Love is sufficient of itself, it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit,
its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself.
Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love.
Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows
back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it.
Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in
which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return
however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return;
the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made
happy by their love of him.
The Bridegroom’s love, or rather the love which is the Bridegroom, asks in return
nothing but faithful love. Let the beloved, then, love in return. Should not a bride love,
and above all, Love’s bride? Could it be that Love not be loved?
Rightly then does she give up all other feelings and give herself wholly to love alone;
in giving love back, all she can do is to respond to love. And when she has poured out
her whole being in love, what is that in comparison with the unceasing torrent of
that original source? Clearly, lover and Love, soul and Word, bride and Bridegroom,
creature and Creator do not flow with the same volume; one might as well equate a
thirsty man with the fountain.
What then of the bride’s hope, her aching desire, her passionate love, her confident assurance?
Is all this to wilt just because she cannot match stride for stride with her giant, any more than
she can vie with honey for sweetness, rival the lamb for gentleness, show herself as white as the
lily, burn as bright as the sun, be equal in love with him who is Love? No. It is true that the
creature loves less because she is less. But if she loves with her whole being, nothing is
lacking where everything is given. To love so ardently then is to share the marriage bond;
she cannot love so much and not be totally loved, and it is in the perfect union of
two hearts that complete and total marriage consists.
Or are we to doubt that the soul is loved by the Word first and with a greater love?
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Thursday, 9 October 2014
Let St. Bernard Answer Gradualism
