How Violent and Dangerous Is the Passion of Love, and How Much We Ought to Fear It

ONE of the things most to be feared is the passion of love. Love is the chiefest and strongest of the passions, and the passion most difficult to withstand; all the greater the risk we run of being carried away and thrown headlong by it. The blessed St. Augustine well sets forth the force and violence of this passion and the reason we have to fear it, by two grave examples from Holy Writ. The first is that of our father Adam. The saint asks: What was the reason why Adam obeyed the voice of his wife and broke the commandment of God by eating of the forbidden tree? Can it be that Adam was deceived and led to believe that, if he ate that fruit, he should be like God, as the serpent had told Eve? It is not to be supposed that Adam, gifted with such profound wisdom as he was, could have been deceived to the extent of believing such a thing. So says the Apostle St. Paul: Adam was not deceived like Eve (I Tim. ii. 14) to believe such a thing as that. So St. Augustine observes that when God asked Eve: Why hast thou done this? she answered: The serpent deceived me and I ate. But when He asked Adam, he did not answer: “The woman that Thou gavest me deceived me, and I ate,” but answered: The woman that thou gavest me for companion gave me that fruit, and I ate (Gen. iii. 12-13). He had conceived such love and such affection for his wife that, not to vex her, he did what she asked. This is the way that Adam was deceived; it was love that deceived him—not that he was overcome by sensuality and concupiscence of the flesh, says St. Augustine, for at that time there was not that rebellion in it; but he was carried away by love and good will of friendship, by which, sometimes, to please a friend we displease God. Thus it was by love that sin entered into the world, and with it death and all evils and afflictions.

The second example is that of Solomon. What, says St. Augustine, made Solomon fall into such folly as to turn idolater? It is not to be supposed, says St. Augustine, that a man to whom God had given such wisdom could have believed that there was any divinity in idols, or any profit in honoring them. What, then, brought him to commit such a signal folly as to adore them and offer them incense? Do you know what? Love. Holy Writ itself tells us this clearly. He loved with a most passionate love idolatrous women, those women concerning whom God had given command to the children of Israel to have nothing to do with them, since without doubt they would pervert them and bring them to worship their gods (III Kings xi. 1-2). Solomon did not obey this commandment of God and so that befell him which God said; for taking one woman of them to wife he built a temple to the idol which she adored; and taking another he built another to her idols too, and so to all the rest. They adored there their idols, and King Solomon, with all his gravity and wisdom, adored them also along with them, and offered them incense, not because he believed that there was anything there to worship, says St. Augustine, but because he was overcome and blinded by love, and was loth to displease the objects of his affections, and wished to give pleasure and satisfaction to those whom he loved so much. Love perverted his heart.

Therefore saints and masters of spiritual life warn us to be much on our guard against this passion and against all occasions that may carry us thereto. Even though the love seem good and be for persons of high virtue and holiness; even though the talk and conversation be on good and spiritual subjects, and the parties to it fancy that such conversation is a great help to them to advance in spirit; nevertheless let them proceed with much care and reserve. This is the common teaching of the saints, and St. Bonaventure applies it, saying that spiritual love is apt to degenerate and be adulterated, and from spiritual turn to that which is carnal and sensual. And though at the beginning it were wine, it afterwards gets mixed with water; and what was balsam is adulterated by admixture of other liquors, base and vile, according to that text of Isaias (i. 22): Thy wine is mingled with water. This is the means and bait which the devil is wont to employ to deceive a man and carry him off little by little to where he wants him to go.

St. Bonaventure says very well that the devil does what the master of the feast does. In the beginning he puts out good wine, and then that which is worse (John ii. 10). In the beginning he makes them believe that all is devotion and spirituality, and that they shall derive great profit from this intimacy and familiarity; and when he sees them now grown soft and overcome, and thinks that they are pledged to one another, then he openly brings out his poison; this was the bait set to start with to gather them into the fish trap. And the devil is not wearied, says St. Bonaventure, with spending a long time playing his catch with this bait, which seems so good; he counts it all well spent in return for gaining the object of his desire, that this spiritual love may come to end in carnal and sensual love. Oh, how many, says St. Bonaventure, have started conversations and intimacy with certain other persons under color of some spiritual motive, thinking that their whole dealing was of God and spiritual things, things of profit to their souls; and so possibly it was at first, but little by little this love fell away and degenerated, and their conversation came to turn on topics irrelevant, light, and ridiculous! They began in the spirit, and ended in the flesh (Gal. iii. 3).

Gerson tells of a servant of God highly endowed as well in learning as in virtue, who used to hold conversations with a nun, a servant of God, on holy subjects profitable to the soul. But little by little, along with this conversation and interchange of ideas, love grew, sed non in Domino—“not in the Lord.” The attachment was so strong that he could not refrain from going to visit her many times, and prolonging the interviews; and when he was not in her company, he could scarcely give over thinking of her. Nevertheless, so blind was the good man that he did not think there was any danger in all this, or any deceit of the devil, for he said to himself that nothing evil ever came into his thoughts about her—an excuse wherewith many are apt to be blinded and deceived. So the thing went on until he was forced, on a certain occasion that arose, to take a long journey. Then, on going away, the servant of God felt that this love was not pure or chaste, and but for God’s removing the occasion by this absence he was very near falling into great mischief. And so, says Gerson, there speaking of the great danger and deceitfulness that there is in love, all is not gold that glitters, nor is everything charity that appears so. And he quotes the saying of a person of high sanctity, that there is nothing to be more dreaded and held in greater suspicion than love, though it be with persons of great virtue and holiness; and he alleges hereupon the witness of the Wise Man: There is a way that seemeth to a man right, and the last portions of it lead to death (Prov. xvi. 25). Such seeming right ways are very crooked and are bound to end in evil. Such, he says, is apt to be this way of love.