Lest You Remain

8 Jesus said to Peter: “Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in Heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in Heaven” (Mt 16:19). Well, you happy sinner, I will go with you to Peter. But can you hear what Peter tells us to do? “Above all, let your love for one another be constant, for love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pt 4:8). Peter advises a very good and not difficult thing. We may love one another, without unpleasant arduousness and much diffi- culty. Yet, so as not to err in this love, as it may happen easily, Saint Gregory [the Great] gives a proper mode of conduct, saying: “Anyone who bestows love upon someone, may not rush to believe that he has love, before discerning the motives of one’s loving. Since, if someone loves, yet not because of God, he does not have love. [. . .] Love is true, only when a friend is loved in God, and a foe because of God. [. . .] The one who truly possesses love, because of God’s command, loves someone by whom he is not loved.” So, according to Peter, “love covers a multitude of sins,” but along with the explanation of St. Gregory, only this love “with which, because of God, we love our enemy.” Sinners, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you. Forgive and you will be forgiven. ( Inspectio Cordis ) 9 Contemplate the words of Saint Paul: “If I speak with human tongues and angelic as well, but do not have love, [. . .] I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:1-2). Just as if you said: “Man without love, a Religious without love is a shadow without the sun, a body without the soul, simply nothing.” What the soul is for the body, love is for the Church, Orders, and Religious Houses. Someone who encouraged this virtue was right saying: “Take the Sun away from the world, and you will take away every- thing, take love away from man and he will be left with nothing.” Love is the soul, light, and life of the Orders and any human community. Thus, whoever destroys love, it is as if, he destroyed life, turned off the light and killed the soul. This is so, because a lack of love in one member, reverberates in the entire body. When we take an example of a human body: if one finger is cut with a poisoned blade, venom travels through the arm and infects the entire body. All the parts of the body suffer the wound of one member. Thanks to love, from the particular mem- bers—the Superiors, peers and inferiors—the one body of the Order is formed. ( Inspectio Cordis ) L EST Y OU R EMAIN W ITHOUT W ORK IN THE V INEYARD OF THE L ORD 164