You must love every human being with all your heart while placing your trust in God only, and serving Him with all your might. Because while He is protecting us, our friends will favor us and our enemies will be powerless to do us harm. When He forsakes us, all our friends will leave us and our enemies will take charge over us. While friends of Christ genuinely love everybody, they are not loved by all. Worldly friends do not love everybody and are not loved by everyone. Friends of Christ retain their love to the end, while worldly friends for a while — before something occurs between them that creates a conflict over some worldly matter.
Saint Maxim the Confessor
