Love according to Saint Augustine

Written

Love works in the soul like the weight in the bodies.
Our rest is our place. There love lifts us up, and your good spirit elevates our lowness, snatching it from the gates of death. In good will is our peace. Every body because of its weight tends to the place that is proper to it. The fire tends upwards, the stone downwards, both pushed by their weight to look for their place. The oil poured into the water rises above the water, the water poured over the oil is immersed under the oil, both pushed by their weight to look for their place. Out of order there is restlessness, in order there is stillness. My weight is my love, it takes me wherever I go. Your gift ignites us and brings us upwards. We dare and move. We climb the ascent of the heart singing the song of the steps. Of your fire, of your good fire we dare and we move, rising towards the peace of Jerusalem. "What a joy for me to hear these words: We will go to the house of the Lord!". Placed there by good will, we will desire nothing but to remain there forever.

For there are things in the world that are badly loved, and they make unclean the one who loves them. Illicit love is a great pollution of the soul and a burden that oppresses those who wish to fly. In fact, when the soul is enraptured upwards by a just and holy love, so too has it sunk into the abyss by an unjust and unclean love. It happens to each of us that we are taken where our own weight, that is, our love, has to be carried. For it is not taken where it should not be taken, but where it should be. And he that loveth good shall be carried to that which loveth, and where shall he be but the good that he loveth? With the prospect of what reward Christ the Lord exhorts us to love him, if not with what is fulfilled what he asks the Father: "I want these too to be with me where I am". Do you want to be where Christ is? Love Christ and from this weight you will be carried where Christ is. What drags you up and kidnaps you doesn’t allow you to fall down. Do not look for any other means to climb high: by loving you leverage, by loving you are transported high, by loving you get there. In fact, you strive when you struggle with unclean love, you come, dragged when you win, you get there when you are crowned. " Who will give me wings - says a lover - like those of a dove, and I will fly and rest?". He was still looking for wings, he still didn’t have them and that’s why he was moaning; he still didn’t enjoy it, he still struggled, he still wasn’t transported.

Love and do what you want.
We find a man who runs wild for charity and a man who is kind for iniquity. A father beats his son and a slave trader instead treats with respect. If you stand before these two things, the beatings and the caresses, who does not prefer the caresses and flees the beatings? If you lie to people, charity strikes, iniquity blandisces. Consider well what we teach here, that is, the facts of men do not differ except from the root of charity. In fact, many things can happen that have a good appearance but do not proceed from the root of charity: even thorns have flowers; some things seem harsh and harsh; but they are done, to establish a discipline, under the command of charity. Therefore, once and for all a brief precept is imposed upon you: love and do what you will; whether you keep silent, be silent for love; whether you speak, speak for love; whether you correct, correct for love; whether you forgive, forgive for love; whether in you the root of love, for from this root he cannot proceed but the good.

Though the same charity is due to all, the same medicine must not be administered to all: so the same charity generates some, with others it becomes weak, it cares to build some, while it fears to offend others; towards some it bends, With some she is tender, with others she is stern; but she is not an enemy of any; she is a mother to all.

Everyone lives in what he loves.
It is where we have the heart that we live: those who love the world therefore deserve to be called "world", by the name of the dwelling that dwells. As when we say that a house is good or bad, we do not want to condemn or praise the walls of a house, but saying that a house is good or bad, we mean those who inhabit it; so by world we want to designate those who inhabit it and are attached to it. Who are they? They are the ones who love the world: it is they who with their hearts dwell in the world. Those, however, who do not love the world, are indeed in the world with the flesh, but with the heart they live in heaven, as the Apostle says: "Our citizenship is in heaven".

Everything is new for those who love.
If it bothers us to repeat often banal and childish things, let us join them [to beginners] with brotherly, paternal and maternal love, and united to their hearts will also seem new to us. In fact, so much can the feeling of solidarity, that when those let themselves be influenced by us who speak and we by them who learn, we live in one another: so it is as if they told us what they hear and we learned from them what we teach. It does not happen perhaps usually that, when we show, to those who have never seen them before, beautiful and pleasant places, city or country - that we, having already seen them, cross without any interest, we renew our pleasure in their pleasure of the novelty? And all the more, the more they are friends! Because through the bond of love, the more we live in them, the more old things become new for us too.