Learn to Love Yourself, Then Love Others

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Learn to Love Yourself, Then Love Others

Reflection: Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31-33; Luke 10:27; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8

The right order requires that you should study to care for your own conscience before charging yourself with the care of those of others. That is the first step of piety. It is from this first step that a well-ordered charity proceeds by a straight path to the love of one’s neighbor, for the precept is to love him as ourselves. If you shall have first learned to love yourself then you will know, perhaps, how you should love me.

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153)