The Different Degrees of Love

It is possible, then, for everyone to show that love which is called agape, of which the blessed apostle says: “So then, while we have time, let us do good to all people, but especially to those who are of the household of faith.” And this love should be shown to all people in general, so much so that our Lord actually commands us to give it to our enemies, for he says: “Love your enemies.” But diathesis, that is, affection, is shown to only a few, to those who are joined to us by kindred dispositions or by a tie of goodness. Yet affection seems to have many degrees of difference. For we love our parents in one way, our wives in another, our brothers in another, our children in another, and there is a wide difference in the claims of these feelings of affection. Nor is the love of parents toward their children always equal. [a]

This is shown by the case of the patriarch Jacob. He was the father of twelve sons and loved them all with a father’s love, yet he loved Joseph with a deeper affection, as Scripture clearly shows: “But his brothers envied him, because his father loved him.” Clearly this does not mean that that good man, his father, failed to love the rest of his children greatly, but that in his affection he clung to this one more tenderly and indulgently, because he was a type of the Lord. We read that this was also shown very clearly in the case of John the Evangelist, of whom these words are used: “that disciple whom Jesus loved.” Yet certainly the Lord embraced all the other eleven, whom he had chosen in the same way, with his special love, as he also shows by the witness of the gospel, where he says: “As I have loved you, so you also love one another.” And of them it is said elsewhere: “Loving his own who were in the world, he loved them even to the end.” But this love for one in particular did not show any coldness in his love for the rest of the disciples. It showed only a fuller and more abundant love toward the one, which his privilege of virginity and the purity of his flesh bestowed on him. And so it is marked out by exceptional treatment, as something more exalted, because what singled it out was no hateful comparison with the others, but a richer grace of overflowing love.

We have something of this kind, too, in the person of the bride in the Song of Songs, where she says: “Set love in order in me.” For this is true love set in order: while it hates no one, it still loves some more because they deserve it. While it loves all in general, it singles out some of them to embrace with a special affection. And again, among those who are the special and chief objects of its love, it singles out some who are preferred to others in affection.