Miscellanies 2.9.41

Such fear, then, leads up both to repentance and to hope. Hope is the expectation of good things, or a confident expectation of an absent good. Indeed a good disposition is also taken into hope, which we have learned leads by the hand to love. Love would be agreement in matters of reason, of life, and of manner, or, to put it briefly, fellowship of life, or the intensity of friendship and affection with right reason in the treatment of companions. And a companion is another self; which is why we call brothers those who have been reborn by the same Word. Close to love lies hospitality, which is a certain skill in the treatment of strangers; and strangers are those to whom worldly things are strange. For by the worldly we understand those who hope in the earth and in fleshly desires. “Do not be conformed,” says the apostle, “to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of the mind, so that you may prove what is the will of God, the good, acceptable, and perfect.” Hospitality, then, is concerned with what benefits strangers; and strangers are guests, and guests are friends, and friends are brothers: “Dear brother,” says Homer. Philanthropy too, through which also affection, being a friendly treatment of human beings, and affection, being a certain skill in loving friends or kinsfolk, accompany love.