Allan Fitzgerald: Forming Consciences in a World of Hurt

Augustine’s phrase, “Love and do what you will” (Hom. on the First Letter of John 7, 8), in not about making an individual’s intention or feeling the criterion for moral action. It is about acting in the spirit of Jesus Christ whose love is, therefore, integral to his person and, therefore, is the foundation for setting this phrase within the communal setting of a homily about restoring the body of the Church to its intended unity. This paper will set this phrase within the Catholic-Donatist division so as to allow its meaning to be about the love-in-action that Christ and his members live by and not simply one more individualistic ‘reading’ of words taken out of context. It is, in other words, a paper about humble healing of a divided world rather than a facile justification of individual action.