|
Having spoken of the spirit of faith and of trust in God, we
must consider what the progress of charity should be in the
illuminative way, that the soul may pass from the mercenary or
interested love of the imperfect to perfect charity. Consequently we
shall discuss the signs of imperfect love, then those of the progress
of charity, the relations of charity with our natural dispositions,
and its progressive conformity to the divine will.
THE SIGNS OF IMPERFECT LOVE
St. Catherine of Siena indicates clearly in her Dialogue (1) the
signs of mercenary love; we quoted this passage earlier in this
work.(2) The saint says in substance that love remains imperfect in
the just man when, in the service of God, he is still too much
attached to his own interests, when he still seeks himself and has an
excessive desire of his own satisfaction.
The same imperfection is then found in his love of his neighbor. In
loving his neighbor, he seeks self, takes complacency, for example, in
his own natural activity, in which there is rash haste, egoistical
eagerness, occasionally followed by coldness when his love is not
returned, and he believes that he sees in others ingratitude, a
failure to appreciate the benefits he bestows on them.
In the same chapter the saint points out that the imperfection of
this love of God and souls is clearly shown by the fact that, as soon
as we are deprived of the consolations that we had in God, this love
no longer suffices us and can no longer subsist; it languishes and
often grows colder and colder as God withdraws His spiritual
consolations and sends us struggles and contradictions in order to
exercise us in virtue. Nevertheless He acts thus only to put our
inordinate self-love to death and to cause the charity that we
received at baptism to grow. This charity should become a living flame
of love and notably elevate all our legitimate affections.
THE NATURE OF CHARITY AND THE MARKS OF ITS
PROGRESS
The signs of the progress of charity are deduced from its very
nature. Scripture tells us in several places that the just man is the
"friend of God." (3) St. Thomas,(4) explaining 'these words of
Scripture, shows us that charity is essentially a love of friendship
we should have for God because of His infinite goodness which radiates
on us, vivifying us and drawing us to Himself.
Every true friendship, St. Thomas tells us, implies three
qualities: it is first of all a love of benevolence by which a man
wishes good to another, as to himself; in this it differs from the
love of concupiscence or of covetousness, by which one desires a good
for oneself, as one desires a fruit or the bread necessary to
subsistence. We ought to wish our friends the good which is suitable
for them, and we should wish that God may reign profoundly over minds
and hearts.
Moreover, every true friendship presupposes a love of mutual
benevolence; it is not sufficient that it exist on the part of one
person only. The two friends should wish each other well. And the more
elevated the good which they wish each other, the more noble is this
friendship. It is based on virtue when friends wish each other not
only what is pleasant or useful like the goods of earth and fortune,
but what is virtuous - fidelity to duty, progress in the love of moral
and spiritual good.
Lastly, to constitute a true friendship, this mutual love of
benevolence does not suffice. We may, in fact, have benevolence for a
person at a distance, whom we know only through hearsay, and that
person may have the same benevolence for us; we are not, however,
friends for that reason. Friendship requires in addition a community
of life (convivere). It implies that people know each other, love each
other, live together, spiritually at least, by the exchange of most
secret thoughts and feelings. Friendship thus conceived tends to a
very close union of thought, feeling, willing, prayer, sacrifice, and
action.
These three characters of true friendship - the love of
benevolence, mutual love, and community of life - are precisely found
in the charity which unites us to God and to souls in Him.
The natural inclination which already subsists in the depths of our
will, in spite of original sin, inclines us to love God, the Author of
our nature, more than ourselves and above all, as in an organism the
part loves the whole more than itself, as the hand exposes itself
naturally to preserve the body and especially the head.(5) But this
natural inclination, attenuated by original sin, cannot, without the
grace which heals (gratia sanans), lead us to an efficacious
love of God above all things.(6)
Far above this natural inclination, we received in baptism
sanctifying grace and charity with faith and hope. And charity is
precisely this love of mutual benevolence which makes us wish God, the
Author of grace, the good that is suitable to Him, His supreme reign
over souls, as He wishes our good for time and eternity. Such a desire
is indeed a friendship based on community of life, for God has
communicated to us a participation in His intimate life by giving us
grace, the seed of eternal life.(7) By grace, we are "born of God," as
we read in the prologue of St. John's Gospel; we resemble God as
children resemble their father. And this community of life implies a
permanent union, which is at times only habitual, for example, during
sleep; at others, when we make an act of love of God, it is actual.
