Salesian Literature

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6.  Mutual Charity   

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent, February 27, 1622, concerning Our Lord's commandment of love of neighbour, His desire that we be united with each other, the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour, in what way the Commandment of love of neighbour is new, Our Lord's example of love of neighbour, Our Lord's restoration of man to God's image and likeness, seeing and loving Our Lord in our neighbour, the extent to which we should love our neighbour, how it is better to be spent for our neighbour's sake than to spend ourselves for him in the way we choose, union with God and our neighbour in the Most Blessed Sacrament, love of neighbour as the Commandment which God stresses to us the most earnestly, and how we should love our neighbour with the same incomparable ardour and constancy with which Our Lord loved us on the Cross.

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"Every  kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.'  - Lk.11:17

 

In today's Gospel [Lk. 11:14-28], Our Lord insists that every kingdom divided against itself (not united in itself) is brought to desolation. On the other hand, the converse is true, too: all kingdoms united in concord, not permitting any division to enter, will surely be filled with consolation. For if the propositions are opposite, the consequences must be, also. These words are among the most remarkable, noteworthy and important that our Divine Master ever spoke. For this reason the ancient Fathers carefully interpreted them.

 

They agree that our Saviour had three kinds of concord or union in mind when He spoke, where division in any of them results in desolation. The first is the concord which should exist between a king and his subjects, making subjects submissive and obedient to his laws. The second is the union which we ought to have within, in our inner kingdom, where reason must be the king to whom are subject all the faculties of our spirit, all our senses, and even our bodies. Without this obedience and submission we cannot avoid having desolation and trouble, any more than there could be peace in a kingdom in which the subjects are not obedient to the laws of the king.

 

Since it would require too much time to speak of all three unions, I will dwell only on the third, that which we ought to have with each other. This union or concord has been earnestly preached, recommended and taught to us by Our Lord, equally in word and example. He does this so forcibly and in such admirable terms that He appears to forget to recommend to us the love we ought to have for Himself and for His Heavenly Father. He does this to better inculcate in us the love and union He wants us to have for one another. He even calls the Commandment of love for the neighbour His Commandment[1] [Jn. 15:12], His most cherished one. He came into this world to teach us, as our divine Master. Yet nothing is so stressed, nothing stated so completely as the observance of this Commandment. He does so with good reason, for the beloved of the Beloved, the great Apostle St. John, assures us that anyone who says that he loves God and does not love his neighbour is a liar [1 Jn. 4:20-21]. On the other hand, he who says he loves his neighbour but does not love God also contradicts the truth. That simply cannot be. To love God without loving the neighbour, who is created in His image and likeness [Gen. 1:26-27], is im­possible.[2]

 

But what should this union and concord be which we all ought to have? Oh! What should it be indeed! It must be such that if Our Lord Himself had not explained it, no one would have been so daring as to use the same terms as His. At the Last Supper, after He had given the incomparable pledge of His love for us men, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, He said: Father, My very dear Father, I beseech You that all those whom You have given Me may be one, as You and I, Father, are one [Jn. 17:11-12, 21-22]. To show that He was not speaking only for the Apostles, but for all the rest of us, He added: I do not pray for them alone (that is, those He had just mentioned), but for all those who will believe in Me through their word [Jn. 17:20]. Who would have dared, I repeat, to make such a comparison, or to ask that we might be united as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are united?

 

This prayer seems at first glance too good to be true, for the union of the three Divine Persons is really incomprehensible, and no one at all can possibly imagine that simple union and that unity so unspeakably simple. Thus we cannot really hope to reach an identical union, for that is impossible, as all the ancient Fathers point out. We must be content to approach it as nearly as possible, according to our capacity. Actually, Our Lord does not call us to an identical union, but only to the quality of this union; that is, we ought to love one another and be united together as purely and per­fectly as possible.

 

I have taken much more pleasure in preparing this subject today since I found that St. Paul recommends to us this love of the neighbour in that wonderful language he uses in the Epistle we read today at Holy Mass. To the Ephesians he writes: "Beloved, walk the way of love for one another as very dear children of God; walk in this way just as Jesus Christ walked in it, giving His own self for us, offering Himself to God His Father as a holocaust and oblation of sweet odour" [Eph. 5:1-2]. Oh, how lovable these words are, and worthy of reflection! These are golden words. By them this great saint helps us to understand what our concord and our dilection toward each other should be like.

