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Longer Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

3. Rule 3: Concerning Love Towards One’s Neighbour (R. 2)

To discourse on the commandment which is second in order and power will come next.

We have said above that the law is the cultivator and nurseryman of those powers which have been implanted in us from the beginning like seeds. But since we have been commanded to love our neighbour as ourselves, let us learn whether we have power from God to fulfil this commandment too. Who does not know that man is a tame and sociable animal, and not a solitary¹ and fierce one? For nothing is so characteristic of our nature as to associate with one another, to need one another, and to love our kind. So the Lord Himself first gave us the seeds of these things, and accordingly demands their fruits, saying: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.”² And wishing to stir up our souls to keep this commandment, He demanded as a proof that we are His disciples, not signs and marvellous works—and yet He bestowed the working of these too in the Holy Spirit³—-but what says He? “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one towards another.”⁴ And He links these commandments in such a way that He transfers to Himself benefits conferred on one’s neighbour. For He says: “I was an hungred and ye gave me to eat,”⁵ and so on. To which He adds: “Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.”⁶

Consequently, in keeping the first commandment one keeps also the second; and through the second one returns again to the first. And he who loves the Lord loves also, so it follows, his neighbour. For “he that loveth me” said the Lord “will keep my commandments.”⁷ But “this” He says “is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.”⁸ But again he who loves his neighbour fulfils love towards God, since God accepts the favour as conferred on Himself. Wherefore Moses, the faithful servant of God, showed such love towards his brethren, that he chose to be blotted out of God’s book, in which he had been entered, unless the people were forgiven their sin.⁹ And Paul was bold enough to pray that he might be accursed from Christ on behalf of his brethren, kinsmen according to the flesh, wishing that he himself might be accepted as an equivalent for the salvation of all, after the pattern of the Lord:¹⁰ Though he knew all the time that it was impossible for a man to be alienated from God who has sacrificed the grace of God because of his love for God in order to keep the greatest of the commandments, and that for this very reason he would receive manifold more than he gave. What we have already said is abundant proof that the Saints reached this measure of love towards one’s neighbour.

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