Then there is truly community of life, the meeting of the paternal
love of God for His child, and of the love of the child for the Father
who vivifies it and blesses it. This is especially true when, by a
special inspiration, the Lord inclines us to an act of infused love,
which we could not make with common, actual grace. There is a
spiritual communion, the prelude of the spiritual communion of heaven,
which will no longer be measured by time, but by the indivisible
instant of changeless eternity.
Such is indeed the friendship with God which begins on earth.
Because Abraham had this love, he was called the friend of God. For
the same reason the Book of Wisdom tells us that the just man lives in
the divine friendship, and Christ says: "I will not now call you
servants. . . but I have called you friends." By his analysis of the
distinctive marks of friendship, St. Thomas only explains these divine
words; he does not deduce a new truth; he explains revealed truth and
enables us to penetrate it deeply.(8)
Charity, even in its least degree, makes us love God more than
ourselves and more than His gifts with an efficacious love of esteem,
because God is infinitely better than we and than every created gift.
Efficacious love of esteem is not always felt, for example, in
aridity; and at the beginning it has not yet the intensity or
spontaneity that it has in the perfect, and especially in the blessed.
A good Christian mother feels her love for her child, whom she holds
in her arms, more than her love for God, whom she does not see; yet,
if she is truly Christian, she loves the Lord with an efficacious love
of esteem more than her child. For this reason, theologians
distinguish commonly between appreciative love (love of esteem) and
intensive love, which is generally greater for loved ones whom we see
than for those who are at a distance. But, with the progress of
charity, the love of esteem for God becomes more intense and is known
as zeal; in heaven its impetuosity will exceed that of all our
strongest affections.
Such is the nature of the virtue of charity; it is the principle of
a love of God that is like the flowing of our hearts toward Him who
draws us and vivifies us. Thus we ultimately find a great
gratification in Him, desiring that He may reign more and more
profoundly in our souls and in the souls of others. For this love of
God, knowledge is not necessary; to know our heavenly Father through
faith suffices. We cannot cease to love Him without beginning our own
destruction, and we can cease to love Him by any mortal sin.
The efficacious love of esteem of God above all else, which may
subsist in great aridity of the sensible faculties, is very much
opposed to sentimentality, which is the affectation of a love one does
not have.
Since such is the nature of charity, what are the indications of
its progress? There are, first of all, the signs of the state of
grace: (I) not to be conscious of any mortal sin; (2) not to seek
earthly things, pleasures, wealth, honors; (3) to take pleasure in the
presence of God, to love to think of Him, adore Him, pray to Him,
thank Him, ask His pardon, talk to Him, aspire to Him.(9) To these
signs must be added the following: (4) to wish to please God more than
all those whom one loves; (5) to love one's neighbor effectively, in
spite of the defects which are in him, as they are in us, and to love
him because he is the child of God and is beloved by Him. Then one
loves God in one's neighbor, and one's neighbor in God. Christ says:
"By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have
love one for another." (10)
These signs are summed up in St. Paul's words: "Charity is patient,
is kind; charity envieth not, dealeth 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." (11)
Happy is the heart that loves God in this manner, without any other
pleasure than that which it has in pleasing God! If the soul is
faithful, it will one day taste the delights of this love and take an
unequaled happiness in Him who is limitless good, the infinite
plenitude of good, into which the soul may plunge and lose itself as
in a spiritual ocean without ever meeting with any obstacle. Thus the
just man begins to love God with a love of esteem (appreciative love)
above all things, and he tends to love Him above all intensively with
the ardent zeal which perseveres in aridity in the midst of trials and
persecutions.