 

Concord  and dilection  are  the  same  thing.  The word "concord" signifies union of heart. "Dilection" signifies elec­tion of affections, or union of affections. He seems to want to make clear to us what the Saviour meant when He prayed to His heavenly Father that we might all be one (that is, united), as He and His Father are One. Our Lord was somewhat brief in teaching us in words how He wanted us to practice this holy and most sacred union. For this reason His glorious Apostle developed them in explaining them to us. He exhorts us to walk in the way of dilection (love) as God's most dear children. It is as if he meant: Just as God, our all-good Father, has loved us so dearly that He has adopted us as His children [Eph. 1:5; 1 Jn. 3:1-2], you must show that you are truly His children by your loving one another dearly in all goodness of heart.

 

Lest we may walk with a child's steps in the way of dilection which God our Father has so strongly recommended to us, St. Paul adds: Walk the way Our Lord walked in it: He gave Himself for us, and so on. By this he indicates that he wants us to walk with giant strides and not with a child's little steps. Love one another as Jesus Christ has loved us [Jn. 13:34; 15:12], not because of any merit that may be found in us, but only because He created us in His image and likeness. It is this image and likeness that we ought to love and honour in all, not anything else that may be there. For really nothing is lovable in us which is of us, since not only does it not enhance this divine image and likeness, but it actually disfigures, defiles and stains it so that we are scarcely recognizable. Now we must not love that in our neighbour, for God does not will it.[3]

 

Why, then, does Our Lord want us to love one another so much, and why, ask the majority of the holy Fathers, did He take so much care to equate this precept to the Commandment of the love of God? [Matt. 22:39]. It astonished the Fathers that these two Commandments are said to be similar to each other, because one pertains to the love of God and the other to the love of the creature: God, who is infinite, and the creature who is finite; God, who is Goodness itself and from whom all good comes to us, and man, who is full of malice, through whom so many miseries come upon us. For the Commandment to love the neighbour includes also the love of enemies [Matt. 5:43, 44]. O God! What dis­proportion between the objects of these two loves, and yet these two Commandments are alike to such a degree that the one cannot exist without the other and must necessarily increase or perish in proportion as the other increases or perishes, as St. John declares [Jn. 3:30].

 

Mark Antony once purchased two young slaves who were brought to him by a trader. At that time children were sometimes sold, as is still done in some countries today. There were men who supplied them and engaged in this business much as we do with horses in our country today. These two children resembled each other so perfectly that the trader tricked Mark Antony into believing that they were twins, for otherwise how could they resemble each other so perfectly? When they were separated from one another, it was particularly difficult to tell which was which. They were such a rarity that Mark Antony valued them greatly and paid dearly for them. But when he brought them to his house, he found that each spoke a different language. Pliny relates that one was from Dauphiny and the other from Asia, places incredibly distant from each other. Discovering that they were not only not twins, but not even from the same country or born under the same king, Mark Antony flew into a rage and became incensed with the person who had sold them to him. But a certain young character convinced him that their resemblance was that much more remarkable inasmuch as they were from different countries and had no connection with each other. That calmed him. He came eventually to value them so highly that he would have preferred losing all his property to losing these two children, such a rarity did he find in their resemblance.

 

This helps us to appreciate the fact that, in the same way, the Commandments of love of God and love of neighbour resemble each other as much as these two slaves of whom Pliny speaks, even though they too are from "countries" very remote from each other. Indeed, what could be more remote, I ask you, than the Infinite from the finite; than divine love, which relates to the immortal God, from love of neighbour, which relates to mortal man; than the one, which relates to Heaven, from the other, which relates to earth? Because of all this, this resemblance is all that much more amazing. Therefore, like Mark Antony, we should purchase both these loves as twins coming forth from the merciful Heart of our good God at the same time. For simultaneous with His crea­tion of man in His image and likeness, God commanded him to love both God and neighbour.

 

The law of nature has always taught these two precepts and has engraved them in the hearts of all, so that even if God had not spoken of them, nevertheless all would have known that they were obliged to keep them.[4] This seems clear in that the Lord was extremely displeased by the answer given Him by the miserable Cain who, when God asked him what he had done with his brother Abel, had the arrogance to respond that he was not obliged to watch out for him [Gen. 4:9]. No one can excuse himself from this and say that he does not know that he is to love his neighbour as himself, because God has imprinted this truth in the bottom of our hearts in creating all of us in the image and likeness of each other. Bearing the image of God in ourselves, all of us are consequently the image of each other. Together we constitute the image of one portrait, that of God.

