Love: It Isn’t Easy

Do not suppose that it is easy to preserve love, that you need not do anything to keep it, that you can always afford to be gentle with the beloved, a gentleness that sometimes masks a “not caring” what the loved one does. That is not how you preserve love. Do you love your children when you won’t discipline them? Do you love your neighbor when you never correct them? This is not love but apathy. Love must sometimes arouse you to correct the loved one. When you find that they are good, rejoice with them; when you find that they are going in a wrong direction, admonish them.

–Augustine, Commentary on the Epistle of John, 7.11.1