THE LOVE OF GOD AND OUR NATURAL DISPOSITIONS
But, it will be objected, there are harsh, rude, bitter characters,
little inclined to affection. How, therefore, does what we have just
said apply to them? St. Francis de Sales replies to this objection as
St. Thomas does, stating that one cannot admit, without falling into
the naturalism of the Pelagians, that the distribution of divine love
is made to men according to their natural qualities and
dispositions.(12) St. Francis de Sales adds:
The supernatural love which God by His goodness pours into our
hearts. . . is in the supreme point of the spirit. . . , which is
independent of every natural character. . . . It is, nevertheless,
true that naturally loving souls, once they are well purified of the
love of creatures, do marvels in holy love, love finding a great
ease in dilating itself in all the faculties of their hearts. Thence
proceeds a very agreeable sweetness, which does not appear in those
whose souls are harsh, melancholy, and untractable.
Nevertheless, if two persons, one of whom is loving and gentle,
the other naturally fretful and bitter, have an equal charity, they
will doubtless love God equally, but not similarly. The heart that
is naturally gentle will love more easily, amiably, sweetly, but not
more solidly, or more perfectly. Thus the love which will arise
among the thorns and repugnances of a harsh and cold nature, will be
braver and more glorious, as the other will be more delightful and
charming.(13)
It matters little, then, whether one is naturally disposed to
love when it is a question of a supernatural love by which one acts
only supernaturally. Only, Theotime, I would gladly say to all men:
Oh, mortals! If your hearts are inclined to love, why do you not
aspire to celestial and divine love? But, if you are harsh and
bitter of heart, poor souls, since you are deprived of natural love,
why do you not aspire to supernatural love, which will lovingly be
given you by Him who calls you in so holy a manner to love Him? (14)
From this doctrine on the relation of the life of grace and of
our natural dispositions spring consequences of great importance in
mystical theology. (15)
PROGRESSIVE CONFORMITY TO THE SIGNIFIED DIVINE
WILL
The love of conformity consists in wishing all that the divine will
signifies to us as being its intention.(16) This will is signified to
us by the precepts and by the counsels conformable to our vocation,
and by events, some of which are painful and unexpected.(17) We are
speaking of the signified divine will when we say in the Our Father:
"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Thus we see what
progressive conformity to the divine will should be.
To love God in prosperity is good, provided that one does not love
prosperity as much or more than God Himself. In any case, this is only
an inferior degree of love, easy to all. When facility in the practice
of duty ceases, to love the divine will in its commandments, counsels,
inspirations, to live by it, constitutes a second degree which is more
perfect and which recalls the words of Jesus: "My meat is to do the
will of Him that sent Me." (18)
But we must also imitate Christ in loving God in painful and
unbearable things, in daily vexations and tribulations, which His
providence permits in our lives for a higher good. And, indeed, we
cannot truly love God unless we love these tribulations, not in
themselves, but for the spiritual good which results from patience in
bearing them. Consequently, to love sufferings and afflictions for the
love of God is the highest degree of holy charity. Our adversities are
then converted into good, for, as St. Paul says: "To them that love
God [and who persevere in this love], all things work together unto
good." (19)
St. Francis de Sales (20) remarks on the subject of ardent love
that, according to Plato, it is poor, ragged, naked, pale, emaciated,
homeless, always indigent; it sleeps out of doors on the hard ground,
for it makes a man leave everything for the one he loves; it causes
him to lose sleep and to aspire to an ever closer union. Plato spoke
thus of natural love; but, adds the holy Bishop of Geneva, all of this
is still truer of divine love when it wounds a soul deeply. Therefore,
St. Paul wrote: "Even unto this hour we both hunger and thirst, and
are naked, and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode. . . . We are
made as the refuse of this world." (21)
"Who reduced him to this state," asks St. Francis de Sales, "except
love? It was love which cast St. Francis of Assisi naked before his
bishop and made him die naked on the ground. It was love that made him
a beggar all his life. It was love that sent the great St. Francis
Xavier, poor, indigent, tattered, here and there in the Indies; . . .
it was love which reduced the great cardinal, St. Charles, archbishop
of Milan, to such poverty. . . that he was (in his episcopal palace)
like a dog in the house of his master."
