Chapter IX
SAINT BERNARD OF
CLAIRVAUX
we must love God first, in order to love our neighbors in Him. This too, like all good things, is the Lord's doing, that we should love Him, for He has endowed us with the possibility of love. He who created nature sustains it; nature is so constituted that its Maker is its protector forever. Without Him nature could not have begun to be; without Him it could not subsist at all. That we might not be ignorant of this, or vainly attribute to ourselves the beneficence of our
Creator, God has determined in the depths of His wise counsel that we should be subject to tribulations. So when man's strength fails and God comes to his aid, it is meet and right that man, rescued by God's hand, should glorify Him, as it is written, "Call upon Me in the time of trouble; so will I hear you, and you shall praise Me." In such wise man, animal and carnal by nature, and loving only himself, begins to love God by reason of that very self-love; since he learns that in God he can accomplish all things that are good, and that without God he can do nothing.
Chapter IX
OF THE SECOND AND
THIRD DEGREES OF LOVE
So then in the beginning man loves God, not for God's sake, but for his own. It is something for him to know how little he can do by himself and how much by God's help, and in that knowledge to order himself rightly toward God, his sure support. But when tribulations, recurring again and again, constrain him to turn to God for unfailing help, would not even a heart as hard as iron, as cold as marble, be
°Ps 50:15, [ 30 |
ON LOVING GOD softened by the goodness of such a Savior, so that he would love God not altogether selfishly, but because He is God?
Let frequent troubles drive us to frequent supplications; and surely, tasting, we must see how gracious the Lord is."
Thereupon His goodness once realized draws us to love Him unselfishly, yet more than our own needs impel us to love Him selfishly: even as the Samaritans told the woman who announced that it was Christ who was at the well:
"Now we believe, not because of Your saying: for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the savior of the world."'" We likewise bear the same witness to our own fleshly nature, saying, "No longer do we love God because of our necessity, but because we have tasted and seen how gracious the Lord is." Our temporal wants have a speech of their own, proclaiming the benefits they have received from God's favor. Once this is recognized it will not be hard to fulfill the commandment touching love to our neighbors; for whosoever loves God aright loves all God's creatures. Such love is pure, and finds no burden in the precept bidding us purify our souls, in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.' Loving as he ought, he counts that command only just. Such love is thank worthy, since it is spontaneous; pure, since it is shown not in word nor tongue, but in deed and truth;'" just, since it repays what it has received.
Whoso loves in this fashion, loves even as he is loved, and seeks no more his own but the things which are Christ's, even as Jesus sought not His own welfare, but ours, or bax |
SAINT BERNARD OF
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rather ourselves. Such was the psalmist's love when he sang:
"O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious."
Whosoever praises God for His essential goodness, and not merely because of the benefits He has bestowed, does really love God for God's sake, and not selfishly. The psalmist was not speaking of such love when he said: "So long as You do well to him, he will speak good of You.""" The third degree of love, we have now seen, is to love God on His own account, solely because He is God.
Chapter X
OF THE FOURTH DEGREE OF LOVE,
WHEREIN MAN DOES NOT EVEN LOVE SELF
SAVE FOR GOD'S SAKE
How blessed is he who reaches the fourth degree of love, wherein one loves himself only in God! Your righteousness stands like the strong mountains, O God. Such love as this is
God's hill, on which it pleases Him to dwell. "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?" "O that I had wings like a dove; for then would I flee away and be at rest." "At Salem is His tabernacle; and His dwelling in Sion." "Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech!""'' When shall this flesh and blood, this earthen vessel which is my soul's tabernacle, attain thereto? When shall my soul, rapt with divine love and altogether self-forgetting, yes, become like a broken vessel, yearn wholly for God, and, joined unto the Ps 118:1, "Ps 49:18.
"Ps 24:3; 55:6; 76:23 12035.
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ON LOVING GOD Lord, be one spirit with Him? When she shall exclaim, "My flesh and my heart fails; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.""" I would count him blessed and holy to whom such rapture has been vouchsafed in this mortal life, for even an instant to lose yourself, as if you were emptied and lost and swallowed up in God, is no human love; it is celestial. But if sometimes a poor mortal feels that heavenly joy for a rapturous moment, then this wretched life envies his happiness, the malice of daily trifles disturbs him, this body of death weighs him down, the needs of the flesh are imperative, the weakness of corruption fails him, and above all brotherly love calls him back to duty. Alas! that voice summons him to re-enter his own round of existence; and he must ever cry out lamentably, "O Lord, I am oppressed: undertake for me"; and again, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"*"
Seeing that the Scripture says, God has made all for His own glory, surely His creatures ought to conform themselves, as much as they can, to His will. In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves, And real happiness will come, not in gratifying our desires or in gaining transient pleasures, but in accomplishing God's will for us: even as we pray every day: "Your will be done in earth as it is in heaven." O chaste and holy love! O sweet and gracious affection!
O pure and cleansed purpose, thoroughly washed and purged from any admixture of selfishness, and Ps 73:20.
Ts 38:14; Rom 7:24.
T10.
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sweetened by contact with the divine will! To reach this state is to become godlike. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sunbeams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory. When will that be? Who will see, who possess it? "When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?""" "My heart has talked of You, Seek ye
My face: Your face, Lord, will I seek." Lord, think You that I, even I shall see Your holy temple?
In this life, I think, we cannot fully and perfectly obey that precept, "You shall love the Lord Your God with all Your heart, and with all Your soul, and with all Your strength, and with all Your mind."'* For here the heart must take thought for the body, and the soul must energize the flesh, and the strength must guard itself from impairment. And by God's favor, must seek to increase. It is therefore impossible to offer up all our being to God, to yearn altogether for His face, so long as we must accommodate our purposes and aspirations to these fragile, sickly bodies of ours. Wherefore the soul may hope to possess the fourth degree of love, or rather to be possessed by it, only when it has been clothed upon with that spiritual and immortal body, which will be perfect, peaceful, lovely, and in everything wholly subjected
"Ps 42:2.
"SPs 27:8, "4k 10:27.
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