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Since this is so let us see, I pray you, in what terms Our Lord has recommended the love of neighbour to us. I will make several observations. Speaking to His Apostles, He said, "I give you a new commandment: Love one another" [Jn. 13:34]. First of all, why does He call this Commandment new, since it had already been given in the Law of Moses? [Lev. 19:18]. As we have just seen, it had not even been ignored—but rather was recognized—in the law of nature; in fact, it had even been observed by some since the creation of man. Our Divine Master called it new because He wanted to renew it. When a quantity of new wine is put into a cask in which there is still a little of the old, we do not say that the cask contains old wine, but rather new wine, because there is such a greater quantity of the new than the old. Similarly, Our Lord called this Commandment new because although it had been given before, it had been observed by only a very small number of people. Because He wanted it to be so renewed that everybody would love one another, He could designate it altogether new.

 

Thus the first Christians had but one heart and one soul [Acts 4:32], and preserved such a union among themselves that there was never found any division among them. As a result of their concord, they enjoyed a very great consolation. The many grains of wheat are ground and kneaded together to make but one single loaf, a loaf which is made from all those grains which, though once separated, can no longer ever be separated or distinguished or recognized individually. In the same way, those early Christians had so fervent a love for each other that their wills and their hearts were all holily blended as one. But this holy blending and divine mixture presented no difficulty, for neither division nor separation was possible. The bread thus kneaded from all these hearts was infinitely pleasing to the taste of the Divine Majesty.

 

Many grapes are pressed together to make but one wine. It is no longer possible to distinguish what wine came forth from which cluster or which bunch. Being blended together haphazardly, they form but one wine drawn from the many clusters. In like fashion, the hearts of the first Christians, in which holy charity and dilection reigned, were only one wine though made from many hearts as from so many grapes. What built that great union among them was none other, my dear souls, than the most Holy Communion [Acts 2:42; 1 Cor. 10:17]. When later on Its reception was discontinued, or when It was rarely received,[5] charity itself, by this very fact, became cold among Christians and totally lost both its strength and its attractive sweetness.

 

The Commandment to love the neighbour is new, then, for the reason just given; that is, because Our Lord came to renew it, indicating that He wished it to be better observed than it had ever been before. It is new also because it is as if the Saviour resuscitated it, just as we can call a man a new man who has been restored to life from death. This Commandment had been so neglected that it must have seemed never to have been given inasmuch as there were so few who remembered it, or at least who observed it. Then Our Lord gave it again. And He wants it to be as if it were a new thing, a new Commandment, one that is practiced faithfully and fervently.

 

It is new also because of the new obligations that we have to observe it. What are these obligations that Jesus Christ brought to the world in order to render us pliant in the observance of this divine precept? They are certainly great, since He Himself came to teach them to us, not only in words but, much more, in example. This divine and most lovable Teacher did not want to instruct us how to paint until He Himself had first painted before us. Thus He gave us no precept which He Himself had not first practiced. And so, before renewing this Commandment of love of neighbour, He loved us and showed us by His example how we ought to observe it so that we would have no excuse to the effect that it is impossible to observe. He gave Himself to us in the Most Holy Sacrament and then He said: Love one another as I have loved you [Jn. 15:12]. The men of the Old Law were damned if they did not love their neighbour, because either the law of nature or the Mosaic Law obliged them to it. But if, after the example Our Lord has left us of it, Christians still do not love one another and do not observe this divine precept of mutual charity, they will be condemned with a condemnation incomparably greater.

 

People of old (I mean those who lived before the Incarnation of our dear Saviour and Master) may have been some­what excusable if they did not observe this Commandment well. For, though it was already known at that time that Our Lord would unite our human nature to the divine nature and would come to repair by His death and Passion the image and likeness of God that is imprinted upon us, it was only known by some of the greatest of them—the Patriarchs and Prophets, for instance. The rest were almost all ignorant of it. But now that we know, not that He will come, but that He has come, and has recommended anew this holy dilection one for another, how worthy of punishment shall we be if we do not love our neighbour!

