Salesian Literature

Chapter 4  :  Our knowledge of God in this world is the source, not the standard, of love

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Which is stronger, can you tell me: love in turning our gaze towards God, or sight in turning our hearts?

 

Love demands knowledge, for we can never love the unknown; the more thorough does our knowledge of something good become, the deeper grows our love for it – as long as the emotion meets with no impediment.  Still, it often happens that love, due to knowledge, does not keep pace with what the mind perceives, but spurts well on ahead.

 

In this life, then, our love for God can exceed our knowledge of him.  Hence St. Thomas’ assertion[1] that women and childlike souls excel in devotion, more capable as a rule of loving God than are university professors and artists.

 

According to the Chronicles of the Friars Minor:

 

The saintly Brother Giles, who was among the first companions of St. Francis of Assisi, once said to St. Bonaventure: ‘You scholars are blessed indeed – your wide knowledge supplies you with ample material for praising God; we simpletons, what are we to do?’

 

‘All you need is the grace to love God,’ replied St. Bonaventure.

 

‘But, Father,’ retorted Brother Giles, ‘do you mean that an ignorant man can love God as much as an educated one?’

 

‘Of course he can,’ said St. Bonaventure; ‘a poor simple woman, let me tell you, can love God every bit as much as a doctor of theology.’

 

At this, Brother Giles, carried away by the idea, exclaimed: ‘Love your Saviour, poor simple woman, and you will be as great as Brother Bonaventure!’

 

The will becomes aware of something good only through the medium of the intelligence, that is certain; once aware of goodness, however, it has no further need of understanding for love to be active – the pleasure it feels, or looks forward to feeling, from union with the good is strong enough to be a powerful stimulus to love, to the desire of possession.  So that knowledge of good is the origin of love, but not its measure; just as we notice that awareness of an insult arouses anger which, if not immediately stifled, nearly always goes beyond what is justified.  The passions do not simply follow in the wake of knowledge that excites them; they often leave it behind in their headlong rush after what attracts them.

 

Such activity is much more violent in the case of charity.  Our wills are not directed then by natural knowledge, but by the light of faith; since this assures us that God is infinite in goodness, it gives us sufficient grounds for loving him the most we can…

 

Deep into the earth we dig in search of gold and silver, toiling in the present for something that is still a fond hope for the future, as uncertain knowledge sets us to work in real earnest.  The more likely it appears that we have struck a vein or ore, the more avidly do we continue the search.  A tiny scent is enough to set a pack of hounds in fully cry.  So knowledge, veiled by clouds of obscurity, like the knowledge we have through faith, gives us a strong desire to love the goodness it helps us to discern.  What truth there is in St. Augustine’s anguished cry, “the ignorant take heaven by storm”[2]; whereas many with all their learning are swallowed up in hell!

 

To your way of thinking, Theotimus, which of these two men would have the greater love for the light: a blind man, without sight from birth, who knew all that scientists have said in explanation and praise of it; or a ploughman, with keen eyes, who sees and enjoys the beauty of the rising sun?  the blind man knows more about it, but the ploughman enjoys it more; and that enjoyment begets a much more passionate, intense love than ever mere intellectual knowledge can do – experiencing something good is vastly more enjoyable than knowing all the scientific facts about it.

 

Our love for God starts with knowledge that faith gives of his goodness, a goodness we go on to experience and enjoy through love; love whets our appetite, but appetite increases our love.

 

Who loved God more, I ask you: the theologian Occam, from time to time described as the most logical of men; or St. Catherine of Genoa, an illogical woman? His knowledge of God was mostly from books, hers only from experience; yet her experience led her to the heights of seraphic love, while he – for all his learning – remained a stranger to such perfect bliss.

 

Still, we have to confess that the will, while it is attracted by the delight it feels in what it loves, is borne onwards towards union much more vigorously when the intellect also plays its part by setting forth to perfection the goodness of the thing we love.  Now the will is attracted and impelled at one and the same time – impelled by knowledge, attracted by pleasure.  Knowledge, then, is not an obstacle, but an aid to devotion; if we can have both, each helps the other.

 

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[1]  Summa Theologica, 2.2.q.82.a.3.ad.3.

[2]  cf. Confessions, 8.8.

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