Conquer and persuade your heart by faith and the love of Christ, and do not what your heart desires, but what your faith and the commandment of Christ require of you. Christ commands, He who loves you commands, eternal truth demands it, it pleases His holy will, it is useful for you, although the carnal heart, the thought and the mind of the blind desire the opposite. Therefore, we must do as He wills, and not as our passionate flesh, if we want to love Him. This is also our Christian podvig, that we should do not what our blind flesh wants, but what God's commandment commands.

3) The lover also loves the one whom he loves. Thus, when you love your friend, then for the sake of your beloved friend you love him whom the friend loves. When you love Christ, you must love every person, your friend and your enemy. For Christ so loved all, that He laid down His life for all, friends and enemies, as the Apostle says: Christ died for all (2 Corinthians 5:15). That is why He commands us to love our neighbors, because He loves us as well as our neighbors, so that we not only do no harm to them, but also do every good as we do to ourselves, from this love for our neighbor is also known.

From this it follows that for the sake of Christ, Who loves all, you must also love everyone, if you want to love Christ, and from this it follows that for Christ's sake you will not renounce the hungry to feed, the thirsty to drink, the naked to clothe the naked, the strange to bring into the house, the sick and imprisoned to visit, to comfort the sorrowful, to rejoice over the happiness of your neighbor, over the misfortune to grieve. This is what love for Christ and for your beloved neighbor demands of you. For the fruit of love for one's neighbor is mercy for one's neighbor and benevolence. From this it follows that those who do not love their neighbor do not have love for Christ. But they do not love him, for they do not do him good. Worse than that are those who not only do not do good, but also do evil to their neighbor. Such people, oppressing and embittering their neighbor, persecute and embitter Christ Himself, although they do not notice it. For he who embitters a servant also touches his master, but every man is a servant of God.

4) A lover beware of insulting his beloved. For insult and love for the beloved cannot be together in the lover. Unless the offense is due to ignorance, or some other weakness, and not from intent and will, or when he who loves his beloved insults for his benefit. But such an insult from love happens. As a father insults his son when he beats him, so that he may be in order, so a friend insults his dear friend, exposing his faults. Thus good shepherds insult the people entrusted to them, so that they may have sorrow for God's sake, which produces unfailing repentance unto salvation (2 Cor. 7:10).

In the same way, the Lord Himself, whom He loves, punishes him; but he smites every son whom he receives" (Heb. 12:6). But such an insult as that comes from love is not repugnant to love, it is even a well-known sign and fruit of love. And therefore the word here is not about this offense, but about such as happens from anger of the heart. Christ is offended by every sin as the eternal Truth, and Goodness, and the Treasure of all virtues. For whoever loves Christ guards himself from all sin, and the more he loves Him, the more he guards himself from sin, only in order not to offend or grieve Him, leaving other reasons that can lead away from sin.

5) A lover feels sorry when he offends his loved one himself, or when he sees someone else offended. Thus, whoever loves Christ, when through weakness he sins in something, is contrite, regrets, scolds himself, and with humility and fervent confession of his sin and humiliation and reproach of himself, falls down before Him without hypocrisy, and condemns himself worthy of all punishment. Such a person, even if he was in hell for a crime, would praise God's truth there. Thus the Apostle Peter, the warmest lover of Christ, when he denied Christ and found out his sin, with which he had offended his beloved Teacher, when he went out, wept bitterly (Matt. 26:75). It is hard for a lover to grieve his beloved, and this sorrow cannot exist without his own subsequent sorrow. For true love rejoices with him who rejoices, and weeps with his beloved who weeps (Romans 12:15).

6) He who loves his beloved always bears in his heart, not materially (for it cannot be that a person is in our heart, both body and soul), but spiritually. For love has its place in the heart and is one with the beloved. Thus the son of a father whom he loves, and a friend of his dear friend, although absent, embraces in his heart, why he often remembers him, takes care that something contrary does not happen to him, talks about him, asks and inquires how his beloved is when he is separated from him, and often weeps because he does not see him for a long time. Such an action is noticeable in natural love.

Such was St. Paul, who, with burning love for Christ, cried out: "I have a desire to depart and be with Christ" (Phil. 1:23).

