"Therefore let us now see the sacred mystery whereby this impotent man is healed by the Lord. The Lord Himself came, the Teacher of love, full of love, shortening, as it was predicted of Him, the word upon the earth, and showed that the law and the prophets hang on two precepts of love. Upon these hung Moses with his number forty, upon these Elias with his; and the Lord brought in this number in His testimony. This impotent man is healed by the Lord in person; but before healing him, what does He say to him? Will you be made whole? The man answered that he had not a man to put him into the pool. Truly he had need of a man to his healing, but that man one who is also God. For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. He came, then, the Man who was needed: why should the healing be delayed? Arise, says He; take up your bed, and walk.
He said three things: Arise, Take up your bed, and Walk. But that Arise was not a command to do a work, but the operation of healing. And the man, on being made whole, received two commands: Take up your bed, and Walk. I ask you, why was it not enough to say, Walk? Or, at any rate, why was it not enough to say, Arise? For when the man had arisen whole, he would not have remained in the place. Would it not be for the purpose of going away that he would have arisen? My impression is, that He who found the man lacking two things, gave him these twoprecepts: for, by ordering him to do two things, it is as if He filled up that which was lacking.
How, then, do we find the two precepts of love indicated in these two commands of the Lord? Take up your bed, says He, and walk. What the two precepts are, my brethren, recollect with me. For they ought to be thoroughly familiar to you, and not merely to come into your mind when they are recited by us, but they ought never to be blotted out from your hearts. Let it ever be your supreme thought, that you must love God and your neighbor: God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.
These must always be pondered, meditated, retained, practised, and fulfilled. The love of God comes first in the order of enjoying; but in the order of doing, the love of our neighbor comes first. For He who commanded you this love in two precepts did not charge you to love your neighbor first, and then God, but first God, afterwards your neighbor. Thou however, as you do not yet see God dost earn to see Him by loving your neighbor; by loving your neighbor you purge your eye for seeing God, as John evidently says, If you love not your brother whom you see, how can you love God, whom you do not see? See, you are told, Love God [...] " (Tractate on the Gospel of John, 17, 7-9).
The author
Augustine was born into 354 in Thagaste (today Souk-Ahras in Algeria) .He is Father and Doctor of the Church. He wrote two much known works: "The Confessions" and "the City of God". He is without any doubt the greater thinker of North Africa (Maghreb). One day, it heard in his garden a voice which says to him: "Take and read". He opened the Bible and fell on the following passage: "Let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires"" (Roman, 13, 13-14). His conversion was immediate and he was baptized by Ambrose, the bishop of Milan into 387. He became bishop of Hippone (current Annaba).