Salesian Literature

Chapter 17:  Charity, in hope, is genuine but imperfect

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Love, as practised in hope, is undoubtedly directed towards God, but it also comes back to us.  While it has the goodness of God in view, it also has an eye to our own advantage; while it looks up to the perfections of God, it also looks out for our own satisfaction.  Such love does not lift us upto God, I mean, because he is supremely good in himself, but because he is supremely good to us.

 

It is a question, you see, of ours and us.  It is genuine love – no doubt of that; but it is selfish love – loving for what we can get out of it.  I am not saying, however, that this love turns back on us to such an extent that we love God only out of love for ourselves.  Good heavens, no! To love God solely out of self-love, to make our own convenience the measure of our love for God – that would be to commit grave sacrilege.  The man who loves God only out of self-love, loves self as he should love God and loves God as he should love self.

 

However, there is all the difference in the world between saying, “I love God for the reward I expect from him”, and saying, “I love God only for the reward I am expecting”; just as there is all the difference between saying, “I love God for my own sake”, and saying, “I love God only because I love myself.”  If I say that I love God for my own sake, I mean that I love to feel God is mine, that he is my supreme good; and this is the pious emotion of the bride in the Song of Songs, as she cries out again and again in extreme gratification: all mine, my true love, and I all his … who but I the longing of his heart? (Cant. 2:16; 6:2; 7:10).  But if I were to say that I love God for love of myself, I would mean that self-love is the whole point of my love for God; so that my love for God would be dependent on, subordinate to, my love of self – a monstrous impiety.

 

That love, then, which we call hope, is a self-regarding love, but it is a saintly, well-regulated love of self.  We are not drawing God down to our own level, turning him to our own advantage; we are uniting ourselves to him as our last end, our final happiness.  We love ourselves as well as God, but we do not put ourselves on the same level as him, or even prefer ourselves to him.  Self-love is all mixed up with our love for God, but love of him floats to the top.  Self-love clearly enters into our love for God, but as a mere motive, not the chief end in view.  We are to some extent thinking of ourselves, but God holds the first place.

 

Yes, Theotimus, there is no doubt of it: when we love God as our supreme good, we are not loving him for a quality which brings him down to us, but for one which lifts us up, brings us home to him.  We are not his goal, his ambition, his perfection; but he is ours.  He is not our property, we are his; he does not depend on us, we depend on him.  In a word: as our supreme good, which we love, he gains nothing from us, but we gain all from him.  He is rich and bountiful in our regard; we are merely expressing our wants, our poverty.

 

Loving God as our supreme good, then, is in no way dishonourable or disrespectful; we are acknowledging him to be our perfection, our refreshment, our goal, in the possession of which our happiness lies.

 

In hope, however, love is imperfect; it is not drawn to God’s infinite goodness for what it is in itself, but for what it is to us.  Still, as this kind of love knows no better motive than that which results from reflection on the supreme good, we claim to love God supremely by it.  In fact, however, no one, by this love alone, can either keep all God’s commandments or win eternal life; without charity such love is emotional rather than practical.

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A TREATISE ON THE LOVE OF GOD

BOOK 2: 

Charity comes to Life