"Yet because we are of the flesh (carnales) and are begotten through the flesh's concupiscence, our yearning love (cupiditas vel amor noster) must begin from the flesh; yet if rightly directed, advancing under the leadership of grace, it will be consummated in spirit. For that which is first is not spiritual, but that which is natural (animale); then that which is spiritual. First man loves (diligit) himself for his own sake. For he is flesh, and is able to understand nothing beyond himself. When he sees that he cannot live (subsistere) by himself alone, he begins, as it were from necessity, to seek and love God. Thus, in this second stage, he loves God, but only for his own sake. Yet as his necessities lead him to cultivate and dwell with God in thinking, reading, praying, and obeying, God little by little becomes known and becomes sweet. Having thus tasted how sweet is the Lord, he passes to the third stage, where he loves God for God's sake. Whether any man in this life has perfectly attained the fourth stage, where he loves himself for God's sake, I do not know. Let those say who have knowledge; for myself, I confess it seems impossible. Doubtless it will be so when the good and faithful servant shall have entered into the joy of his Lord, and shall be drunk with the flowing richness of God's house. Then oblivious to himself, he will pass to God and become one spirit with Him."[1]
So one sees the stages through which love of self and lust of fellow become love of God. A responsive emotion attends each ascending step in the saint's intellectual apprehension of love—as one should bear in mind while following the larger exposition of the theme in Bernard's De deligendo Deo.[2]
The cause and reason for loving God is God; the mode is to love without measure: "Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est; modus, sine modo diligere." Should we love God because of His desert, or our advantage? For both reasons. On the score of His desert, because He first loved us. What stint shall there be to my love of Him who is my life's free giver, its bounteous administrator, its kind consoler, its solicitous ruler, its redeemer, eternal preserver and glorifier? On the other hand, "God is not loved without reward;
- ↑ Ep. 11, ad Guigonem. Bernard adds that when Paul says that flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God, it is not to be understood that the substance of flesh will not be there, but that every carnal necessity will have ceased; the love of flesh will be absorbed in the love of the spirit, and our weak human affections transformed into divine energies.
- ↑ Migne, Pat. Lat. 182, col. 973–1000.
