Salesian Literature

Chapter 3  :  Gratifying love knows at once possession and desire

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Our love for God takes its origin from the first satisfaction which the will experiences as soon as it becomes aware of his goodness, the moment it begins to reach out towards him.  Once love develops, intensifies that first satisfaction (as I have explained in the foregoing chapters), we find a place in our hearts for God’s perfections.

 

The enjoyment we take in him makes us happy; we are then experiencing one aspect of that loving contentment to which the bride in the Song of Songs gave voice: All mine, my true love (Cant. 2:16).  But since this gratifying love is not only something that we experience, but also something that has its origin in God, it is a mutual giving between the soul and God.  Gratifying love leads us to enjoy God’s perfections as though they were our own possessions; but those perfections, because they exceed the grasp of our minds, possess us.  In this way such satisfaction leads us not only to proclaim that God is ours, but to echo the second part of the bride’s contentment: and I all his.  Gratifying love puts us in possession of God, imprinting his perfections on our hearts; it also yields us into God’s possession, associating us with his perfections, lifting us up to his level.

 

Gratifying love fully satisfies the soul, yet still leaves it longing for satiety; while we take an intense delight in God’s goodness, we still want to go on doing so.  Ever satiating ourselves, we are always looking for more; ever absorbing, we are conscious always of having our fill.

 

In his first letter the head of the apostles declared that the prophets of old revealed the graces destined to overflow in the days of Christianity – among others, our Lord’s sufferings, and the glory that would crown them, not only through his risen body, but in his exalted name (cf. 1 Pet. 1:10-12).  Even the angels, he ends, long to behold the mystery of the Saviour’s redemptive work: and now they can satisfy their gaze.

 

But how is that to be taken?  If angels have sight of the Redeemer, if they see the whole mystery of our salvation made plain in him, how cant hey still be longing to view it?  That they have constant sight of him, Theotimus, is certain; so welcome, however, so highly pleasing is their vision that the gratification they enjoy satiates them without diminishing their desire.  Their enjoyment is not lessened by desire, but heightened; at the same time, their desire is not stifled, but exquisitely intensified by enjoyment.

 

The enjoyment of good, of something which always satisfies, is never blighted; it is continually renewed, constantly attractive, for ever desirable.  The enduring satisfaction of those in love with heavenly things begets a longing that knows unfailing contentment, as unceasing desire gives rise to a satisfaction that is endlessly coveted.  Once we are in possession of something finite, all longing for it ceases, only to reappear when the thing is taken away from us; possession and desire are incompatible.  When what we possess is infinite, however, desire can exist with possession, and possession with desire; the infinite has a way of gratifying desire by its presence, while all the time stimulating it by the magnitude of its own perfection – fostering in those who have it a constantly gratified desire, an ever-desired gratification.

 

When the human will meets with God, it rests in him, supremely satisfied; yet its desire remains active all the time.  While it longs to love, it still loves to have a longing; it desires love, yet loves desire.  Peace of heart does not mean that nothing is happening, but that nothing is lacking; it does not lie in suspension of movement, but in having no need to move.

 

The damned know a constant activity that is always agitated, never serene; in this life, while we are pilgrims, our affections are sometimes active, sometimes still; the saints in heaven are restful in their activity, active in their repose.  Only God knows a rest that is motionless, for he alone is pure actuality.  In our natural activity here we find no rest in movement; but when we attempt supernatural activity (when we try, in other words, to do acts of charity), we find rest in the outpouring of our hearts, we find movement in the repose of gratifying love for God – a foretaste of that future bliss on which our hearts are set.

 

That man who desires God while possessing him, does not desire him in the sense of being in quest of him; he is merely exercising his will in the very good it is enjoying.  Outpouring of heart in desire is not an effort to achieve possession; the heart has that already.  It is simply expanding its enjoyment – not to acquire something, but to maintain it; not to gain possession, but to find delight in it.

 

The lover is always seeking his beloved, St. Augustine comments; love goes on seeking what it has already found – not to have, but to have it always.

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