Loving A Hidden God
THE NATURE OF LOVE
The weight of a body drives it towards its own proper place. But a thing's weight does not necessarily seek the lowest place but rather that place that is appropriate for it. Thus, fire rises and stones fall. Oil poured over water remains on the surface of the water; water poured over oil sinks below the oil. Their weight causes them to seek their proper place. When things are out of place, they move. Once they find their proper place they are at rest. And so it is that my love is my weight; it is the force that moves me wheresoever I go.
Confessions, 13.9.10.
There are various ways in which we can be related to other human beings and to God. In the order in which they advance or arrest progress towards loving union, they are:
1. Hatred
2. Indifference
3. The "love of concupiscence" (amor concupiscentia)
4. The unilateral "love of benevolence" (amor benevolentia)
5. Friendship (the mutual love benevolence)
A convenient way of differentiating and understanding each stage is to examine how they respond to the mandate of the so-called "Do No Harm Principle" which commands:
1. You should not bring unnecessary harm to others as you pursue your own good.
2. You should rescue others from harm (whatever the source), unless you are reasonably excused.
Obviously if my relationship to another human being is hatred, I not only ignore both commands but even act against them. The virulence of my hatred would drive me to cause as much harm to them as I could. If perchance I was moved to rescue them from some impending harm, it would only be so that they might suffer greater harm later on. My goal is not union but separation. Indeed, if possible, I would seek their annihilation out of revenge for the harm that I imagine they have done to me.
If my attitude towards others is pure indifference, my goal is not to harm them but just not to be bothered by them. If I recognize their existence at all, my attitude can be best described as absolute neutrality. I would be neither for them nor against them. For example if someone asked me how I felt about God, I would say:
Well, he may or may not exist, but in either case it has nothing to do with me.
If I am indifferent towards human beings, this does not mean that I have no interaction with them. Unless I live the life of a hermit, I must deal with others every day. But, although I am quite award of the stream of humanity passing by in all its sizes and shapes, I "could care less" about them unless they began to encroach on my space. Like the anonymous drivers speeding past me on the thruway, others become a "problem to be addressed" only when they "crash" into my life and disrupt it. There is no interest in making them friends or loving them or continuing any connection with them once my suit for damages is concluded.
This state of indifference is not the same as leading a solitary anonymous life where I neither know nor am known. If I live as a solitary and have no one to love as a friend, I could at least be open to a love that I have not yet discovered. I could love those still hidden "others" so that they might become my friends if the occasion arises. (83 Diverse Questions, 71.6) Even if I have been forever a solitary on a desert island not even knowing if someone else existed, my attitude could be:
Well, if there is something beyond myself out there, I would like to know about it. If there is someone other than myself in the universe, I would be interested in knowing about them.
With such an attitude, I am not indifferent to others. I am just alone.
Neither hatred nor indifference can bring me closer to union with others. The only force powerful enough to do this is love. This is so because love is a complex act. At its foundation is an act of choice, a decision to seek some good with the goal of becoming one with it. A wave of emotion whereby I feel good may be part of the attractiveness of the object, but only choice can move me towards it. Such choice depends on two preconditions: knowledge and delight. I cannot choose something I do not know and I do not choose everything that I do know. Without knowledge of and delight in the object I will not come to love it and, not loving it, I will not be drawn to become one with it.
To love means to desire. Through desire I am drawn towards some object with a view to uniting with it in some way, of becoming one with it, of making it one with me or making myself one with it. To love someone or something means to wish to be united with it, to make it my own and (perhaps) to have it consume my "own-ness". When I love something it is like coming upon a pool of deliciously cool water on a hot day and wishing to jump in and be immersed in its delight.
The union between knower and thing known in the act of knowledge is quite different from the union of fulfilled love. Thinking about my past and present loves, I am indeed increased. My life has been enriched by knowing them but my knowledge does not make me become like them. Love for them has a quite different effect. When I love them and in some sense "choose" them, I do become like them. My life changes. To use Augustine's image, the objects of my affection become stuck to me with the glue of love. They leave in me "footprints" so that wherever I go they are always with me. (Trinity, 10.8.11) Without losing my identity or destroying theirs, I am raised or lowered to their level.
Knowing what is below me does not make me any less, but loving it does. Examining the lives of beasts does not make me a beast but loving a beastly life, desiring to live that life reduces me to the status of a beast. As Augustine says:
Through the act of love we dwell with our heart. It is for this reason that we call those "the world" who live in the world and love it. Those who love the world live in the world with their heart. For those who do not love the world may live bodily in the world, but in their heart they already live in heaven.
Commentary on the Gospel of John, 2.11.2
And again:
Do you love the earth? Then you will become earth. Do you love God? What shall I say? Will you be a god? I don't dare say this on my own but listen to God speaking through Sacred Scripture: "I have said `All of you are gods and sons of the Most High'".