 

Is it any wonder that this beloved Lover of our souls wants us to love one another as He has loved us, seeing that He has so completely restored us to that perfect resemblance to Him which we once had that it almost seems as if there is no longer any difference between Him and us? Certainly, no one can doubt that the image of God which was ours before the Incarnation of the Saviour was very far from the true likeness of Him whom we represented and whose portrait we were. For what proportion is there, I ask you, between God and the creature? The colours of this portrait were extremely faded, tarnished and discoloured; there remained only some features, some small lineaments, such as we see in a portrait or picture which is only sketched, to which the last tints have not yet been added. It bears but a slight resemblance to him whom it represents. But Our Lord, in coming into the world, has so raised our nature higher than all the angels, the cherubim, and all that is not God, and has made us so like Himself, that we can say with certainty that we resemble God perfectly. In becoming man, He has taken our likeness and given us His.[6] Oh, how earnestly should we summon up our courage to live according to what we are and to imitate as perfectly as possible Him who came into this world to teach us what we need to do to preserve in our­selves this beauty and divine resemblance which He has so completely repaired and embellished in us!

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Now tell me, then, how cordial ought our love to be for one another, since Our Lord has repaired us all equally, and without any exception made us like to Himself? We must always remember, however, that we are not to love in our neighbour what is contrary to this divine resemblance and what could disfigure this sacred portrait. But with this one exception, my dear souls, ought we not to love dearly the neighbour, who truly represents to us the sacred Person of our Master? And is this not one of the most powerful motives we could have for loving each other with an ardently burning love? When we see our neighbour, ought we not to do as the good Raguel did when he saw the young Tobias? Tobias went to Rages in obedience to his father [also called Tobias]. He met there the good man Raguel. After studying him, Raguel said to his wife: 'Ah, my God, this young man reminds me so much of my kinsman Tobias!" Then he asked the young man where he came from and if he knew Tobias, to which the angel who had led him answered: "Do we know him! He to whom you are speaking is his son!" Then the good Raguel was overcome with joy and embraced him and kissed and caressed him very tenderly. "O my child," he cried out, "you are the son of a good father, and how you resemble that noble man!" Then he received him into his house and treated him royally, in keeping with the affection which he held for his kinsman Tobias[7] [Tob. 7:1-9].

 

Should we not do the same when we meet one another? We should say to our brother: "How greatly you resemble that noble Man, for you remind me of my Saviour and my Master!" And upon the assurance that he would give us, or that we would give each other, that we do indeed recognize the resemblance of the Creator and that we are His children, how many tokens of affection ought we not to give one another! To speak better, how lovingly and tenderly ought we to receive our neighbour, honouring in him this divine resemblance, always tightening more closely this sweet bond of charity [Col. 3:14] which keeps us bound, clasped and united to each other. Let us walk then in the way of love, as God's most dear children, just as the holy Apostle exhorts us to do in today's epistle.

 

But walk, he continues, as Jesus Christ walked. He gave His life for us and offered Himself to His Father as an offering for us, an oblation of sweet odour [Eph. 5:1-2]. From these words we learn to what degree our mutual love ought to extend and to what perfection it should reach: to give one another soul for soul, life for life—in short, all that we are and all that we have, excepting only our own salvation. For God desires only that exception. Our Lord gave Himself for each one of us; He gave His soul, He gave His body. In short, He reserved nothing. Similarly, He wants us to hold back nothing [1 Jn. 3:16] except our eternal salvation.

 

Our Divine Master gave us His life not only to heal the sick, to work miracles, and to teach us what we ought to do to be saved or to be pleasing to Him. He also spent His entire life even shaping His cross, suffering a thousand thousand persecutions from the very ones to whom He was doing so much good and for whom He laid down His life. We must do the same, says the holy Apostle, that is, we too should shape our cross in suffering for one another as the Saviour taught us; in giving our life for those very ones who would take it from us, as He so lovingly did; in spending ourselves for our neighbour, not only in agreeable things, but also in those which are painful and disagreeable such as bearing lovingly these persecutions which might in some fashion cool our heart towards our brothers.

