Chapter I. God's Love for Us; Our Return of Love

Let us therefore love God: because God first hath loved us. I John 4: 19

Man naturally desires to be happy, and true wisdom consists in seeking, not apparent, but real happiness, to be found not in the fleeting but in the immutable, in possessing and loving the infinite Good, who alone can satisfy the deepest longing of our hearts.

The basis for the Great Commandment

The First Commandment of God accords with these longings. Besides being the principle and end of all the other commandments, it is the end of the evangelical counsels as well. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself."¹ St. Paul calls the love of God and neighbor "the bond of perfection" 2 because it unites our souls to God, our last end, and tends to make all our powers center in Him. Divine charity has sovereignty over all the other virtues, informing, animating, and ordering them toward their last end. 3 All the exploits of the other virtues are attributed to it, the general of the army

3 o THE LOVE OF GOD of virtues, the principle of merit. So true is this that without charity we are, according to St. Paul, 4 personally nothing, even though we might have, for the good of our neighbor, the gifts of prophecy and of miracles and the knowledge of the angels. We^are personally nothing in the order of salvation, because without charity our soul is in a state of death, devoid of merit, and our will is turned aside from the divine will, directed away from God, our last end. On the other hand, true charity suffices, in a sense, for everything, because it necessarily presupposes the faith and hope it vivifies and because it implies all the infused moral virtues subordinated to it and animated by it. 5 In this sense St. Augustine could say: "Love and do what you will"-provided you love in truth. In the same vein St. Paul has written: "Charity is patient, is kind ; charity envieth not, dealedi not perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never falleth away: whether prophecies shall be made void or tongues shall cease. . . . And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." 8

From this revealed doctrine, St. Augustine and St. Thomas have concluded that Christian perfection in this life consists neither in knowledge of God nor in wisdom, so highly extolled by philosophers, nor yet in fortitude, so much admired by the heroes of paganism, nor in the external austerities and solitary life of the anchorites, nor in the acts of divine worship and of religion. For St. Augustine and St. Thomas, Christian

•I Cor. 13:4-13- perfection consists essentially and particularly in the increasingly faithful observance of the two commandments of the love of God and of neighbor, secondarily and instrumentally in the evangelical counsels, since these are ordered to die destruction of whatever hinders the perfect exercise of charity. 7 They add that the first and greatest commandment has no limits and that the perfection of charity falls under the precept not as matter or that which is to be immediately realized but as the end toward which all men, each according to his condition, ought to tend. 8

Such^s the first and greatest commandment. What is its basis? We find the answer in the words of St. John: "X£t_us therefore love God, because God first hath loved us." 9 For our deeper understanding of charity, let right reason first tell us what love is due to God in the purely natural order. Then supernatural revelation will teach us what it alone can: the intimate nature of the supernatural love we owe to God. In this way we shall see more clearly the basis for the first and greatest commandment.

Reason and the love of God

Free from error, reason alone suffices to tell us that our hearts, made as they are to love the good, ought to love the Sovereign Good, die principle of all others, before and above them all. Not without purpose did God grant to us the intelligence He denied to animals. Fashioned to know the truth, our intellect finds complete repose only in the knowledge of the supreme truth upon which all others depend. Since

8 Ibid., ad 2um and ad 3um. See also St. Augustine, De perjeclione juslitiae, c. viii.

it knows the good, it knows not only the sensible, delectable good possessed by animal and libertine alike, not only the useful good sought after by the man of affairs as a means to an end, but the tnjc^^th^has its perfection within itself, independently of the pleasure or advantages derived frqmjk_ Justice In : everyTorm is such a good, as is truthfulness as opposed to falsehood, courage and patience too, in fact, the whole harmony of the virtues that make a man a good man. Our intellect, having an idea of the true good, conceives it without limitations. Above and beyond justice mixed with imperfection, we conceive of justice without a shadow, a limit, or a restriction. Transcending every particular, our thoughts reach pure Good, Supreme Good, which, by its essence, is identical with Beauty, that Beauty spoken of by Plato in The Banquet as "everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning ... not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others . . . or existing in any other being, as, for example, in an animal or in heaven or in earth or in any ouher place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without any diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to die evergrowing and perishing beauties of all other things." 10 ° Our intellect, seeing itself superior to blind matter, realizes that it could not have come from matter. Is there any greater absurdity than to maintain that the intellect of a St. Augustine could be produced by blind material fatality, that life could spring up from absence of life, that order and the principle of order could rise out of lack of order? The greater does not

