What, dear brethren, is the end and object for which we live in this world? Undoubtedly it is to acquire the love of God. This divine love will render us for ever blessed, and we shall be blessed just in the proportion we have acquired it. The greatest saints are those who have loved God best; the least in heaven are those who have loved Him least; but all must love God in some degree, or there is no place in heaven for them. Now, I assert that the easiest, shortest, and most efficient road to the love of God is the love of our neighbor, or of our fellow-man, who is designated by the word neighbor. I assert it on the authority of St. John himself, who has laid it down in the clearest manner. We read in the breviary of to-day this beautiful narrative of St. Jerome: "The blessed John the Evangelist, whilst he was living at Ephesus, in his extreme old age, was scarcely able to be brought to the church by the hands of his disciples, and could not weave together many words into a sentence. He did nothing at the different assemblies but repeat the same words, 'My little children, love one another.' At last the disciples and brethren who were present, getting tired of always hearing the same thing, said: Master, why do you always repeat this? He replied in a sentiment worthy of St. John: 'Because it is the precept of the Lord, and if this alone be observed it is sufficient.'" {324} How beautiful is this! "Little children, love one another," and, "This alone is sufficient." We must love one another with the sincerity, the artlessness, of little children. There must be no hypocrisy about our love; it must be genuine, and flow from the right fountain. And what is this fountain? It is the love of God. Our love of our fellow-men must proceed from the love of God. We must love him for the sake of God, and because God wishes us to love him, and because he represents God to us. There is a love which is not on account of God, but, on the contrary, opposed to God, and which destroys the love of God in us. A parent, for example, is distractedly fond of a child because the child is beautiful, or talented, or amiable, and this child is consequently indulged and spoiled; is educated for show and vanity, or, to sum it all up, exclusively for this short-lived world and its object. {325} Such love as this does not lead to God, but turns the soul away from Him. With passionate eagerness it fixes it on the present, as its last end and chief good, and quenches its thirst for God, who is the only last end and chief good for which it was created. We must love our neighbor, because we see in him an immortal soul, created to the image and likeness of God, and destined to participate at last in the glory and happiness of God. We must love our neighbor, because he has been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, his God, who was willing to lay down His life for him, after thirty years of toil and hardship, suffering the agony of the cross.