 

There are some who say: "I greatly love my neighbour and would wish, indeed, to render him some service." That is very good, says St. Bernard, but it is not enough; we must go further. "Oh! I love him so much! I love him so much that I would gladly sacrifice all my possessions for him." That is going further and is certainly better, but still it is not enough. "I love him, I assure you, so greatly that I would willingly expend myself for him in whatever he wanted from me." This is certainly a very good sign of your love, but you must go still further; for there is a still higher degree in this love, as St. Paul teaches us, when he wrote: "Be imitators of me as I imitate Christ" [1 Cor. 11:1]. And in one of his epistles[8] he wrote thus to his most dear children: "I am ready to give my life for you, and give of myself so completely that I make no reservation in proving to you how dearly and tenderly I love you. Yes, I am even ready to agree to all that anyone would want of me in your behalf" [2 Cor. 12:14-15, 19]. In this he teaches us that to spend ourselves even so far as to give our life for the neighbour is not as much as to allow ourselves to be spent at the will of others, either by them or for them.

 

This is what he had learned from our dear Saviour, who spent Himself for our salvation and our redemption [Phil. 2:8], and afterwards allowed Himself to be spent so as to perfect this Redemption and to win eternal life for us, even permitting Himself to be fastened to the Cross by the very persons for whom He died. He spent Himself during His whole life, but in His death He allowed Himself to be spent, permitting not His friends, but His enemies, to do with Him all that they wished. They put Him to death with a fury insupportably wicked. Nevertheless, He did not resist at all but allowed Himself to be pulled and turned in every direction as prompted by the cruelty of these malicious executioners [Is. 50:5]. For He beheld in all this the will of His heavenly Father, which was that He should die for humankind, and to which He submitted with an incomparable love, one more worthy of being adored than imagined or understood.

 

It is to this sovereign degree of perfection in the love of the neighbour that religious, and we others who are consecrated to the service of God, are called, and for it we must aspire with all our strength. We must spend ourselves not only for his good and consolation, but also permit ourselves to be spent for him by holy obedience—to do, without ever resist­ing, whatever shall be desired from us. When we spend ourselves, what we do by our own choice or our own will always greatly satisfies our self-love. But to allow ourselves to be spent for the neighbour in things which she wishes and we do not, that is, which we do not choose, therein lies the sovereign degree of abnegation which Our Lord and Master taught us in dying. We would rather preach, but are sent to serve the sick; we want to pray for the neighbour, but are sent to serve him instead. It is always of greater value by far to do what we are made to do (I mean, of course, only in that which is not contrary to God and does not offend Him) than to do what we choose of ourselves.

 

Let us then love one another, says St. Paul, as Our Lord loved us. He offered Himself as a holocaust: when He was on the Cross He poured out His blood upon the earth even lo (he last drop, as if to make a sacred mortar [Col. 1:20] with which He would mortar, unite, join and attach to each oilier all the stones of His Church, that is, the faithful. He did this that they might be so united that there would never he any division found among them, so greatly did He fear that this division would be the cause of their eternal desolation [Lk. 11:14-28]. Oh, how powerful this motive is to move us to love this Commandment and to observe it exactly. We have all alike been washed with this Precious Blood, as with a sacred mortar, to bind and unite our hearts together! Oh, how great is the goodness of our God! [Ps. 72 (73):1].

 

Our Lord was offered, or rather offered Himself, for us to God His Father as an offering, an oblation of sweet odour [Eph. 5:1-2]. What divine fragrance He spread before the Divine Majesty when He instituted the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, where He so admirably demonstrated to us the greatness of His love. This act of incomprehensible perfec­tion, by which He gave Himself to us who were His enemies and who caused Him His death, was an infinitely sweet fragrance. At the same time He bestowed on us the means to reach the supreme degree of union which He desired for us, namely, to be made one with Him as He and His Father are One, that is, one same reality [Jn. 17:11-12, 21-22]. He had asked this of His heavenly Father, or rather He had desired to ask it; now in asking it He discovered at the same time how it was to be realized. O incomparable Goodness! How worthy You are to be loved and adored!

 

To what extent did the greatness of God lower itself for pitch one of us, and to what extent does He wish to exalt us? To unite us so perfectly with Himself as to make us one same thing with Him.  Our Lord did this to teach us that as we are all loved with one same love by which He embraces us all in this Most Holy Sacrament, so He wishes us all to love one another with that same love, a love which tends toward union, but a union greater and more perfect than can be conceived. We are all nourished with the same bread [1 Cor. 10:17], this heavenly Bread, the divine Eucharist. The eating of It, called Communion, represents to us, as we have said, the common union that we ought to have together;[9] without this union we would not be worthy of bearing the name of "children of God," since we would not be obedient to Him.

