Salesian Literature

Chapter 14:  Love is the synonym of charity

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St. Augustine[1], clearly demonstrates that the term “love” has no less sacred a connotation than the word “affection”.  Each of them, he says, can mean sometimes a pious emotion, sometimes a depraved passion; and he quotes various texts in support of this view.

 

St. Denis[2], an expert on the names of God, is even more emphatically in favour of using the word “love”.  Theologians, he explains (an he means the apostles and their first disciples – he knew no others) used “love” more frequently than “affection”, to correct the common people and break them of their habit of giving “love” a profane or carnal sense.  Although these theologians thought of love and affection as synonyms, “yet some of them thought that love was more suitable in reference to God – so St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote: ‘My love is crucified.’”

 

Love implies greater zest, greater effectiveness, seems to be more active than affection.  That is why “affection”, for the Romans, was not as strong a word as “love” – “Clodius”, says their great Orator Cicero, “bears me great affection; to put it more strongly, he loves me.”

 

Love, then, has rightly become the synonym of charity – love at its highest.  So, for these reasons, and because I intend to treat of active rather than habitual charity, I have called this treatise The love of God.

 

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[1]  City of God, 14,7.

[2]  The Divine Names, 4.

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