Salesian Literature

Chapter 7:  A description of love in general terms

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So powerfully does goodness attract, the will immediately seeks satisfaction in that direction, once it becomes aware of something good, of something most agreeable to it.

 

At the same time as the will becomes aware of good, shown by the intellect, it experiences a sudden pleasure, a sense of gratification.  This moves and inclines the will, gently but powerfully, in the direction of what it loves, so as to become one with it.  Satisfaction also drives the will to discover the most suitable way of achieving that union.

 

There is a close connection evidently between goodness and will.  This connection, or attraction, produces the satisfaction which the will experiences when it becomes aware of good.  The satisfaction, in turn, moves and inclines the will towards the good.  The goal of this movement is union.  Finally the will – in its movement and quest for union – tries every means of reaching it.

 

Take, if you will, the workings of insensitive love between magnet and iron – a striking likeness of the sensitive, voluntary love I am discussing.  The connection between iron and magnet is so close that, as soon as iron feels the magnet’s power, it is attracted towards it, quivers with satisfaction, begins to move, and strives at all costs for contact, for union.  There you have the several stages of love admirably portrayed by inanimate things.

 

When all is said, however, love – properly speaking is the will’s satisfaction in, and movement towards, what it loves.  Satisfaction, however, is only the beginning of love; the essence of love lies in movement – the heart going out to the object loved.  Satisfaction, in short, is the first impulse, the first emotion, which goodness produces in the will; this emotion is followed by the will’s movement out towards the thing loved; and that is love, really and truly.  Quite clearly, then, love is simply the movement, outflowing and progression of the heart towards good.

 

Now this movement, which satisfaction causes, continues until union with, or possession and enjoyment of, the object loved is achieved.  That is why, when the good for which a man is striving is at hand, the impulse simply gives his heart a push, unites it with the object, and in this way achieves possession.  It is then called “gratifying love”; no sooner has it sprung from the first satisfaction, than it culminates in a second – union with the object to hand.  But when the good on which the heart is set, towards which it moves, is far away in space or time; or when union cannot be as perfectly achieved as one expected – then the movement of the heart in the direction of the absent object is, strictly speaking, termed “desire”.  Desire is simply the appetite, lust or greed, for things we do not possess, but which we mean to have.

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