Shut No One out from Your Love
Do all you can to love everyone. If you are not yet able to, at the very least don’t hate anyone. Yet you won’t even manage this if you have not reached detachment from the things of this world.
You must love everyone with all your soul, hoping, however, only in God and honouring him with all your heart.
Christ’s friends are not loved by all, but they sincerely love all. The friends of this world are not loved by all, but neither do they love all.
Christ’s friends persevere in their love right to the end. The friends of this world persevere only so long as they do not find themselves in disagreement over worldly matters.
A faithful friend is an effective protector. When things are going well, he gives you good advice and shows you his sympathy in practical ways. When things are going badly, he defends you unselfishly and he is a deeply committed ally.
Many people have said many things about love. But if you are looking for it, you will only find it in the followers of Christ. Only they have true Love as their teacher in love.
This is the Love about which it is written: ‘If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, but have not love, I am nothing.’ [1 Cor. 13:2]
Whoever has love has God, because God is Love. [1 John 4:16]
Maximus the Confessor
Centuries on Charity, 4, 82ff. (SC9, pp.17off.)
Many Languages but One Human Nature
The common nature of humanity is not spoiled by differences of language. Among both the Greeks and among other nations it is possible to find those who ponder on goodness and those who practise evil.
This opinion is shared also by the pagans. The Greeks themselves recognize that among people of other races can be found a care for virtue, and that they are not prevented from attaining it by having different languages.
Moreover, the heralds of truth, the prophets and the apostles, did not possess the fluency of the Greek tongue, but they were nonetheless overflowing with true wisdom. They brought the divine teaching of God to all the nations, and with their writings about virtue and religion they crossed land and sea.
Theodoret
The Cure of Pagan Diseases, 5, 58ff. (SC57 pp.245ff.)
~ Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain, A Patristic Breviary: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