10 Symposium, 211, cd. Jowctt (New York: Random House, i 9 37)> PP- 334 «• come from the less. Furthermore, our intellect, seeing its own dependence and the dependence of all other intellects on the true, realizes that it owes its existence to a higher Intellect identified with the Truth itself always known. Likewise our will, which seeks the good, owes its existence to a higher Will identified with the Sovereign Good always loved. And the Sovereign Good cannot be distinct from the Supreme Truth and from Being itself — self-defined for Moses as "I am who am."

When our intellect has a notion, however imperfect, of limitless goodness and beauty, the will, following the intellect, desires that good. Made to love and desire the good, the will Ought to love first and most the Sovereign Good, the principle of all others. 11 Nothing could be more obvious. St. Thomas goes so far as to say that in our will there is a natural tendency to love God, the author of our nature, more than ourselves. The reason given by the holy doctor for this is profound, taken from the very nature of things.

Now in natural things everything which, as such, is dependent upon and naturally belongs to another, 12 is principally and more strongly inclined to that other to which it belongs than toward itself. . . . For we observe that the part naturally exposes itself in order to safeguard the whole; as, for instance, the hand is without deliberation exposed to the blow for the whole body's safety. And since reason copies nature, we find the same inclination among the social virtues; for it behooves the virtuous citizen to expose himself to the danger of death for the public weal of the state; and if

12 The words "its enure being" mean its conservation as well as its first production in being. A son depends on his father for his generation but he can keep on living after his father dies. The relationship of creatures to God is entirely different. They depend on Him for their very existence; if He did not will to conserve them in being, they would be annihilated. Cf. Ia, q.104, a. 1.

man were a natural part of the city, then such inclination would be natural to him and not acquired. Consequently, since God is the universal good, 13 and under this good both man and angel and all creatures are comprised (because every creature in regard to its entire being naturally belongs to God, its creative and conserving first cause), it follows that from natural love angel and man alike love God before themselves and with a greater love Otherwise, if either of them loved self more than God, it wou d follow that natural love [given by the Author of nature] would be perverse, and that it would not be perfected but destroyed by charity. 1 *

We shall take up this point at some length in the next chapter in order to determine the true relationship between love of God and legitimate love of self. For the moment, it is enough to ask: Since the Sovereign Good is the principle of every other good, is it not infinitely better and more worthy of love than we are?

Our natural inclination to love God above all thmgs is no doubt weakened by the effects of original and personal sin. Moreover, as we actually find ourselves, it does not bring us to love God, the author of our nature, efficaciously by observing the whole natural law. 16 Nevertheless it does subsist in the very core of our will, for it is identified with the will's very nature. And it exists in the damned and contributes much to their suffering. In them there is a grievous quasicontradiction between their natural inclination still leading

"What is meant here is universal good m essendo et in praedicando, that is, goodness in its very essence and not goodness as attributable to all good things.

or sanctifying grace.

ill cm to love existence and life and God, the author of life, and the pride, disobedience, and hate that persist in turning 1 hem from God.

Thus right reason shows us that only the Sovereign Good can really allay our natural thirst for happiness and satisfy our heart's deepest yearnings. This fact is a proof of the existence of God; since, if He did not exist, these natural inclinations would be absurd. 17 The two greatest philosophers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, put this truth into words when they placed beatitude in the natural knowledge of God and in a certain natural love of the Sovereign Good.

What right reason can establish is daily confirmed by experience. Whenever we think we have found happiness in some created good — some situation, the knowledge of some science, an intimate and fine friendship — it is not long before we discover that what we have is still only a finite good, incapable of fully satisfying a mind with a capacity to know and desire infinite good. The profound boredom so often experienced by worldlings, whose pleasure-seeking footsteps are everywhere dogged by it, testifies that their hearts are made for a good infinitely greater than the joys they pursue. Their continual need for change and the disillusionment that drives them from one creature to another make it evident that only God can fill the infinite void within their hearts. Our will, made to love the good in general and the Sovereign Good most of all, has depths that are, in a sense, infinite. Finite goods can do no more than move its surface. It is free to respond to their attraction or not. 18 Only God, seen face to face, can exercise an attraction upon it that is irresistible

17 This has been covered elsewhere: God: His Existence and His Nature, tr. Rose (St. Louis: Herder, 1934), h $° 2 D, 55-57-

3 6 THE LOVE OF GOD and perfectly adequate to its capacity for loving. That is why in heaven love of God is not free but follows necessarily upon the beatific vision. 19 It is above liberty, as the very first movements of our emotions are below it.

