of Love: knowing that, however hard we try, we almost never achieve the necessary peace for Love to flourish. See how the most hidden parts of the soul surface as soon as we lower our guard. And so, suddenly, while preaching generosity, humility, patience, courtesy and unselfishness, temper flared.
I fell into the vice of all those who speak of virtue: intolerance.
You see, it is not enough merely to speak of these ideas or to struggle with them. We have to seek out their hiding place, to change our innermost nature. Then all feelings of anger will die of their own accord. Then our souls will grow gentler, not because we took out aggression, but because we put in Love.
God is Love, a Love which, as it penetrates us, sweetens, purifies and transforms everything. It drives out all error, it renews, regenerates and rebuilds the inner man.
Will-power alone cannot transform you.
Love can.
Therefore, let Love in. Remember: this is a matter of life and death. There is no point my standing here and talking about Love if I am incapable of Love myself. ‘Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.’
That is to say, it is better not to live than not to love.
It is better not to live than not to love.
* * *
Let us speak a little about guilelessness and sincerity. The people who influence and touch us most deeply are those who believe what we say.
Suspicion makes people shrivel up.
Faced by guilelessness, however, we grow and expand. We find courage and friendship beside those who believe in us.
Those who understand us can transform us.
It is good to know that there are still people who think no evil, because they know the importance of the good they are doing. Those people grow in the eyes of men and of God. They are unafraid of envy or indifference because Love ‘thinketh no evil’, always looks on the bright side, always looks for the positive in every action.
And again, he who loves wins, even though he sought no reward. How marvellous to live always in the light! What a stimulus, what a blessing to spend an entire day without once thinking evil!
To be trusted is to be very close to Love. And we will only achieve that if we trust in other people. The little harm that others can do us because of our guilelessness is as nothing compared to our joy in the face of life. There will no longer be any need to wear heavy armour, bulky shields and dangerous weapons. Guilelessness will protect us.
We can only help someone if we trust him. If we respect others, we will recover our self-respect.
If we believe that someone can improve and that person feels we consider him to be our equal, he will hear our words and believe he can be a better person.
* * *
Love ‘does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth’. I called this ingredient sincerity.
He who loves will love Truth as much as he loves his fellow man. He will rejoice in the Truth, but not in what he was taught to believe.
Not in the truth of doctrines.
Not in the truth of churches.
Not in this ‘ism’ or that ‘ism’.
He will rejoice in the Truth. He will seek the Truth with a humble, unbiased mind and will be contented with what he finds.
Perhaps the word sincerity is not the best one to describe that quality of Love, but I cannot come up with a better one.
I am not talking about the kind of sincerity that humiliates someone else, that pounces on other people’s mistakes in order to show how good we are. Real Love does not consist in exposing other people’s weaknesses, but in accepting everything and rejoicing to see that things are better than people said they were.
So much for the analysis of Love. Now we have to try and fit all those ingredients into our characters.
That should be our objective in the world: learning to love.