Tears set an end to words; thou, O Lord, wilt set to them limit and measure."[1]
We may now turn to Bernard's love of God, and rise with him from the fleshly to the spiritual, from the conditioned to the absolute. There is no break; love is always love. More especially the love of Christ, the God-man is the mediating term: He presents the Godhead in human form; to love Him is to know a love attaching to both God and man.
Guigo, Prior of the "Grande Chartreuse," whose Meditations have been given,[2] was Bernard's friend, and wrote to him upon love. Bernard replies: "While I was reading it, I felt sparks in my breast, from which my heart glowed within me as from that fire which the Lord sent upon the earth!" He hesitates to suggest anything to Guigo's fervent spirit, as he would hesitate to rouse a bride quiet in the bridegroom's arms. Yet "what I do not dare, love dares; it boldly knocks at a friend's door, fearing no repulse, and quite careless of disturbing your delightful ease with its affairs." Bernard is here speaking of love's importunate devotion; his words characterize the soul's importuning of God:
"I should call love undefiled because it keeps nothing of its own. Indeed it has nothing of its own, for everything which it has is God's. The undefiled law of the Lord is love, which seeks not what profits itself but what profits many. It is called the law of the Lord, either because He lives by it, or because no one possesses it save by His gift. It is not irrational to speak of God as living by law, that law being love. Indeed in the blessed highest Trinity what preserves that highest ineffable unity, except love?"
So far, Bernard has been using the word charitas. Now, in order to indicate love's desire, he begins to use the words cupiditas and amor.[3] When these yearning qualities are rightly guided by God's grace, what is good will be cherished for the sake of what is better, the body will be loved for the soul's sake, the soul for God's sake, and God for His own sake.
- ↑ "Finem verborum indicunt lacrymae; tu illis, Domine, finem modumque indixeris."
- ↑ Ante, Chapter XVI.
- ↑ As Augustine before him. Cf. Taylor, The Classical Heritage, etc., pp. 129–131.