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Children who have a good father ought to imitate him and follow his commandment in all things. Now, we have a Father better than all others and from whom all good is derived [Jas. 1:17]. His commandments can be nothing but perfect and salu­tary. Thus we should imitate Him as perfectly as possible, and also obey His divine ordinances. But of all His precepts, there is none which He stresses so earnestly, nor for which He has indicated that He desires so exact an observance, as that of the love of neighbour. The Commandment to love God is higher than the Commandment to love the neighbour; but since nature offers greater resistance to the love of neighbour, it was necessary that we should be encouraged in a more particular manner to its practice.

 

Let us love, then, to the whole extent of our hearts, in order to please our heavenly Father, but let us love reasonably; that is, let our love be guided by reason, which desires that we love the soul of the neighbour more than his body. But let us love his body also, and then, in proper order, all that pertains to the neighbour, each thing according to its merits, for the proper exercise of this love.

 

If we do this, oh how justly we can sing, and surely with great consolation, this Psalm which St. Augustine found such delight in reflecting upon: Behold how good it is and how pleasant where brethren dwell in holy union, concord, and peace, for they are like the precious ointment they poured out upon the head of the High Priest Aaron, which then flowed down over his beard and onto his robes [Ps. 132 (133)]. Our Divine Master is the High Priest upon whom this precious and fragrant ointment of most holy charity has been poured out in measureless profusion, both toward God and toward the neighbour. We are as the hair of His head and His beard. Or else, we can consider the Apostles as the beard of Our Lord, who is our Head, and whose members we are [1 Cor. 12:12, 27; Eph. 4:15; Col. 1:18]. The Apostles were attached to Him in that they saw His example and His works and received His teachings immediately from His sacred mouth. The rest of us have not had this honour. Rather, what we know we have learned from the Apostles. We are, then, like the robes of our High Priest, our Saviour, on which, nevertheless, overflowed that precious ointment of most holy charity which He so greatly prescribed and recommended to us. And so His holy Apostle has expressed this charity more in detail for us, not wanting us to busy ourselves in imitating either the angels or the cherubim in this so very necessary virtue, but rather to imitate Our Lord Himself, who taught it to us more by works than by words, especially when fastened to the Cross.

 

It is at the foot of this Cross that we should remain always. It is the place where the imitators of our Sovereign Master and Saviour ordinarily abide. For it is from the Cross that they receive the heavenly liqueur of holy charity. It streams out in great profusion from a divine Source, the bosom of our good God's divine mercy. He loved us with a love so firm, so solid, so ar­dent and so persevering that death itself could not cool it in the least. Quite the contrary, it warmed and increased it infinitely. The waters of the most bitter afflictions cannot quench the fire of His charity toward us [Cant. 8:6-7], so ardent is it. Even the persecutions wrought by His enemies were not powerful enough lo vanquish the incomparable solidity and constancy of the love with which He loved us. Such ought to be our love for the neighbour: firm, ardent, solid and persevering.

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[1] Cf. Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent.

[2] Cf. Treatise on the Love of God, Book X, chapter 11; Sermons of St. Francis de Sales on Our Lady, "The Assumption," August 15, 1618; and "The Visitation," July 2, 1621.

[3] Cf. Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, chapter 22.

[4] St. Francis de Sales seems here to be expanding the parameter of the natural law from the injunction to "do good and avoid evil" to the double commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. This is just another indication of the centrality of love in his spiritual vision.

[5] St. Francis de Sales is referring to a period when the frequent reception of Holy Communion had fallen into disuse; there were perhaps some who did not receive Communion at all.

[6] Rarely has a western Doctor of the Church assessed redeemed humanity as positively as St. Francis de Sales does here. No doubt these thoughts on the grandeur of redeemed humanity contribute much to his optimistic appreciation of Christian anthropology, as well as to the attractive­ness of his spirituality.

[7] Cf. Treatise on the Love of God, Book X, chapter 11.

[8] Cf. Spiritual Conferences, IV, "On Cordiality”.

[9] Cf. Spiritual Conferences, VI, "On Hope."

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