Salesian Literature

Chapter 17:  The ability to love God above all things is not natural to us

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Eagles, for all their spirit and strength of wing, have much greater powers of sight than flight; the range and sharpness of their vision far outstrips their wing-thrust.  So it is with the human soul’s natural propensity for God – it is more clear-minded t see God’s lovableness than strong-willed to love him.  Sin has weakened the will far more than it has clouded the intellect.  The rebellious sense appetite, which we call concupiscence, undoubtedly harasses the mind; chiefly, however, it stirs up trouble in the will.  That unfortunate faculty, weak already – shaken with the continuous attacks levelled at it by concupiscence – is unable to go on loving God more and more, as reason and a natural tendency prompt it to do.

 

It makes sad reading, the eloquent evidence of those great philosophers Socrates, Plato, Trismegistes, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Epictetus, Seneca – evidence of no little knowledge of God; even more than that, of no small attraction to him.  Those powerful minds, with all their knowledge of God, with all their urge to love him – dear Lord above! they lacked the strength, the spirit to love him aright.  They caught sight of his invisible nature, his eternal power and his divineness, as they are known through his creatures, says St. Paul (Rom. 1:20-21).  Thus there is no excuse for them; although they had the knowledge of God, they did not honour him or give thanks to him as God.  To some extent they reverenced him, affording him the highest titles of honour; yet they did not honour him as he should be honoured – more than anything else.

 

Our nature, after all, is sickly with the distressing weakness of sin.  It is like palm trees on the side of the world; they only sprout incompletely, trying, so to speak, to produce fruit, but not quite succeeding.  The maturing of ripe dates is reserved to hotter climates.  Left to itself, the human heart never gets beyond the rudiments, as it were, of loving God.  for love to reach maturity, when we love God more than anything else – that demands the life of grace, the habit of charity.  Imperfect love, a natural yearning of the heart, is nothing but an irresolute resolve; an ambition that would like to, but won’t; a sterile intention, unproductive of results; a paralysed will, gazing at the health-giving pool of charity, powerless to fling itself in (cf. Jn. 5:7).

 

What it comes to is this: such goodwill is abortive – no life in it, no enthusiasm, no strength for actually bringing itself to put God first.  St. Paul perfectly expresses the sinner’s experience: Praiseworthy intentions are always ready to hand, but I cannot find my way to the performance of them (Rom. 7:18).

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