Stop that kind of love…

Albert Edelfelt’s The Gossip – 1887

I have heard people slandering, and I have rebuked them. And these doers of evil replied in
self-defense that they were doing so out of love and care for the person whom they were
slandering. I said to them: ‘Stop that kind of love, otherwise you will be condemning as a liar him who said: “Him that privily talked against his neighbor, did I drive away” (Ps. 100:5). If you say you love, then pray secretly, and do not mock the man. For this is the kind of love that is acceptable to the Lord.  But I will not hide this from you (and of course be careful, lest you judge the offender): Judas was in the company of Christ’s disciples, and the thief was in the company of murderers. Yet it is a wondrous thing, how in a single instant, they exchanged places.

Saint John of Sinai, Step 10: “On Slander or Calumny,” # 4, in The Ladder of Divine Ascent

hat tip: Daily Dynamis