Love is patient,
because it bears serenely the injury it suffers.
It is kind,
because it repays evil with good.
It is not jealous,
because it covets nothing in this world: it does not know what it is to envy worldly prosperity.
It is not boastful,
because it yearns only for spiritual reward and it is not carried away by external things.
It is not arrogant,
because it thrives only on the love of God and neighbor and avoids whatever would take it from the path of righteousness.
It is not covetous,
because although it ardently pursues its own spiritual goals, it does not desire the goods of others.
It does not insist on its own way,
because it scorns as alien those things it temporarily possesses here below: it seeks to hold on only to what is enduring.
It is not irritable,
and even though injuries seek to provoke it, it does not let itself have any desire for vengeance, for no matter how difficult a time it may have in this life, it hopes for greater rewards in the next.
It is not resentful,
because it has invested its thought in the love of purity, and having rooted out all hatred it is incapable of harboring in its heart any type of aversion.
It does not rejoice at wrong,
because it feels affection for others and does not rejoice at seeing the ruin of its enemies.
It rejoices in the right,
because by loving others as it loves itself, it is as pleased to see goodness in them as if it were indeed something to its own personal advantage.
-- Saint Gregory the Great
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