7) He who loves his beloved follows the disposition, and everyone seeks to have friendship with his fellow. That is why it happens that true friendship cannot exist if it is not between the good and the like-minded. There is no communication between the humble and the proud, the sober with the drunkard, the chaste with the unclean, the generous and merciful with the covetous, the extortionate, and the hard-hearted, but one turns away from the other, and everyone seeks what he loves. Thus he who loves Christ tries to follow His most gracious and Divine morals: he is humble, patient, meek, not malicious, loving, peaceful, simple-hearted, sincere, merciful, merciful, compassionate, and so on, not for the sake of merit, but for the sake of the fact that Christ is such and has such virtues.

8) The lover thinks in the same way with the beloved and agrees with him in everything, and what the beloved strives for, the lover also strives for. Otherwise, there would be no agreement and like-mindedness in them, when one of them thought differently about this, and the other about the other, intended and began, that mutual love and friendship are contrary to each other, and because of this mutual love is ruined and friendship ceases. Friendship, as it has been said, cannot exist, if not between those of the same nature. Christ desires and seeks salvation for all. This is true and known, for His coming into the world signifies and shows that He wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4).

Therefore, whoever loves Christ cares for his own salvation as well as for his neighbor's. He who loves with his beloved must have one thought, one effort and care. And although this office applies most of all to the servants of God, it also concerns all Christians, for Christianity is a spiritual body. In the material body, one member takes care of another and helps, for example, the hand wipes the hand, washes it, the eyes take care of the whole body, and so on, so in the spiritual body, that is, Christianity, one must take care of the other.

This is prayer, advice, loving rebuke. True love wants for its neighbor what it wants for itself, and tries to turn its neighbor away from what it itself is fleeing from. When Christ, after His resurrection, asked the Apostle Peter: Simon Jonah! Do You Love Me? – and Saint Peter answered: Yes, Lord! Thou knowest that I love Thee, – then He said to him: "Feed My sheep" (John 21:16). As if the Lord had said so: "Simon! If you love Me, feed My sheep." From this it is evident how precious our salvation is to the Lord Jesus. And he teaches them that whoever wants to love Him must strive not only for his own salvation, but also for his neighbor's salvation. That is why the Apostle says with regret: "All seek their own, and not that which is pleasing to Jesus Christ" (Phil. 2:21). From this lies how gravely the shepherds sin against Christ, who, being in the flock, do not feed the sheep of Christ, but only shepherd themselves, for which they are subject to the dreadful judgment of God, for the Lord will seek his sheep out of their hand (Ezekiel 34:10).

9) He who loves glory and honor for his beloved desires and seeks and rejoices when his beloved is glorified, but grieves when he is dishonored. Thus a son rejoices when he hears that his father has a good name, and a friend rejoices when his beloved friend is glorified. Love is touched by what it sees in the beloved, as if it were its own, and so it imputs the well-being and misfortune of the beloved as its own. Thus, whoever loves Christ seeks in all things the glory of His name, and not his own, and rejoices when His holy name is glorified. The name of Christ is glorified when those who confess His name live worthy of confession and the faith, which they confess with their lips, show by good works. So it is with a man, for example, a father, when his children live virtuously, and for a master, when his servants are constantly converting, honor and glory. For people, seeing the honest life of their children, praise the father, and seeing the constancy of the servants, they ascribe honor to the master: to know, they say, a good father that he has such children, and a reasonable master who so decently supports slaves. From this it is evident that Christ dishonors lawless Christians by His life.

10) He who loves does not love him who is disgusting to his beloved: the son of his father's adversary does not love, the wife of the adversary does not love her husband, the friend of her friend's adversary. For the heart, in which love has its place, cannot be divided, but clings either to one or the other, and cannot love those who are contrary to each other together, but without fail, having left one, clings to the other, as Christ says: No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or he will be zealous for the one, and neglect the other (Matt. 6:24). This world is repugnant to Christ, because whoever loves Christ does not love this world, according to the teaching of the Apostle: "Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world" (1 John 2:15). The world here is understood not as heaven and earth with their fulfillment, but as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, as the Apostle teaches (1 John 2:16). Through this, Satan leads us, like Adam in Paradise through eating from the commanded tree, from Christ and obedience to Him. The riches, honor, glory and sweetness of this world are a pleasant sight for our flesh, it points to them, it is deceived by Satan, the ancient serpent – as Eve pointed out to Adam the apple of the commanded tree – and wants to turn the heart away from the love of Christ and turn to His creation, and instead of the Creator to love the creature. The heart, embraced by the love of Christ, turns away from this evil counsel, although outwardly it also seems good.