Chapter XIV — Part
1
Tells of the Four Modes of Loving, and shows forth the -first Three Modes of it.
THERE are four Modes of Love, wherein all holiness abides. The First Mode is of command, and it belongs to the Friends of God.
The Second is of convenience, and it belongs to those uplifted spirits who live after the counsels of God. The Third Mode is neither of command nor of convenience, and it belongs to the Sons of God, who suffer His action in bare love.
The Fourth Mode is to be one with God in Love.
Hear now and understand: The First Mode of Love is to fear and to love God above all things; to obey Him and the Holy Church in Christian Faith, in goodness and in virtue.
Such are the Friends of God, who are pleasing to Him in the lowest Mode whereby it is possible to live in Him.
Hereafter follows the Second Mode of Love, wherein we live in God, in Spirit and in truth. Herein the good man rather directs his loving intention towards God than does good works for His sake in the world without: and so is he ever moved and urged by the Spirit of the Lord to greater love. And the more he loveth, the more is he so moved.
Wherefore he comes to feel that which is blessed beyond all modes, and that is to love after no manner.
Here also, and in this wise, does he become a pure spirit, cleaving to God with a love that is modeless; and he empties himself continually, until he attains to the repose of being.
Thereafter feels he new stirrings, and again he empties himself, for all his strength fails him in a love that is modeless: And this it is to love God and to be loved of Him. For no man understands what Love is in Itself, but such are Its workings: Which gives more than one can take, and asks more than one can pay.
This urgency of Love is sometimes felt in the heart, as a burning fire of longing in the soul, a disturbance and a restlessness in the body, and in the spirit a hungry and consuming greed, which devours the workings of the spirit in a simple emptiness of being. Lo, there begins an intellectual gazing and a loving inclination in a sweet atmosphere of bliss, where the Modeless Love is perfected.
For this intellectual gazing and this loving inclination are two heavenly pipes, sounding without need of tune or notes: they go always forward in that everlasting life, without digression or return, keeping in harmony and concord with all the Holy Church; for the Holy Spirit gives the wind that sings in them. And they are intermediary between the Love that is Modeless, and the Love that is bare and empty of all.
Hereafter follows the Third Mode in an uplifted and enlightened love in the Divine Light.
In this mode are spirits empty and stripped of all, uplifted above all action in a bare understanding and love. They labour no more, for the Spirit of the Lord labours in them, and they are, as it seems, themselves grace and love; and they are called the Sons of God, because they are dead to themselves in Him, and have given up their own will to His beloved Will.
Their life is hid with Christ in God, and they become, wholly and anew, born of the Holy Ghost, chosen Sons of the Love of God, and beyond grace and all the actions of it, they again and again annihilate and dissolve themselves in Love; for they are God-formed, and become transformed and super-formed by the Spirit of Our Lord; just as the glowing iron is super-formed and made one with the fire.
As much as is iron, so much is fire; and as much as is fire, so much is iron; yet the iron does not become fire, nor the fire iron; but each retains its substance and its nature. So, likewise, the spirit of man does not become God, but is God-formed, and knows itself breadth and length and height and depth; and, as far as God is God, so far is the loving spirit made one with Him in love .