Choose a topic from Part 2A:
1. The opposite of love is hatred. If love is "heads," hatred is "tails." To love a thing is to hate its opposite; to hate a thing is to love its opposite. Now, love is caused by good; hence hatred is caused by that which is a deprivation of good; hatred is caused by evil.
2. Hatred is caused by what hinders us from attaining good. Such hindrance not only deprives us of the good object, but deprives the object of its availability. Now, if we did not love a thing, we should not be aware of any block or hindrance in our way to it. If we did not love, we should not hate. Hence love is a cause of hatred.
3. Love is stronger than hatred. Sometimes hatred is more keenly felt than love, and so seems stronger.
4. Strictly speaking, a man cannot hate himself. In practice, a man may harm himself by sin or evil habit; we may say of a man that he is his own worst enemy. And a man may live like the beasts of the field, directing his love to things that cannot bring him to his true end. Yet such mistaken lives are not lives of self-hatred in the strict sense, but of self-love that is misdirected.
5. A man can actually hate the truth, not in general, but in particular instances in which truth proves embarrassing, or hampering, or otherwise contrary to his desires.
6. Hatred can be universal only in the sense that everything of a certain kind can be hated. The sheep hates all wolves. The good Christian hates all sin.
"Spiritual persons ought to be equally ready to experience sweetness and consolation in the things of God, or to suffer and keep their ground in drynesses of spirit and devotion, and for as long as God pleases, without their making any complaint about it."
St Philip Neri
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"The Lord has always revealed to mortals the treasures of his wisdom and his spirit, but now that the face of evil bares itself more and more, so does the Lord bare his treasures more."
St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church
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"God gives us some things, as the beginning of faith, even when we do not pray. Other things, such as perseverance, he has only provided for those who pray."
St Augustine
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