God alone can fully satisfy our thirst. The living waters flow from Him, their source. The realization of this truth made St. Catherine of Siena say that, if we wish to quench our thirst at the cup of a lasting friendship, we must keep it refilled from the source of living water or, soon exhausted, it will fail us and we shall go thirsty.

Even alone, when unerring, reason can reveal to us the possibility and, more than that, the necessity of loving God the author of our nature. In this, experience confirms reason. Reason points to the commandment of love of God as the first of the natural law and shows that it virtually contains all the others. 20 As love of truth is the scholar's principle of life; love of art and beauty, the artist's; love of country, the soldier's; so love of God seems to be the principle of every human life. To love God is natural. Reason, even when left to its own resources, realizes that man should love God. Great philosophers have sung the praises of this natural love. And poets, whose lives may have left much to be desired, have, by thinking about the beauty of the divine perfections, attained to an inefficacious act of natural love of God, to admiration of Him that is full of velleities, and only of velleities.

For us, as we actually are after the Fall, to have an efficacious love of God, the author of our nature, we must have the help of grace and we must ask for it. 21 Without it, we can understand the necessity of such a love; but we cannot succeed in

Ibid., q-5. >-4- *<> Ibid., q.109, a. 3, 4. n-lbid., a. 3, 7- making our own love efficacious. Even if, without grace, we succeeded in loving God, author of our nature, efficaciously and above all things, and managed to observe the natural law in its entirety, our natural love of God would remain infinitely removed from divine and Christian charity. For charity is essentially supernatural and has for its primary object God, die author of grace, in His intimate life.

God's love for all, the basis of our love for Him

No man of genius, no angel, can by his unaided intellect alone, comprehend or conceive of supernatural charity, the loving friendship between God and man.

Often in the Old Testament just men like the patriarchs and prophets are called "friends of God." 22 The Canticle of Canticles speaks symbolically of this strong and tender love of fri endshi p. 23 Our Lord Jesus Christ, by bringing us the fullness of divine revelation, has made it clearer to us than anyone else could by telling us: "I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But 1 have called you friends : because all things whatsoever I have heard of My Father, I have made known to you." 24 Just before this He had said : "As the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments , you will abide in My love, as I also have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man

22 Judith 8: 22; Isa. 41:8; Wisd. 7: 27; Ps. 138: 17. In John 3: 29, St. John the Baptist is called the friend of the bridegroom.

3 8 THE LOVE OF GOD hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do the things that I command you."

Philosophers who recognize the realm of spirit but have not come to the Christian faith sometimes say: "We cannot understand a love of friendship, such as you describe, between man and God. We can certainly have sentiments of admiration, respect, gratitude, and obedience towards God. We can worship Him interiorly and even exteriorly. But how can we love Him as a friend? We have never seen Him. He is so far above us as to be invisible and incomprehensible by His very nature. We obviously owe Him all we have and are; yet we can do nothing for Him in return. Friendship presupposes mutual good will, the possibility of doing good to one another, a certain intercourse or community of life, a common life, if it may be so expressed, that demands mutual revelation of intimate thoughts, a common quest for the same good, and the shared pursuit of one ideal." 25 Between God and us love and intimacy like this seem to be impossible. So argues reason when left to itself. _

What reason cannot discover, what the angelic intellect by its own natural powers cannot know, has been revealed to us by God in the days of the Old Testament and brought to us in its fullness by our Lord Jesus Christ, He has made known to us the infinite love of God, who wills our participation in His own intimate life through grace. He has taught us that to ' tiake our Father in heaven a fitting return we have only to model our love on His, who first loved us. As St. John says: 1 "By this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world, thatwe

M Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachcau Ethics, Bk. VIII, cd. McKcon (New York: Random House, 1941).

may live by Him. In this is charity: not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. My dearest, if God hath so loved us, we also ought to love one another." 26

