You are just, O Lord, and Your ordinance is right. Deal with Your servant according to Your kindness.
Ps 118:137; 118:124
Can we have any conception of a greater love for men than that of our Saviour, since, however wicked or ungrateful we may have been, He does not cease to love us? He forgives us our trespasses so readily that one would say that He was under an obligation to us. He rewards us for our good works liberally, never revealing how much He has contributed towards their performance. Although, in fact, we have done next to nothing for Him, He does not cease to be grateful, and showers down graces with profusion, just as if we had rendered Him some important service.
Fr Juan Eusebio Nieremberg SJ (17th century)
We should love our neighbour with a genuine affection, and not in the same way as we love things necessary or useful, such as bread, a house, and other things which are for our use or for our amusement, these we not love as ourselves, but for ourselves.
St Bernadine of Siena
When the Son of God gave us the best of prayers, He did not intend that we should say ‘My Father’ but Our Father, inasmuch as we have a common Father in heaven we should consider all men as our brethren, and that in this way we should love each other with a mutual love, with a love stronger on grace than in nature, as we have all an equal right to a vocation to a supernatural life, the same hope of a heavenly reward,
St John Chrysostom
How sweet is this command! Does it not appear worthy of the goodness and wisdom of God? Is it not reasonable that men who are endowed with one and the same nature, who have one and the same Father in heaven, who are obliged to live in society, who are all fellow-travellers, and who ought to meet again in heaven, is it not reasonable that we should love one another here below, and should help one another in the same degree as we would wish to be helped ourselves?
Pere de la Colombiere
The love of our neighbour may be placed in the same category as the love we owe to God. All who say ‘Lord, Lord’ (that is to say, all who say that they love God) shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Good works and proof of that love requisite. He alone will enter the kingdom of heaven who does the will of My Father. The same may be said of the love of our neighbour. We must show it by solid proofs.
St Augustine
He who does not believe that he has aught to pay to his neighbour, as if he had discharged the debt, ought rather to weep for himself as being without charity.
St Fulgentius
AnaStpaul 