The love of conformity to the divine will is like a fire, the
flames of which are the more beautiful and bright as they are fed with
more delicate matter, for example, with drier, purer, and better wood.
For this reason, says the same saint, every love that does not have
its origin in the Savior's passion is frivolous and dangerous.(22) The
death of Jesus, the supreme expression of His love for us, is the
strongest incentive to our love of Him. Nothing satisfies our hearts
as does the love of Jesus Christ, by the way of perfect spoliation
which unites the soul very closely to the divine will.(23)
The love of conformity to the divine will signified by the precepts
and counsels, and by events, enables us to abandon ourselves to the
divine will of good pleasure, not yet manifested, on which our future
depends.(24) In this filial abandonment there is faith, hope, and love
of God; it may be expressed as follows: "Lord, I trust in Thee!" From
this comes the motto: "Fidelity and abandonment," which preserves the
balance between activity and passivity, above slothful quiet and
restless and fruitless agitation. Abandonment is the way to follow;
daily and hourly fidelity, the steps to take on this way. By fidelity
in the light of the commandments, we enter the obscure mystery of the
divine good pleasure, which is that of predestination.
We certainly do not possess all the love we need; therefore, the
saints tell us, it is folly to expend our love inordinately upon
creatures. The cooling of divine love comes from venial sin or from
affection to venial sin. On the contrary, a generous act of charity
merits and obtains for us immediately the increase of this infused
virtue, which vivifies all the others and renders their acts
meritorious. The increase of charity prepares us to see God better
eternally and to love Him more intimately forever.
We should, therefore, deem as nothing all that we give to obtain
the priceless treasure of the love of God, of ardent love. He alone
gives to the human heart the interior charity that it lacks. Without
Him our hearts are cold; we experience only the passing warmth of an
intermittent fever.
When we give our love to God, He always gives us His. Indeed He
forestalls us for, without His grace, we could not rise above our
self-love; only grace, for which we should ask incessantly, just as we
always need air in order to breathe, gives us true generosity.
During the journey toward eternity, we must never say that we have
sufficient love of God. We should make continual progress in love. The
traveler (viator) who advances toward God progresses with steps of
love, as St. Gregory the Great says, that is, by ever higher acts of
love. God desires that we should thus love Him more each day. The song
of the journey toward eternity is a hymn of love, that of the holy
liturgy, which is the voice of the Church; it is the song of the
spouse of Christ.
It is not unfitting to tremble at times in the presence of God, but
love must predominate. We must fear God filially through love, and not
love Him through fear; therefore filial fear, that of sin, grows with
charity, whereas servile fear, that of punishment, diminishes.
Our love of God grows by our carrying the cross. St. Francis de
Sales declared: "The most generous and courageous characters are
formed in crosses and afflictions, and cowardly souls are pleased only
in prosperity. Moreover, the pure love of God is practiced far more
easily in adversities than in comforts, for tribulation has nothing
amiable about it except the hand of God who sends it . . . whereas
prosperity has of itself attractions which charm our senses." (25)
As the love of conformity to the divine will grows, it renders
sweet the sufferings on which it feeds; the soul then walks with
assurance according to the words of the Savior: "He that followeth Me
walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life." (26)
The love of God grows each time we mortify self-love. To desire
ardently divine love, we must, therefore, retrench all that cannot be
quickened by it. Growing thus, the love of God renders the virtues
eminently more pleasing to God than they are by their own nature; the
meritorious degree of their acts depends upon the degree of love.