From this text St. Thomas Aquinas concluded that divine ' harityi uniting us to God and to one another in Him, is true love or friendship. I t certainly implies mutual good will, for God wills our good, our eternal salvation, and we will His glory^ that He be known and loved as He deserves now and I ( n ever. Besides, the charity that unites us to Him is founded, like all true friendship, o n real community of life, since H e communicates to us a participation in His own intimate life, sanctifying grace, the, seed pf eternal life and happiness, by which we shall be forever associated in the intimate life of God. Then we shall see Him without intermediary, as He sees Himself; and, so seeing, we shall love Him as He loves Himself. 27

To have a deeper understanding of God's uncreated love, the basis of our own supernatural charity, let us consider the nature of true and generous love. Then let us take away all limitations from its qualities, making them infinite, and we shall catch a far, faint glimpse of what God's love is like.

When we love another truly We love him for his own sake, 1 nit for ours, not regarding him as something to be used or enjoyed. but wishing him well, willing him well. Truelove is not mere emotion, rising spontaneously at the sight of a lovable object; it is a'love of weU-wis hjng and well-doing By it we desire and do good to another, loving actively, effectively, and generously.

4 o THE LOVE OF GOD

Love usually demands three things of usu*hat we go out of self by tending toward the one to whom we would do good ;jhat we be united to him by a close communion of ideas, sentiments, and desires j-that we devote ourselves to him, give ourselves to him, and,""if need be, sacrifice ourselves for him, that he may be made better and may reach his final goal. 28

A real mother images this kind of love. No mere emotional delight in the lovableness of her child contents her. She must both will and do him good, going out of herself, forgetting herself, abandoning all the preoccupations of self-love and egotism to reach out to her little one. When she takes him up, puts her arms around him, and holds him close, it is as though she would become one with him. Wholly and always devoted, her love leaps up to meet his every need, and when he is ill nothing can take her from his side where, day and night, she cares for all his wants. From her he learns to walk and talk and pray; she it is who first awakens his mind, his heart, his soul.

By endowing these qualities of truly generous love with infinity, we can discover something of the meaning of God's love for us. Rightly did Isaias compare His mercy to the tenderness of a mother for her child, because the tenderness of a mother's heart has its source in the infinitely greater goodness of God. God's uncreated charity for us has ever been and ever will ■ be a benevolent, bountiful, and essentially active love. Such ' love could not be a merely affective, passive pleasure in what-

28 Cf. Ia Ilae, q.26, a. 4, for the distinction between the love of concupiscence and the more perfect love of friendship, which leads a man to will for his friend what is good for him. In q.28, a. 3, St. Thomas says that love, especially the love of friendship, draws us out of ourselves and (.ibid., a.i, 2, 3) "n«« us to our friend, makes us live in him and hold his interest so dear that we are willing to sacrifice our own good for his.

ever is lovable in us. All that makes us lovable in God's eyes comes from Him and is given to us only by His sovereignly free and gratuitous love. Whatever is lovable is good, and every good of every order can come only from the source of all good things, Goodness itself. From all eternity God necessarily loves this infinite Goodness which is Himself. In it He finds His essential beatitude. He had no need to create us, for I Ic is no greater, no happier, no wiser for having created the universe. 29 Freely He willed to manifest His goodness, to have us participate in His own inner riches. He willed to radiate goodness as He made the sun to radiate light. The same God who filled the air with the song of birds also willed the mighty hymn of His infinite praises to roll out from Him to other minds and other lives. "The heavens show forth the glory of God." God's love is creative. Far from supposing lovableness in those He loves, He creates it in them by His pure, sovereignly free, and gratuitous benevolence. 30

Out of wholly gratuitous love God has given us existence, the life of the body and of the spiritual and immortal soul ; He keeps us in existence and gives us, besides, the help necessary at each moment to make those intellectual and volitional acts indispensable for attaining goodness and truth. Even what seems most exclusively our own — the free determination to choose good rather than evil — comes to us from Him. The disorder and failure so often adulterating our acts comes from us exclusively, for it requires only a defective cause. 31 When we choose the good, then God, as first cause, first intellect, first liberty, and source of every good, makes us choose it by an act

at once vital and free. 32 He is closer to us than we are to ourselves. If all that comes to us from Him were taken out of our lives, we would be, in the strictest sense of the term, absolutely nothing. Two dogmas serve as the basis for Christian humility: creation ex nihilo and the necessity of grace for the least act effective for salvation.

