love is perfect in proportion to the number of persons whom it includes.

Now there are three degrees in the comprehensiveness of charity. Some men love their neighbours either on account of the benefits they receive from them or by reason of some tie of blood or of social life. This love is bounded by the limits of human friendship, and of it our Lord says: if you love those who love you, what reward have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? (Matt 5:46–47).

Others, again, include strangers in their charity, as long as they meet with nothing in these strangers antipathetic to themselves. This degree of charity is limited by natural feeling; for as all men form one species, each individual man is by nature the friend of all others. (Cf. Aristotle, Ethics 8.1, 1155a21.) Thus it is natural to us to put one who has lost his way on the right road, to help a man who has fallen down, and to perform similar kindly offices. As, however, we naturally prefer ourselves to others, it follows that we shall love one thing and hate what is opposed to it. Therefore a merely natural love never includes the love of our enemies.

But the third degree of charity is the love extended even to our enemies. Speaking of this love, our Lord says: love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you (Matt 5:44). He shows that this love constitutes the perfection of charity by concluding his instruction with the words: be, therefore, perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt 5:48). The fact that this perfection is beyond ordinary perfection appears in the words of St. Augustine, who says in the Enchiridion, chapter 19, that these things belong to the perfect among the sons of God. Nevertheless, all the faithful ought to strive to fulfill them; and by prayer and self-conquest the soul of man ought to be brought to these sentiments. But this sublime virtue is not found in the generality of mankind, although we believe that God hears the prayer which says: ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.’ (Matt 6:12.) (Augustine, Enchiridion, ch. 73 (CCSL 46; PL 40:266).)

But as by the term neighbor all men are understood, and as no exception is made in the precept which says: love your neighbor as yourself, (Matt 19:19, 22:39.) it may be thought that the love of our enemies is commanded as necessary to salvation.

This difficulty is easily solved if we call to mind what has been said about the perfection of divine love. The precept which says: (Matt 22:37.) love the Lord your God with your whole heart may be understood as a matter either of precept, to be obeyed as a necessity, or as a counsel, or as perfection attained only by the blessed in heaven. If the command, love the Lord your God with your whole heart be understood to mean that man’s heart is to be always actually fixed on God, it can only be obeyed by the blessed in heaven. If it be taken as signifying that man is not to admit anything into his heart contrary to divine love, it is in this sense a precept which must of necessity be obeyed. If, again, we understand by these words the renunciation of all things for the sake of greater freedom in communion with God, it is a counsel of perfection.

In the same way we may say that it is a precept not to exclude even our enemies from the universal love of our neighbor enjoined upon us nor to admit within our heart anything opposed to this love. But to love our enemies with an actual love when there is no necessity for so doing is a counsel of perfection. Of course it is necessary for salvation to love our enemies by doing them actual service and assisting them if they be in any extremity; if, for example, they be dying of hunger. The precept of brotherly love does not, however, bind us to show any special affection nor to do any particular service to our enemies, unless they be in the extreme distress of which we have spoken; neither are we bound by precept to do any special service to any other of our neighbours.

Love of our enemies springs directly and purely from love of God; whereas our love for other men arises from diverse motives, e.g., from gratitude, from kinship, from fellow-citizenship, and the like. But nothing save the love of God can make us love our enemies; for we love them because they are his creatures, made in his image, and capable of enjoying him. And as charity prefers God before all other good, the consideration of the divine good, which inclines us to love our enemies, outweighs the consideration of any injury received from them which would incline our nature to hate them. Thus, in proportion to the love of God in a man’s soul will be his readiness to love his enemies.