Thereby the accomplishment of our duties of state can be greatly
sanctified and not a minute will be lost for eternity.(27)
If a person has had a high degree of charity and has never sinned
mortally, but his love has grown cool through some attachment to
venial sin, he still keeps the treasure of lofty charity (28) although
he has lost its radiation or fervor like a golden chalice that has
become tarnished and covered with dust, or like a flame in a clouded
glass shade. Therefore, it is important to remove as quickly as
possible this dust, these spots, and restore to charity its fervor and
radiation.
As a practical conclusion, let us consider how we can subordinate
all our affections to the love of God. St. Francis de Sales tells us:
"I can combat the desire of riches and mortal pleasures either by the
scorn that they deserve or by the desire of immortal pleasures; and by
this second means, sensual and earthly love will be destroyed by
heavenly love. . . . Thus divine love supplants and subdues the
affections and passions," (29) or places them at its service.
The love of conformity to the divine will leads to the love of
complacency by which we rejoice over everything that contributes to
the glory of God: we rejoice that He possesses infinite wisdom,
limitless beatitude, that the whole universe is a manifestation of His
goodness, and that the elect will glorify Him eternally. The love of
complacency or of fruition is more particularly felt under a special
inspiration of God: in this sense it is infused and passive; whereas
the love of conformity of which we have spoken, may exist without this
special inspiration, with common actual grace; from this point of
view, it is called active.
For this reason certain authors have held that St. John of the
Cross proposed in The Ascent of Mount Carmel the union of the
love of conformity as the end of the ascetical life, and in The
Dark Night and The Living Flame the union of the passive
love of enjoyment as the end of the mystical life.
We, as well as many contemporary writers,(30) think, on the
contrary, that St. John of the Cross preserves the unity of the
spiritual life by speaking, in all his works, of only one end of the
normal development of the life of grace on earth, and of only one
union and transformation of love, which, it is true, presents itself
under two aspects. The first of these aspects is the entire conformity
of our will to the will of God; but this active gift of self is
normally accompanied by the communication of the divine life passively
received, which is the second aspect. Therefore the normal term of the
spiritual life is a state at once ascetical and mystical, in which the
perfection of active love, manifested by the virtues, is joined to
infused or passive love, which leads the soul to the summit of union.
The way leading to this union should, consequently, be not only active
but also passive; it implies both the active purification described in
The Ascent and the passive purification spoken of in The
Dark Night. They are two aspects of purification: in other words,
what the soul should do, and what it should receive and bear. Thus the
unity of the spiritual life is maintained, and perfect union is the
normal prelude of the life of heaven.(31)
|
|
1. The Dialogue, chap. 60. 2. Cf. supra,
chap. 3. pp. 30 f.
3. In the Book of Judith (8:22), Abraham is called the friend of
God. Wisdom (7:27) says that the just man lives in the divine
friendship. And Christ especially tells us: "I will not now call you
servants. . . but I have called you friends."
4. Cf. IIa IIae, q.23, a.1.
5. Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q.60, a.5; IIa IIae, q.26, a.3. See also St.
Francis de Sales, Treatise on tbe Love of God, Bk. I, chaps. 9,
16-18.
6. Summa, Ia IIae, q.109, a.3.
7. In supernatural attrition which, with the sacrament of penance,
justifies the soul, there is an initial love of benevolence, according
to many theologians; but there is not yet community of life, the
convivere, for there is not
the state of grace.
8. St. Thomas shows that therein lies the essence of charity.
9. In Ia IIae, q. 112, a.5, St. Thomas speaks of these signs, and he
adds others in the Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chaps. 21 f. Among
these last signs, St. Thomas enumerates the following: "To converse
with one's friend, to delight in his
presence, to be of one mind with one's friend through conformity of
will, the liberty of the sons of God is in this conformity, most
willingly to speak of God or to hear the word of God."
