Counseling

As … the same medicine and the same food are not in every case administered to men’s bodies, but a difference is made according to their degree of health or infirmity; so also are souls treated with varying instruction and guidance. To this treatment witness is borne by those who have had experience of it. Some are led by doctrine, others trained by example; some need the spur, others the curb; some are sluggish and hard to rouse to the good, and must be stirred up by being smitten with the word; others are immoderately fervent in spirit, with impulses difficult to restrain, like thoroughbred colts, who run wide of the turning post, and to improve them the word must have a restraining and checking influence.

Look … into yourself as well when you have to correct another, and acknowledge that you also are a sinner and subject to frailty, lest you also be grievously tempted, if your admonition proceeds more from irritation than from compassion. Let the correction be prompted by love for the persons and hatred of all vices. And let this love of the neighbor and hatred of all that is wrong always be maintained, so that we may be severe with error but at the same time have a tender compassion for the weakness of human nature.

There may be found some who rebuke the failings of their neighbors rather in the bitterness of hatred than out of charity, and not so much with a view to correct them as to give vent to the bad feeling they have in their hearts. This is certainly not according to God’s will, as it is prompted by revenge rather than by a love of discipline.