Love and the Beauty of God

“To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (Mk 12:33)

Today I would like to share a few thoughts on love from John Cassian’s Eleventh Conference: On Perfection.  There he asks: what is it that draws us to follow God’s commandments, to lead a life of virtue, rather than to follow our own whims and preferences, to lead a life of vice?  He comes up with three possibilities:
1) Fear – dread of judgment, punishment.
2) Hope – desire for the kingdom, future rewards.
3) Love – disposition for the good itself, love of virtue.

We may compare this to St Benedict’s account of the motivations for obedience in Chapter 5 of the Rule.  Obedience, he says, may be undertaken:
- because of dread of hell (fear),
- for the glory of eternal life (hope),
- on account of one’s profession (duty/fidelity),
- but it comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all (love).

Clearly not all these motivations are of equal value.  Drawing on the story of the Prodigal son, Cassian points to three levels: that of the slave (servile), the hireling (working for pay), and the son (beloved).  The Prodigal son progresses:
1) From slavery to vice, as salutary fear moves him to compunction and a change of life.  “I will go back to my father.”
2) He decides to return to the father and to a life of good works, striving for the reward of his daily bread: “I am not worthy to be called your son, make me as one of your hirelings.”
3) Unexpectedly, his father restores him to sonship, with the “disposition of a son who trusts in the generosity of his father’s indulgence and who has no doubt that everything which belongs to his father is his.” (Conf 11.7.1)

So, if I reflect on my motivations in any given situation, I may be acting as slave, as hireling or as son.  But what if we look at it from the other side.  What does my motivation say about who God is for me?
Who is God if I fear him? – a pure, all-demanding master.
Who is God if I desire to get something from him? – a great, all-powerful benefactor.
Who is God if I love him? – a Father who gives away all he has and receives his son back unconditionally.

The character of the father is all-important here: that father who hurries to embrace his errant child.  I can only stand as a beloved son before a father worthy of that name.  He stands for the Father of Jesus Christ, the Beloved Son who can stand before him in total trust and say: “All I have is yours, and all you have is mine.” (Jn 17:10)

Both Cassian and Benedict express the positive value of fear of hell and desire for heaven.  Fear is what gets the Prodigal moving out of the pigsty.  Desire is what speeds him along the road back to his father.  Sometimes fear or desire is the best we can do.  Sometimes it is the right thing for the moment.  But we are called to transcend the infantilism which acts unconsciously to avoid punishment and gain reward.  Perfect love is not coerced.  As Cassian puts it:
“Finally, it is far greater not to wish to depart from the good because of goodness itself than not to consent to evil because of fear of evil.  For in the former the good is willed, whereas in the latter it is as it were violently forced out of someone who is unwilling, whether by fear of punishment of by desire for rewards.” (Conf 11.8.3)

St Benedict also makes clear that our motivations should be purified over time: “Having climbed all these steps of humility, therefore, the monk will presently come to that perfect love of God which casts out fear.  And all those precepts
which formerly he had not observed without fear, he will now begin to keep by reason of that love, without any effort, as though naturally and by habit.  No longer will his motive be the fear of hell, but rather the love of Christ, good habit and delight in the virtues which the Lord will deign to show forth by the Holy Spirit in His servant now cleansed from vice and sin.” (RB 7.67-70)

According to St Bernard, we are called to move from a love centered on ourselves for our own sake, to one centered on God, initially for our own sake, but then, gradually, to love God for his own sake, not just because of what he gives us or saves us from, but because he is himself all lovable.  Being consumed by this vision of God’s lovableness, we may eventually reach the point of loving ourselves and all things for God’s sake, by virtue of his love.

Cassian concludes: “We shall, then, be unable to mount to that true perfection unless, just as he first loved us for no other reason than our salvation, we also love him for no other reason than sheer love of him.” (Conf 11.7.6)
We may compare this to St Bernard’s famous words: “Love is sufficient for itself.  It is its own merit and its own reward.  I love because I love; I love that I may love.”

I think another way of putting this complete lovableness of God is beauty.  Our love for God is elicited by his beauty.  St Augustine puts it in unforgettable terms:
“Beautiful is God, the Word with God … He is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth; beautiful in the womb, beautiful in his parents’ arms, beautiful in his miracles, beautiful in his sufferings; beautiful in inviting to life, beautiful in not worrying about death, beautiful in giving up his life and beautiful in taking it up again; he is beautiful on the Cross, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in heaven. Listen to the song with understanding, and let not the weakness of the flesh distract your eyes from the splendor of his beauty.” (St Augustine, quoted in Vita Consecrata #24)

We learn to love by beholding the beauty of God.  As the first letter of John says:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.” (1 Jn 3:2)
For his part, St Paul says that God’s love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.  This means it is not an external command, and not even two commands: love of God and of neighbor.  If we fall in love with God because he is infinitely loving and lovable, we are infused with the capacity for the very same love.  Seeing him as he really is, in beauty, we become like him and so are enabled – gradually, hopefully, one day! – to love others with his love, without any effort, as though naturally and by habit.  Being a true child of God: “in peaceful imitation of God, it always bestows the love of its own heart on the good and the bad, the just and the unjust.” (Conf 11.9.4)

Our chaplain likes to remind us on memorial days for the dead that our love reaches from one end of the earth to the other and from the beginning of time to the end.  Of course, it’s not our own love, but God’s infinite love that we participate in.  On certain special days we are given a chance to touch that universal love.

On All Saints Day we receive love and love and love from that great cloud of witnesses who, seeing him as he is, become like him; loving him, they become fountains of his love for the world.  They are not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, to join our procession to theirs.  Wearing white robes and carrying palm branches in our hands, their hope, fulfilled, rekindles ours.  

On All Souls Day we are ourselves invited to become fountains for all those who have gone before us in death, especially during this past year.  As we stand in the cemetery, calling out into the cold November air the names of our beloved dead, and all the dead whose names we do not know, they are at that moment consciously drawn into our presence and our love.

So let us enter into these holy days with full confidence in God’s power to transform us and our world by his mighty mystery of love.

Image: The Prodigal Son, Rembrandt