LOVE OF NEIGHBOUR

Love of self, love of God, and love of neighbor.
Much is sometimes said about so-called total selflessness. It has been promoted with great enthusiasm, especially by some French authors of past centuries. La Rochefoucauld does not hesitate to assert that in egoism, in the love of self, every virtue drowns as in the sea. Despite all this, however, Aristotle had already pointed out that such a lofty solution in no way corresponds to real life and that it cannot even correspond to it. Who could be good to one who does not even care for himself! It is useless to appeal to the gospel. Although it says that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mt 22:39), it does not say that we are to love him instead of ourselves, to do good only to him and not to ourselves.
If the love of neighbor is not to be exhausted in lofty words, it must be ordered to pass into action. We must find the right proportion between self-interest and service to others, and this is not easy. Nor is it easy, between the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor is not as apparent as it might seem. Two millennia of Christian education have taught us to combine the two. We forget that the indissolubility of the two loves is the unity of two opposites, a wondrous agreement characterized by the mysteries of God Himself. At the beginning of the journey to perfection, Christians experience contradiction rather than unity of the two ideals. Like Abraham, the eternal example to all believers (cf. Gal 3:6-7), the ancient ascetics abandoned their homes, relatives, friends. The desert and solitude attracted them.

“Until man discovers that he is alone in the world with God,” writes St. Albert the Great, “he will never be happy.” Apophthegms, anecdotal narratives from the Fathers’ lives of the desert, illuminate this longing for solitude with sayings and examples. Abbot Arsenics that he sought counsel from God, how best to save his soul. He then heard from above the words that for centuries became the program of Eastern. “Flee from men, be silent, keep your peace!” He carried out this advice so perfectly that it seemed
exaggerated even to the monks in the desert. Then Abbot Mark kindly admonished him, “Why are you running away from us?” But Arsenics stood firm: “God is my witness that I love you. But I cannot be at the same time with God, and I cannot be with God and people at the same time. There are tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of angels up there, all with the same will. It is different among human beings. They have an intention of other, and that’s why I cannot leave God and be with people.” So it seems indeed an inevitable consequence that led to the foundation of monastic orders: to serve God is to leave the world and people. The word monk comes from the Greek monachos, alone, solitary. “A monk has separated himself from all,” writes Evagrius.
The point, then, is how to merge complete and unconditional love for God with concern for our surroundings. The answer to this question is inseparable from the problem of the presence of God in the world and man. In the company of men, we manage to think of God and to do his will only if we can see God in our neighbours as well. At the beginning of the Old Testament, we read that man is the image of God (Gen 1:26). But in a true sense, we can experience the unity between the word of God and the world of man only after the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the commandment of neighbor’s love, united with God’s passion, is called the new commandment (Jn 13:34).

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