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1. In the Gospel lesson which precedes this one, the Lord had
said: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and appointed
you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and [that] your fruit
should remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name,
He may give it you." On these word you remember that we have already
discoursed, as the Lord enabled us. But here, that is, in the
succeeding lesson which you have heard read, He says: "These things
I command you, that ye love one another." And thereby we are to
understand that this is our fruit, of which He had said, "I have
chosen you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and [that] your
fruit should remain." And what He subjoined, "That whatsoever ye
shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it you," He will
certainly give us if we love one another; seeing that this very thing
He has also given us, in choosing us when we had no fruit, because we
had chosen Him not; and appointing us that we should bring forth
fruit, that is, that we should love one another, a fruit that we
cannot have apart from Him, just as the branches can do nothing apart
from the vine. Our fruit, therefore, is charity, which the apostle
explains to be, "Out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and
faith unfeigned." So love we one another, and so love we God. For
it would be with no true love that we loved one another, if we loved
not God. For every one loves his neighbor as himself if he loves
God; and if he loves not God, he loves not himself. For on these
two commandments of love hang all the law and the prophets: this is our
fruit. And it is in reference, therefore, to such fruit that He
gives us commandment when He says, "These things I command you,
that ye love one another." In the same way also the Apostle Paul,
when wishing to commend the fruit of the Spirit in opposition to the
deeds of the flesh, posited this as his principle, saying, "The
fruit of the Spirit is love;" and then, as if springing from and
bound up in this principle, he wove the others together, which are
"joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance." For who can truly rejoice who loves not good
as the source of his joy? Who can have true peace, if he have it not
with one whom he truly loves? Who can be long-enduring through
persevering continuance in good, save through fervent love? Who can
be kind, if he love not the person he is aiding?
Who can be good, if he is not made so by loving? Who can be sound in
the faith, without that faith which worketh by love? Whose meekness
can be beneficial in character, if not regulated by love? And who
will abstain from that which is debasing, if he love not that which
dignifies? Appropriately, therefore, does the good Master so
frequently commend love, as the only thing needing to be commended,
without which all other good things can be of no avail, and which
cannot be possessed without bringing with it those other good things
that make a man truly good.
2. But alongside of this love we ought also patiently to endure the
hatred of the world. For it must of necessity hate those whom it
perceives recoiling from that which is loved by itself. But the Lord
supplies us with special consolation from His own case, when, after
saying, "These things I command you, that ye love one another,"
He added, "If the world hate you, know that it hated me before [it
hated] you." Why then should the member exalt itself above the
head? Thou refusest to be in the body if thou art unwilling to endure
the hatred of the world along with the Head. "If ye were of the
world," He says, "the world would love its own." He says this,
of course, of the whole Church, which, by itself, He frequently
also calls by the name of the world: as when it is said, "God was in
Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." And this also:
"The Son of man came not to condemn the world, but that the world
through Him might be saved." And John says in his epistle: "We
have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and
He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also
[for those] of the whole world." The whole world then is the
Church, and yet the whole world hateth the Church. The world
therefore hateth the world, the hostile that which is reconciled, the
condemned that which is saved, the polluted that which is cleansed.
3. But that world which God is in Christ reconciling unto
Himself, which is saved by Christ, and has all its sins freely
pardoned by Christ, has been chosen out of the world that is hostile,
condemned, and defiled. For out of that mass, which has all perished
in Adam, are formed the vessels of mercy, whereof that world of
reconciliation is composed, that is hated by the world which belongeth
to the vessels of wrath that are formed out of the same mass and fitted
to destruction. Finally, after saying, "If ye were of the world,
the world would love its own," He immediately added, "But because
ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
therefore the world hateth you." And so these men were themselves
also of that world, and, that they might no longer be of it, were
chosen out of it, through no merit of their own, for no good works of
theirs had preceded; and not by nature, which through free-will had
become totally corrupted at its source: but gratuitously, that is, of
actual grace. For He who chose the world out of the world, effected
for Himself, instead of finding, what He should choose: for "there
is a remnant saved according to the election of grace. And if by
grace," he adds, "then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is
no more grace."
4. But if we are asked about the love which is borne to itself by
that world of perdition which hateth the world of redemption; we
reply, it loveth itself, of course, with a false love, and not with
a true. And hence, it loves itself falsely, and hates itself truly.
For he that loveth wickedness, hateth his own soul. And yet it is
said to love itself, inasmuch as it loves the wickedness that makes it
wicked; and, on the other hand, it is said to hate itself, inasmuch
as it loves that which causes it injury. It hates, therefore, the
true nature that is in it, and loves the vice: it hates what it is,
as made by the goodness of God, and loves what has been wrought in it
by free-will. And hence also, if we rightly understand it, we are
at once forbidden and commanded to love it: thus, we are forbidden,
when it is said to us, "Love not the world;" and we are commanded,
when it is said to us, "Love your enemies." These constitute the
world that hateth us. And therefore we are forbidden to love in it
that which it loves in itself; and we are enjoined to love in it what
it hates in itself, namely, the workmanship of God, and the various
consolations of His goodness. For we are forbidden to love the vice
that is in it, and enjoined to love the nature, while it loves the
vice in itself, and hates the nature: so that we may both love and
hate it in a right manner, whereas it loves and hates itself
perversely.
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