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| Chapter X. How it is the perfection of love to pray for one's enemies and by what signs we may recognize a mind that is not yet purified.
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Chapter X.
How it is the perfection of love to pray for one’s
enemies and by what signs we may recognize a mind that is not yet
purified.
When then any one has
acquired this love of goodness of which we have been speaking, and the
imitation of God, then he will be endowed with the Lord’s heart
of compassion, and will pray also for his persecutors, saying in like
manner: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.”1712
But it is a
clear sign of a soul that is not yet thoroughly purged from the dregs
of sin, not to sorrow with a feeling of pity at the offences of others,
but to keep to the rigid censure of the judge: for how will he be able
to obtain perfection of heart, who is without that by which, as the
Apostle has pointed out, the full requirements of the law can be
fulfilled, saying: “Bear one another’s burdens and so
fulfil the law of Christ,”1713
and who
has not that virtue of love, which “is not grieved, is not puffed
up, thinketh no evil,” which “endureth all things, beareth
all things.”1714
For “a
righteous man pitieth the life of his beasts: but the heart of the
ungodly is without pity.”1715
And so a
monk is quite certain to fall into the same sins which he condemns in
another with merciless and inhuman severity, for “a stern king
will fall into misfortunes,” and “one who stops his ears so
as not to hear the weak, shall himself cry, and there shall be none to
hear him.”1716
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