Fathers

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What the Fathers say

Ecclesiastes 3:8

Western Saints

Jerome

"A time for loving and a time for hating." The time for loving God, children, wife, and relatives is afterwards, and the time for hating those in martyrdom since hostile piety attacks those steadfast men for the sake of the confession of Christ. Or maybe there is a time for loving the law, and those things that the law decrees- that is circumcision, sacrifices, the Sabbath, Neumania [The Jewish feast of the New Moon.], and a time for hating them when the grace of the Gospel has been lost. …

Commentary on Ecclesiastes ↗

Bonaventure

Regarding the alternation of the act of the concupiscible power, he says: A time of love, when a thing possesses goodness; and a time of hatred, when it turns to wickedness; Psalm: "I have hated and abhorred iniquity"; and Romans 12: "Hating evil, cleaving to good, loving one another with fraternal charity." As for the alternation of the act of the irascible power, he says: A time of war, against assailing adversaries: 2 Kings 11: "And it came to pass, at the return of the year, at the time when kings go forth to war, David sent …

Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3 ↗