10. John 13:35.
11. Cf. I Cor. 13:4-7.
12. In his treatise on charity (IIa IIae, q.24, a. 3), St. Thomas
writes: "Since charity surpasses the proportion of human nature, . . .
(and of angelic nature) it depends, not on any natural virtue, but on
the sole grace of the Holy Ghost who infuses charity." Cf. Eph. 4:7:
"To everyone of us is given grace according to the measure of the
giving of Christ." Cf. Rom. 12: 3; I Cor. 12:11.
St. Thomas likewise says (Ia IIae, q. 109, a.6): "Man cannot
prepare himself to receive the light of grace except by the gratuitous
help of God moving him inwardly." Ibid., q. 112, a.3, and also a.4:
"The first cause of this diversity [of graces] is to be sought on the
part of God, who dispenses His gifts of grace variously, that the
beauty and perfection of the Church may result from these various
degrees."
13. Thus it is, as has often been said, that meekness dominated in
St. Francis de Sales, and fortitude in St. Jane de Chantal.
14. Treatise on the Love of God, Bk. XII, chap. I.
15. Those who do not wish to admit that mystical contemplation
proceeds from infused faith illumined by the gifts of wisdom and
understanding, and who thus misunderstand the traditional doctrine of
the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost granted to all the just, may seek to
explain the mystical life in two very different manners.
Some, whose minimizing of the necessity of grace here recalls
Pelagian naturalism, will apply their doctrine not to common Christian
life but to the mystical life. They will declare that the mystical
life is explained especially by the natural qualities of certain
persons who are more emotional and poetical than others. In this
system there is danger of confounding the true mysticism of the great
servants of God, for instance, of St. John of the Cross and St.
Teresa, with the sentimentality or the affectation of sentiment which
they combated ardently, teaching that in the interior life we must not
seek to feel consolation, but to tend toward God in aridity as well as
in joy.
Others, on the contrary, to escape admitting that the infused
contemplation of the mysteries of faith and the union with God
resulting from it is in the normal way of sanctity, will seek to
explain the mystical life by extraordinary graces, such as prophecy,
and will not adequately distinguish it from
visions and revelations. St. John of the Cross, on the other hand,
continually insisted on this distinction, maintaining that as much as
one should desire the close union with God, which becomes the
transforming union, just so much
should one avoid the desire of extraordinary and, as it were, exterior
graces, such as visions and revelations. These deviations show how
important it is to preserve the traditional doctrine on the relations
of the life of grace to our natural dispositions.
16. Cf. St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, Bk.
VIII, chap. 3; Bk. IX, chap. 6.
17. Cf.. Summa, Ila, q. 19, a. 11 f., and Ia IIae, q. 19, a.9 f.
18. John 4:34.
19. Rom.8:28.
20. Treatise on tbe Love of God, Bk. VI, chap. 15.
21. Cf.I Cor.4:11, 13.
22. The Love of God, Bk. IX, chap. 16.
23. Ibid.
24. The signified will of God is thus the domain of obedience, and
His will of good pleasure not yet manifested is the domain of
abandonment.
25. Cf. L'Esprit de saint Francois de Sales, Part XV, chap. 13.
26. John 8: 12.
27. Cf. St. Alphonsus Liguori, Opusc. Uniformita alla volonta di
Dio.
28. Summa, IIa IIae, q.24, a.10.
29. Treatise on the Love of God, Bk. XI, chap. 20.
30. This opinion is held by Fathers Arintero, O.P., Gardeil, O.P.,
Msgr. A. Saudreau, Father Gabriel of St. Magdalen, OCD., and several
modern writers of the same Order; also by Father A. Rozwadowski, S.J.;
cf. La Vie Spirituelle, January, 1936, suppl. pp. [1]-[28].
31. Cf. infra, chap. 29, for a discussion of the errors of the
quietists in regard to contemplation and pure love.
|
