Salesian Literature

Chapter 5  :  Two further advanced stages in loving God above all things

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Other souls there are who neither love unnecessary things nor love them to excess, but love only what God means them to love and in the way he wishes it.  Happy souls! – they love God, their friends in God, their enemies for God; they love many things as well as God, but every single one in God and for his sake.  God it is they love – not only more than anything else, but in everything, and everything in him.

 

Such souls love nothing save in God, although they love many things besides God, and God besides many things.  St. Luke records that our Lord invited a young man, who clearly had a great love for him, to be his follower; but the young man also deeply loved his father, and so wanted to go home to him.  Our Lord suppressed what was excessive in this love, aroused a less mixed emotion, so that the young man would not only love our Lord more than his father, but love his father only in our Lord: Leave the dead to bury their dead; it is for thee, who hast found life, to go out and proclaim God’s kingdom (Lk. 9:59-60).

 

Obviously souls such as these enjoy so great a union with the bridegroom that they deserve to share his rank, to reign with him as queens; they are entirely devoted to him, there is nothing to come between them, and they love nothing besides or apart form him, only in him and for his sake.

 

Finally, above all other souls stands one who is unique – the queen of queens, the most loving, most lovable, most beloved of the bridegroom’s friends.  She not only loves God more than anything and everything, but it is only God she loves in anything, so that she does not love many things but one only –God. because God is the sole object of her love in anything she loves, she loves him uniformly everywhere – as his sweet will requires – above and beyond all things else.

 

If I love my Saviour for himself alone, shall I not love Calvary no less than Tabor, since he is truly to be found on both?  Why not say as wholeheartedly as one as on the other: It is well to be here? (Mt. 17:4).

 

The surest sign that we love God alone in everything is if we love him equally in everything; he is ever the same, so any variation in love for him on our part must result from reflection on something that has nothing to do with him.

 

Such a soul would have no less love of the king of all things, if nothing else existed; anything apart from God, or alien to him, does not count.  Such a one is so single-hearted that she is in love with heaven only because love of the bridegroom reigns there.  So supremely loved is he in that heaven of his that, had he no paradise to bestow, the loving soul would find him neither less lovable nor less beloved.  It is not the bridegroom’s heaven, but only heaven’s bridegroom, that she can being herself to love.  As long as she can find the bridegroom, Calvary while he is crucified is as dear to her as heaven when he is glorified.  Thus perfect love finds God as lovable in himself alone as taken together with all that he has made, for perfect love embraces all things only in God and for his sake.

 

Only one soul has ever reached the peak of perfection in the love of God – the blessed Virgin, our Lady.  So unique is she, in love beyond compare, that all other souls pale by comparison.

 

However, aside from this peerless queen in her matchless eminence, there have undoubtedly been others who reached such a state of unmixed love that in comparison with the rest they could rank as queens, as the bridegroom’s special friends.  Take that man who sang to God with all his heart: What else does heaven hold for me, but thyself?  What charm for me has earth, here at thy side? (Ps. 72:25)  Or the man who exclaimed: There is nothing I do not write down as loss compared with the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord; for love of him I have lost everything, treat everything else as refuse, if I may have Christ to my credit (Phil. 3:8).  Surely here was proof that he loved nothing apart from his Master, that he loved his Master apart form all things else!

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