God has loved us from all eternity. He made His love manifest at the moment of creation. And in the daily creation of souls, in the creation of my individual soul, which He freely maintains in existence at this instant, He renews and reenacts that moment. In the beginning He gave the first man natural life, a gift of love. This gift Adam was to transmit to us all. By a still more gratuitous love, He gave him also something immeasurably above the natural life of men and angels alike, the life of grace, a participation in the divine life properly so called. The gift of eternal life, of seeing and loving God as He sees and loves Himself, was given to the first man to be passed on to all his children.

Just as he had received it for himself and for us, 33 the first man "lost for himself and for us" 34 the seed of glory, sanctifying grace. He failed to appreciate the value of divine life and in his blindness preferred the infinitely inferior life of "the knowledge of good and evil." He chose a life which, so the temptation said, was to be his own to lead, free of any necessity to ask God for light or to obey Him. To living faith and infused wisdom, to divine contemplation and supernatural love of God united to humility and obedience, man preferred a mode of knowledge of the natural order. He

"Sec la, q.ig, a.8; q.83, ».». ad 3\im; q.105, a. 4) 5; la Hae, q.io, a.4, c. and , - ad 311m.

33 Council of Trent, sess. V, Denzinger, no. 789.

c hose to be his own master, to rely on himself and his selfcollected pseudo-data, instead of confiding in God, the first (ruth and sovereign good. Through his own fault, he fell from original justice and the heights of sanctity where the Creator bad placed him.

God's love followed us in our downfall and misery. To pardon us, God could have contented Himself with sending a prophet to express His forgiveness. Freely He willed to do infinitely more: "For God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting." 35 Infinite mercy could do no more. At the same time, according to the decree of the divine liberty, the utmost requirements of justice itself were to be satisfied by the Savior's sacrifice. "Mercy and truth have met each other." 36

We fell, and God willed to stoop down to us as a mother sloops down to a hurt child. He chose to descend, in a sense, to our level that He might raise us up to His. He stripped Himself, as it were, of the brightness of His glory, of His infinite majesty, not willing to appear in the splendor of His magnificence as He did on Mt. Sinai when He showed Himself to Moses. He willed to empty Himself, so St. Paul put it, 37 that He might be found according to our measure. He took a body and soul like ours and was seen in the form of a little child in the lowliest circumstances, in the ranks of the poorest, that all might come to Him without fear. For thirty years He who could have forced everyone to accept Him by the ascendancy of His mind, His character, and His miracles, lived the hidden life of a poor village carpenter of Nazareth.

87 "Exinanivit semelipsum"; Phil. 2:7.

By His lowliness and abasement our God has made Himself one of us: In flesh like ours, He shared our life, willed our happiness, performed our duties, bore our sufferings, felt our weariness, wept our tears. He has taken us into His arms. More than that, on Holy Thursday He, the Word of God o His own will kissed our feet. Finally, by taking on Himself all our offenses, He has given Himself for us, sacrificed Himself for us. He has died a victim for us, shed His blood in cruel suffering, that the heritage of eternal life, which in our blindness we despised and lost, might be once more ours.

Well might St. Paul speak of this as God's "exceeding charity " 88 an "excess of love," for it infinitely exceeds anything within the natural compass of human reason or angelic intellect. St. Paul can even call it "foolishness," 30 for by it the narrow calculations of human wisdom are, in a sense reversed. As a mother, in the folly of her love, offers herself as a victim that the son who has insulted and despised her may k brought back to the right path, so God, out of love dies : or His own creature, who has despised and shunned Him. This is the folly of the Cross beyond and above reason, the remedy for another very real folly which falls far short of reason, the folly of sin: of lust, avarice, envy, and pride, and of forgetfulness and hatred of God.

The evil that destroys reason is far inferior to it; the remedy that heals reason is infinitely above it. Rationalists make no mistake in saying that reason, left to its own resources, cannot understand it ; for this so-called folly belongs to a higher order, beyond the mind's natural reach. In such abysses of love reason is lost; only the supernatural discernment of the saints s» Eph. 2: 4. 80 1 Cor. i: 18.

GOD'S LOVE FOR US 45 can penetrate these depths. Only in heaven shall we see the sublime and the infinite fitness of the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation. To grasp it as it is in itself, we need an immediate vision of the divine essence and of the uncreated personality of the Word made flesh, whom love led to die for us.

