Importance of Love

8. This same precept of love, great in Christ, is commended to all clergy; each one is to endeavor to perfect it, as John the Apostle admonishes, in deed and truth. By no other bond or means can families and cities stand firm and, what is more, attain Christian dignity. Considering this matter and deploring the many evils which arise both in public and private life whenever this precept is made of little account and neglected, We have often raised Our Apostolic voice in this regard, particularly in the encyclical letter Rerum novarum. In it We listed the principles apt to ameliorate the condition of the workers according to evangelical truth and justice. We now reiterate them and renew Our admonition. How much force and influence Catholic institutions, unions of workers, mutual aid societies, and many other groups of this nature, have when motivated by holy love, both to relieve the hardships of the poor and to properly inform a weak populace, is obvious from experience. All who contribute their counsel, their authority, their money, or their labors to these groups, on which the salvation-temporal and eternal - of many depends, certainly have earned a reward both from religion and from their compatriots.