Jesus says:
“You yourself give me the subject for this lesson. You said, ‘I feel pity for and show patience to animals and children because they are not endowed with or do not yet possess reason. But with an adult who talks nonsense, out of either malice or stubbornness, I then do not reason, either, because I don’t pity him.’
“What a clever person! But if your Lord, who has endowed you with reason, had acted like this with you, how often in your life would He have had to punish you? And if - since I have given reason to all men - I were to strike and not take pity when men go against reason, what would I have to do? What man would escape punishment? Neither do I say, ‘When men go against my Law.’ I say, ‘Against reason,’ as you do.
“By this you and everyone else demonstrate how much better God is than the best of men. A limitless perfection of goodness. And regarding which you, abusing precisely this limitlessness, take the liberty of any fault.
“But you ought not to. If I am good, it is not just, either, for you to abuse this. I would like to say, ‘Treat Me as God.’ I limit Myself to saying, ‘Treat Me as your Father, Brother, and Friend, and act with Me as good children, good brothers and sisters, and good friends act among men.’
“But, unfortunately, you are unable to do even this. And do you then complain if you do not have good on earth?”533
533 This entry is followed by the texts connected with the episode involving the “Conversion of Zacchaeus,” included in the cycle on The Third Year of the Public Life.