In heaven we shall see that goodness is essentially communicative, and that the higher its order the more intimately and fully it tends to communicate itself. 40 We shall see that God the Father, in the interior expression of His thought, communicates to the Word within Him, His Son, not only a participation in His nature, but His whole indivisible nature without loss or multiplication. He thus gives to His Word to be "God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God." He begets His Son in that single moment which never passes, 1 lie unique "now" of changeless eternity. We shall see that the Father and the Son, by loving each other, spirate personal love, the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the flaming spiritual current that unites the first two persons in intimate communion." The three live upon the

40 Bonum est essentialiter deffusivum sui. Cf. St. Thomas, Contra Games, Bk. IV, chap. 11 where he shows the truth of this principle in outlining the degrees of being and finally by applying it to God Himself, in order to throw light on the mystery of the Trinity. See also la, q.2 7> a. I, ad 2um.

f 4 I. W D e , dist iT! sh in God: (,) the J°2£422S22J » «■* *«« P<™>ns o the Blessed Trinity; (2) the notiona^ love by which FatKcTand Son spirate the Holy Ghost, an act analogous to thT generation of the Word by die Father; and .5) the personal love which is the term of this active spiration— the Holy Ghost. C.I la, q.41, a. 6. As the Council of Florence defined, the only real distinction in God » the opposition of relations between the three divine Persons.

As to the Tove Cod bears for us, it is only virtually distinct from the essential love common to the three divine Persons, by which They necessarily love the divine goodness. Yet God's love for us, which red Him to create and preserve us. is free, for God need not have created us and He would have been infinitely wise and good and would have enjoyed infinite happiness just the same. Cf. Ia, q.19

4 g THE LOVE OF GOD same infinite Truth by the same intellectual act, upon the same infinite Goodness by the same essential act of love. They are distinct only through the relations of paternity, filiation, and spiration, according to which they are "distinguished as the opposite terms of a relation." ,

Goodness being diffusive of itself and the more intimately and abundantly so as it ascends in the various orders of being, we shall also see that God has freely willed to communicate Himself as much as possible to humankind by uniting Himself "in person" to the humanity of the Savior in such a way that the Word of God and the holy soul and body of Jesus together make but one and the same person, one and the same being; somewhat as in each one of us the soul and body, despite their distinction, constitute a single whole, a person really one. 42

Moreover, God has willed that the acts of love Christ made for us as He hung dying on the cross should have an infinitely meritorious and satisfactory value in the uncreated person of the Word, who truly loved us in those acts of His human will whereby He sacrificed Himself for us," while, in strict justice, He merited for us as the constituted head of humankind. "Therefore as by the offense of one, unto all men to condemnation; so also by the justice of one, unto all men to justifica-

« ma, q.i, "To each thing that is befitting which belongs to it by reason cS its very nature But the very nature of God >s goodness. . . . Hence what

Wong to the essence of goodness befits God. But it Wongs to the e^nce o goodness to communicate itself to others. . . Hence .t belongs o th essence of united in the same Person, remained infinitely distant from each other as natures. « ma, q.i, a. 2, ad 2um.

tion of life." 44 Such is the priceless worth of the cross of Christ.

But our Lord has, in a sense, gone even farther than this; He lias abased Himself yet more, united Himself even more closely to us, given Himself to us still more generously in (he Eucharist. In this sacrament He is, in a way, emptied of Himself, being willing to lie hidden under the humble appearances of bread and wine, docile alike under the hands of the holy or the sacrilegious priest that He may be brought to all, even the repentant criminal about to die. He has willed to descend so low that the poorest missionary, with only a bit of bread at his disposal, can make Him really and substantially present among the tribes he is evangelizing. Under these poor appearances the sacred body of Jesus is present, together with His soul and divinity. The host can be divided in half, then in quarters, and so on until only a small particle, almost imperceptible to bodily eyes, is left; and faith tells us that under this particle are found the soul and body of the Savior, His divinity and omnipotence, and all those infinite riches He wills us to share more abundantly each day.

The Word made flesh is on the altar. During Mass He continues to offer Himself for us and to unite to Himself all who desire to receive the Eucharist. To saints like Catherine of Siena it has been granted to drink in ecstasy atjhejacred. wound of the heart of Jesus; all Christians have the daily privilege of drinking spiritually at the same source through Holy Communion.

