A Beautiful and Challenging Passage from Augustine on Loving God and Others

[From City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 14:]

"Now God, our master, teaches two chief precepts: love of God and love of neighbor; and in them Man finds three objects for his love: God, himself, and his neighbor (and a man who loves God is not wrong in loving himself). It follows, therefore, that he will be concerned also that his neighbor should love God, since he is told to love his neighbor as himself; and the same is true for his wife, his children, for the members of his household, and for all other men, so far as it is possible. And, for the same end, he will wish his neighbor to be concerned for him, if he happens to need that concern. For this reason he will be at peace (as far as lies in him) with all men, in that peace among men, that ordered harmony; and the basis of this order is the observance of two rules: 1) to do no harm to others; 2) to help everyone whenever possible. To begin with, therefore, a man has responsibility for his own household: obviously, both in the order of nature and in the framework of human society, he has easier and more immediate contact with them; he can exercise his concern for them. That is why the Apostle says, 'Anyone who does not take care of his own people, especially those in his own household, is worse than an unbeliever: he is a renegade [against the faith; see 1 Timothy 5:8].'"