Salesian Literature

Chapter 1  :  Compliant love is born of gratification

​

When anyone pleases us, we want to please him in return – the harvest of good seed maturing in good soil (cf. Lk. 8:8).  The human heart, when it finds its gratification in God, yields a such a harvest; it cannot fail to wish, in its turn, to gratify God.

 

True love knows no ingratitude; it strives to please those who give it pleasure.  The likeness that often exists between lovers may be traced to this, for love brings to birth in us a resemblance to what we love.  So the enjoyment we find in God begins to make us godlike; our wills become his through the gratification he affords us.  Love, says St. Chrysostom, either finds people alike, or it makes them so.  Gently and imperceptibly we are influenced by the example of those we love, unconsciously falling under their authority.  In friendship we have no choice but to imitate, or part.

 

Other characteristics of what we love, moreover, besides those which gratify us, make their way in – like the man who found his way to the feast without a wedding-garment (cf. Mt. 22:11).  Thus Aristotle’s pupils went in for stuttering like their master, and Plato’s imitated his stoop.  After all, the delight which the beloved affords smuggles into a lover’s heart all the beloved’s characteristics.

 

That is why gratification transforms us into the likeness of the God we love; and the greater the gratification, the more imperfect is the transformation.  So the saints, who greatly loved, knew a speedy, a perfect transformation, as love traced on their hearts the habits, the dispositions of God, and of his will.

 

The fact is that a good man is good only because he had charity; for a man who loves, no legal obligations are necessary.  Love, after all, is the most forceful persuasion the human heart can know, when it comes to obeying and carrying out the wishes of the one it loves.  Love exerts its influence without fuss or force through mutual gratification – just as we are gratified by God, so we long to gratify him in return.

 

Love is the epitome of theology; it cloaks with holy learning the ignorance of the Pauls, the Anthonys, the Hilarys, the Simeons, the Francises, in default of books, of teachers, of skill.

 

The man who knows a genuine desire to please God, sincerely desires to please him and – in order to please him – grow in his likeness.

​

​

Back to Top

​