Christ could not have given Himself to us any more than He has, willingly becoming our food, being eaten by us. The Eucjiaristic Bread, so superior to us, is not assimilated by us,

4 8 THE LOVE OF GOD but it daily assimilates us more and more to Christ. It transforms us into Him and increases our vitality as members of the mystical body of which Jesus is the head.

We are accustomed to diese marvels. Habit, degenerating at times into routine, prevents us from admiring what is absolutely gratuitous and sublime in the infinite mercy of our God, who thus stoops down to our misery. Thomas Aquinas always kept this admiration alive within him.

O res mirabilis: manducat Dominum Pauper servus et humilisl This goes beyond anything our reason could of itself conceive or our heart naturally desire. Not only do the expressions of God's love as the author of grace satisfy our deepest natural longings; they immeasurably exceed them and likewise surpass the natural knowledge and desire of any angelic mind, whether actual or possible." Going beyond our natural yearnings, they arouse in us the higher and essentially supernatural aspirations of infused hope and divine charity.

Our return of love "Let us therefore love God; because God first hath loved us " 46 It would be well for us to recall what return the saints have made to God for His love, and then see what our own response ought to be. ,

The saints are not content to love God emotionally, to admire Hi7goodness intellectually, to think with poetic enthusiasm of His divine perfections. They understand Christ s words: "Not every one that saith to Me, 'Lord Lord sha enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doth the will

GOD'S LOVE FOR US 49 of My Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven." * 7 He gave this assurance especially for those who do the will of God not merely through duty and with resignation, those who, even in the midst of trials, do it out of love and with generosity, courageously allowing themselves to be loved and purified by God, refusing Him nothing and truly following the example of our Savior who died for us. No saint measures his charity by the sweetness of the sensible consolations sometimes accorded in prayer, but loves dee ply with a love rooted in the will. The love of the saints lives on m the midst of prolonged and barren aridity and is nourished by the hard bread of tribulation as well as the milk of consolation, is compounded of strength as well as of tenderness, and grows more and more generous by continually giving even when it seems to be done with receiving. Love like this makes the saints burn with desire to have God's name hallowed, His kingdom come, His will done on earth as it is in heaven. They hunger and thirst for justice, not with the brief flare of callow enthusiasm but with an ardor born of the gift of fortitude and of charity that endures through struggles and contradictions of all kinds. These they surmount, or rather are lifted across and go on with God, towards God, keeping their peace and sharing it with others.

A saint's love strives to reproduce whatever is imitable in < ind's love, to model itself on God's love so as to make Him a like return. God has come down to our level. In the ardor of His love He has lowered Himself so far as to become the man of sorrows, covered with our sins, "a worm and no man," 48 an abasement we simply cannot comprehend. To

make such love some return, the saints reduce themselves to the level of this God who was made less than they. They go down from the throne of their self-love to stand together with dieir God, stripped of glory and emptied of self. They love Him in His awful abasement more than any prince has even been loved in his most brilliant triumph.

St Dominic went by preference into that part of Languedoc where the Albigensians ridiculed and abused him in every way. He experienced a holy joy in being so treated, the joy of becoming more like the humiliated Christ. And thereafter when he talked to those poor misguided people, it was no longer a man who spoke to them but the Lord who spoke by his mouth and gave him the power to convert their hearts. St. Benedict Joseph Labre was as eager to follow those who insulted him as he was to flee from those who praised him, deeming himself unworthy of any good words. In different ways all the saints find a need to abase themselves out of love for our humiliated, scourged, and stricken Lord.

The Word of God united Himself to us and took on our hul^rT^ays that He might live with us. The desire of the saints is to take on divine ways that they may live with Him Many of diem have retired into solitude to live in perpetual recollection. Many others, kept in the world by duty, have, like St. Catherine of Siena, made an interior cell m the core of their hearts so that their conversation has been with the indwelling Trinity, whom they have served as living temples. They have preferred God to everything else besides, loved Him above all other things, without division and without exclusion, loving all men in Him, their legitimate affections raised to a new level by their love of Him. Fired in the flame of charity, natural love becomes a burning thirst for the salvation of souls.

