Salesian Literature

Part II:  Salesian Commentary

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B. Inspired Narratives

::   First Narrative   ::   Second Narrative   ::   Third Narrative   ::   Fourth Narrative   ::   Fifth Narrative

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Second narrative (1:4)

 

“Ah do not consider my tint,

for I am truly brown,

seeing that my Beloved, who is my sun,

has beamed the rays of his love on me…”

 

it is (a) well known fact that human love has the strength not only of wounding the heart but of rendering sick the body, even to death.  Seeing that a passion and the temperament of the body have much power to incline the soul and to draw it after itself, likewise the affections of the soul have a great strength in order to stir the temperaments and to change the qualities of the body.

But beyond that, love, when it is vehement, so impetuously carries the soul by the thing loved and occupies it so strongly, that it lacks all other operations, whether sensitive or intellectual.  Hence, in order to nourish this love and promote it, it seems that the soul abandons every other concern, even every other exercise of itself.

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For (this) Plato has said that love was “poor, torn, naked, laid bare, pitiful, homeless, lying outside on the hard ground (or) in the doorways, (and) always indigent.”

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It is “poor” because it leaves everything for the thing loved.

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It is “homeless” because it makes the soul leave its home in order to follow always the one who is loved.

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It is “pitiful,” pale, meagre and worn out because it loses sleep, drink and food.

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It is “naked and laid bare” because it leaves all other affections in order to take those of the things loved.

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It lies “outside on the hard ground” because it lives uncovered (in) the heart which loves, manifesting its passions to him by sighs, lamentations, praises, conjectures (and) jealousies.

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It is completely outstretched, as a beggar “in the doorways,” because it makes the lover perpetually attentive to the eyes and mouth of the things which it loves and always attached to its ears in order to speak (to) it and to beg its favours, with which it is never satiated.  Now the eyes, the ears, and the mouth are the doors of the soul.

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And finally, its life is that of being always “indigent” since once it is satisfied, it is no longer ardent, and consequently, it is no longer love.

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Certainly, I know well that Plato spoke in that way of object, vile and pitiful love.  But, for all that, these properties are nevertheless to be found (even) in heavenly and divine love.[1]

 

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[1] Oeuvres, Tome 4, p. 355. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 6, Chapter 15.

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