step is to love our enemies not only as ourselves

[Mary Naeem]

The twenty-sixth step is to love our enemies not only as ourselves, but more than ourselves. Charity, says St. Maximus “leads harmoniously to this praiseworthy inequality through which each prefers his neighbor to himself, as much as in the past he wanted to push him to the side and put himself forward.” In the Apophthegmata, we read that the monks of Sketes in the desert west of the Nile Delta sought to love their enemies even more than themselves.