There are two ways, one of Life and one of Death, and there is a big difference between the two ways. The Way then in fact of Life is this: first, you will love the God who made you; second the person next to you like yourself; and everything whatever you would want to not happen to you, you also don’t do to someone else. And of these words the teaching is this; speak well of those calling down curses on you and pray on behalf of your enemies, and fast on behalf of those hunting you down, because what kind of charity is it if you love those loving you? Don’t also the people groups do the same thing? But you love those hating you and you will not possess an enemy. Keep away from the physical and bodily cravings. If someone gives you a strike on your right cheek, turn the other to him also, and you will be mature. If someone should press you to serve for one mile, go with him two; if someone should lift your cloak, give your shirt to him too; if someone should get from you what is yours, don’t ask for it; because the Father wants to give to everyone from His own charitable gifts.
Yet the way of Death is this: first of all it is good for nothingness and full of curses; homicides, adulteries, cravings, whorings, thefts, idolatries, magics, drug use, piracies, false testimonies, hypocrisies, duplicity, treachery, arrogance, harm, self-will, avarice, disgraceful speech, rivalry, audacity, grandeur, false pretensions; hunters of good people, hating reality, loving a lie, not experiencing the compensation of a right state of being, not clinging to the good neither deciding rightly, passing sleepless nights not for the good, but for the good for nothing, from whom courtesy and endurance are a long ways off, loving vain things, hunting down repayment,, not being merciful to the destitute, not working hard for the one being worn out, not experiencing the One having made them, murderers of children, corruptors of the Divine form, turning back the one being in need, wearing themselves out against the one being afflicted, advocates for the wealthy, lawless judges of the working poor, entirely malfunctioning.
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Didache 1:1-5a, 5:1-2
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