A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Read Chapter 3
Didymus the Blind
AD 398
Every soul has a reprehensible companion and a praiseworthy one: the bridegroom, which is the Logos, and the adulterer, which is the devil. If the devil is present, one should not give him room; one should not let him in, as Judas did. This kind of companion needs to be hated. But a “time to love” has come when the true bridegroom is present. He is worthy of love, so much so that one of the saints has said, “My love has been crucified.” But love is intensified desire. Further, we have a commandment to love our enemies and to approach those who hate us in such a way that we even send a prayer to heaven for them. Insofar as we desire that they be helped and do not want ourselves to be troubled by hostility, we love our enemies; but insofar as we do not imitate them and do not accept the same things or want to be enemies as they want to be, we hate them.
If powers, forces, rulers of the world of darkness and evil spirits tempt us, we are not supposed to take issue with them or make peace with them, but we must fight them. But when we have subdued them and are given power “to tread on snakes and scorpions,” then it is a time for peace. Thus, first the devil has to be crushed under the feet of the saints. When it is time for war, one has to tread on “all the power of the enemy.” But when we have broken them down, we can live in enduring peace, our thinking is free from confusion, and we have a time for peace.
If we have learned, then, whom we should go to war with and how to carry on the fight, we must also learn the other part of the lesson, with whom the Scripture solemnly warns us to make a peaceful alliance. What is the good army, with which I am to join forces through peace? Who is the king of such an army? It is clear, from what we are taught by the inspired Scriptures, that it is the array of the angels of the host of heaven.
If you make a distinction in your mind between things thought of as virtue and vice, you will recognize the moment for the right attitude to each of them. Restraint and pleasure, selfcontrol and indulgence, humility and pride, goodwill and crookedness, and all that are regarded as opposites of one another, are plainly set out for you by the Ecclesiast, so that by adopting attitudes about them in your soul you may make profitable decisions. Thus there is a moment for loving restraint and for hating pleasure, so that you do not become pleasureloving rather than Godloving, and likewise in all the other cases, quarrelloving, gainloving, gloryloving, and all the rest, which through the use of affection for improper ends separate us from the disposition to good.
What truly exists is the one and only intrinsically Lovable, of whom also the rule of the Ten Commandments says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And again the only thing to be hated in truth is the inventor of evil, the enemy of our life, about whom the law says, “You shall hate your enemy.” The love of God becomes a strength for the one who loves, but the disposition to evil brings destruction on the one who loves [what is] evil.
