(1 John 5:2-3)
23. Fulfillment of the Law
And how can we recognize that we love the children of God?
It's because we love God and observe his commandments. In this matter we groan from the difficulty of observing God's commandment. But listen to what I'm going to say. When do you feel oppressed? When you love what? Avarice! You have hard work in loving that. But it's no work at all to love God. Avarice will impose hardships, danger, chafing, and trouble on you, and you'll submit to it. And why? To fill your coffers you'll lose your peace of mind! Surely you were more at peace before you began to grow rich. See what avarice has imposed on you: you've filled your house and have thieves to fear; you've gained money and lost sleep. Look what avarice has commanded you: Do this—and you did it. What order has God given you? Love me. "You're fond of money," he says. You'll seek it and often you won't find it. But if there are any who seek me, I am with them. You love honors, but you may not attain them. Are there any who loved me and didn't attain me? You want a protector or a powerful friend, and you try to get one by means of some lesser person; instead love me." This is what God is telling you: "You don't have to approach me through anyone else. Love itself makes me present to you."
Is anything sweeter than this love, my friends? Surely the psalmist is right: "The ungodly have told me of delights; but they are not as your law, O Lord." God's law is his commandment, that new commandment which is called new because it renews: "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another." See that this is really God's law. The Apostle tells us to "bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ." Love is the consummation of all our works. This is 104 / LOVEONE ANOTHER, MY FRIENDS our aim: it's both why we run and what we are running toward. When we've reached it we shall have rest.
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. You've already heard that **on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." Do you see how God doesn't want to spread your attention over many pages? "On these two commandments": "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." These are the commandments this whole letter is talking about. Hold fast to love and be at peace. Why are you afraid of harming someone? Who harms any beloved person? Love, and you can't help doing good.
Do you have to rebuke someone? Love does it, not severity. Do you strike someone? It's for discipline's sake that you do it, because love of love doesn't allow you to leave anyone undisciplined. And sometimes there may be these different and contrary results: that hatred adopts pleasing ways, while love is severe. Take people who hate their enemies but feign friendship for them. When they see them doing wrong they praise them; they desire their ruin, to see them go blindly over the precipice of their wicked desires from which they may never return. They praise them, as the psalm says, "for the sinner is praised for the desires of his soul." They cover them with adulation. You see how they can hate and praise. Others seeing their friends doing similar things call them back, and if they don't listen they use words of reproof. They denounce and even prosecute them; sometimes it goes that far. Do you see how hatred may flatter and love prosecute? But don't consider the flatterer's words or the seeming severity of the other's. Look for their source, for the root from which they come. The flatterer wants to deceive, the other prosecutes in order to set straight.
My friends, it's not for me to enlarge your hearts. Ask God that you may love one another. You are to love everyone, even your enemies, not because they're already your sisters and FULFILLMENT OF THELAW / 105 brothers but so that they'll become so. Then you will always be aflame with love—for one who is already a sister or brother, or for your enemies, because love will make them your sisters and brothers. Whenever you love a sister or brother, you love a friend, one with you now, already bound to you in catholic unity. If you live well, you will love a sister or brother made from an enemy. But if you love someone who doesn't believe in Christ yet or who believes in him with a demon's faith, you must reprove this foolishness. You must love, and with a sister or brother's love. They are not yet your sisters and brothers, but you love them to make them so. And so all of our love is love for Christians, love for all of Christ's members. The discipline of love, dear friends, its vigor, its flowers, its fruit, its beauty, its charm, its nourishment, its drink, its food, its embraces— we can never have too much of these! If love delights us so much now when we are pilgrims, how we shall rejoice when we are in our own land!