Our Lord gave Himself to us on the cross. The saints give themselves to God, often even by martyrdom, that His name may be glorified, that His kingdom may come, and His will be done. And when they do not shed their blood as a testimony to Him, they may experience a martyrdom no less heroic, the martyrdom of the heart, a kind of slow death in the midst of daily griefs and trials of all kinds. In a wholly practical way they understand and follow the example of St. Paul, who said: "I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up diose things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church." 49 Nothing is lacking in the divine Passion itself. It has infinite and superabundant value. We alone lack something, the reflected reproduction of Christ within us. This is ours to give our Lord by allowing Him to assimilate us to Himself, by working in Him, with Him, and by Him for the salvation of souls through the means He Himself has chosen, prayer and immolation. Our Lord is at once a victim and a priest. He makes all His priests participate in His priesthood and requires all His saints to share with Him in some way His character of victim. Thus man's growing configuration to the crucified Word of God is effected and God's love receives a return of love from His saints.

What should our return be? It should be love of the same essentially supernatural quality as that received in baptism and restored by absolution, if we have been so unhappy as to lose it. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength and

with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself." 50 Consequently, as we have already repeated after St. Augustine 61 and St. Thomas," the perfection of charity falls under this commandment not as matter or that which is to be immediately realized, but as the end toward which all men ought to tend, each according to his condition, one in marriage, another in religious life, another in the priesthood. Everyone in the world ought to grow in charity continually. Growth in charity is progress towards God. As soon as we make up our minds to stop before reaching the end of our journey, we cease to be travelers toward eternity. 53 Our souls become retarded, like children who stop growing before reaching adulthood and so become dwarfs. The road toward eternity is for travel, not for rest. The Fathers of the Church tell us that he who does not go forward on the way to God goes back.

We shall even see that the progress of charity, effected especially by daily Communion, ought in principle to advance more and more swiftly. A stone falls faster and faster as it nears the earth ; so should our souls advance more and more quickly towards God as they draw nearer to Him and are increasingly attracted by Him. 54 The sublimity of the First Commandment being what it is, we cannot doubt that actual graces are progressively offered to us that we may attain its end. Our Lord does not command the impossible. He does exhort us to ask His help.

This being so, we ought to ask ourselves whether we are falling behind on our way to God, whether we are willing

51 De perfectione justitiae, VIII. »2 Ilallae, q.184, a.3.

« Cf. ibid., X, 25 on the words "tanto magis quanto videritis appropinquantem diem." See also la Hae, q.35. a. 6.

enough to come down from the throne of our self-love and our pride in order to stoop down, after the example of the saints, to the abasement of Jesus Christ, which perhaps is more alive in certain souls we look down upon than in our own. Are we willing to die to our own judgment and our own will that we may be united in a perpetual communion of ideas and of will with Christ Jesus, not only at prayertime but all day long? Is our soul's habitual conversation with Him, our Savior, our best friend, our counselor in all life's duties and affairs ? Are we sufficiently willing to be devoted, to sacrifice ourselves when necessary, that we may become each day more like Him who died for us, that we may be associated in some small way at least in the work of redemption before receiving a share in His glorious life for all eternity ?

To reach the perfection of love of God and neighbor, two methods, it is said, lie before us: one descending, the other ascending. The first consists in beginning with the consideration of the great mystery of God's love for us: "Let us therefore love God, because God first hath loved us." This is the way we have been discussing, the one the saints have followed in contemplating the sorrowful Passion. The second method consists in taking ourselves as the starting point, in examining our conscience, our failings, our predominant fault, in considering, too, the many virtues to be practiced in this and that circumstance. Certainly we cannot neglect these practices, but we should make all such examinations under the higher light of the great mystery of love ; otherwise the multitude of our own failings and of the virtues to be acquired will confuse us. Moreover, virtue has no strong attraction for us when not contemplated in our Lord and in our Lady. It is incumbent on us, then, to go to the very heart of the interior life, to charity, which ought to inform, animate, and vivify all the virtues, and, that we may grow in charity, to contemplate how Christ has loved us. We are full of faults; alone we shall not succeed in correcting them. 55 We must beg die Savior to come to us and put our house in order with us. For love of Him, let us allow Him to lead us on the way He has chosen for us. He is the Good Shepherd who leads His sheep into eternal pastures, calling each by name 56 and teaching them, if they will but listen to Him, all He Himself desires of them on the way to eternity.

Footnotes

1. Luke 10: 27. ↩