Commentary on the First Epistle of John, 2.14.5.
As has been said, to know another is not enough to attract my love; they must delight me. Even if I had complete knowledge of another, it would not follow that I would necessarily fall in love with them, rush to be united with them. I must first find them delightful. Delight is what drives me to seek union with this person rather than that person. I must first see the potential object of my affection as a good which promises bliss when embraced. Over the years I have known many lovely people, but only a few have caused the ecstatic delight which drew (and still draws) my love. When I taught geometry in high school some years ago, I like to believe that I knew the discipline fairly well. I cannot say that it delighted me. At most I "enjoyed" it as giving me (of all the people in the class) the authority to give exams, carry a stick ("the straight-edge"), and use colored chalk.
There are different reasons why we may come to delight in and love some persons and not others. We may love with a benevolent love (amor benevolentia) because of the good we see in them. We may also love them with a self-centered love based on the good they bring to us. (amor concupiscentia). Such a love is obviously not the most noble form of love but it is a beginning. I am at least drawn outside of myself towards the another even though it is only because of the pleasure they would bring to me. Such love may be mutual where both parties enjoy the pleasant passion of union, but it does not have to be. I can be pleasured by another even when I bring no pleasure to them. Indeed, I can have this love for someone who does not even know I exist. Over the years my many dreams about loving attractive "others" have brought temporary (and sometimes base) bliss to my heart. In my adolescence various movie stars (Loretta Young for one) could turn my head easily. And, on one occasion, I went so far as to write an anonymous (I was bashful and dumb) love-letter to a girl up the street. Of course she did not know me because I never signed the letter, but my sighing for her was no less sincere. Her lack of attention towards me did not dampen my ardor. My love was pure concupiscent love and continued to exist until replaced by love of basketball.
Benevolent love is the highest form of love and it too can be unilateral or mutual, but only the mutual love of benevolence can truly be called the love of friendship, the love which can result in a sacred union with the loved one. Though unilateral benevolent love (where I love you but you don't love me) is not the highest form of love, the form which best prepares us for union with God, in many ways it is more valiant. It is truly heroic to love another with one's whole heart and mind and soul and not experience the return of such love. As the word "benevolence" implies, we "wish good" to our loved one and this simply because of the good we find in them. We love them because they are good. Thus, the great saints loved the good that was God even when they were in the midst of their "dark night of the soul" when they were not even sure that he existed. An example of such heroic love was shown to me by a woman who for eleven years came day after to my mother's nursing home to feed her comatose husband his lunch. He no longer even knew she existed, and yet she came day after day. Perhaps she got some satisfaction from the visits but I must believe that her love for her husband was because of the good she saw (or remembered) in him. She "wished him well" simply because he was good even when he was unable to return any sign of his love for her.
I suspect that even our must noble loves have a bit of love of concupiscence about them. We at least "feel good" in the embrace of our beloved no matter how virtuous we pretend to be. Obviously the love of benevolence is the more secure form. If we love another only because of the advantage or good feeling our love brings to us, then it will quickly disappear when we no longer "get anything out of it". Indeed, Such selfish love can hardly be called love of all. It certainly has little or no consideration for the feelings of the other person. When such love is the only basis for a marriage, divorce is done quickly with no thought for the disastrous effect on the former beloved.
Because of its dependence on full knowledge and overpowering delight, perfect love in this life will always be difficult. Indeed, Augustine, who was himself something of an expert in noble and ignoble love, firmly believed that the only way we can have true love for other humans or for God is by through the grace of God. Supported by that grace we can come to delight in our human loves and our hidden God even though they remain mostly mysteries for us. As Augustine told his listeners:
Inquire where a person gets the ability to love God from, and absolutely the only discovery you will make is that it is because God has first loved him. You can hear more plainly from the apostle Paul what he has given us to love with. "The love of God", he says, "has been poured into our hearts". Where from? From us perhaps? No. Where from? "Through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us". (Rom 5:5)
Sermon 34, 2. See Sermon 265, 10
There no question that love is painful as long as it is unfulfilled and in this life it is always unfulfilled. Even when we are united with our love, we always wish that it could be better, that we were better and more deserving, that our beloved truly understood the depth of our love, that our loving union could last forever. But, as Augustine says, even this wound of love is health-giving because as long as we desire what we do not yet have we are pulled into the future where the fullness of love awaits us. There the pain will have ceased but the love will go on forever. (Sermon 298, 2.2) In that land of fulfilled love, the land of union with God, we will come to see the truth in the words of Augustine:
Love and do what you will. Let the root of love be within; from this root only good can grow.
Commentary on the First Epistle of John, 7.8.
But just now, as we continue to struggle through these imperfect days of our lives, straining to find love and to love properly, about the best we can do is to try to follow the advice of St. Paul:
Never let evil talk pass your lips; but only the good things men need to hear, things that will really help them. Get rid of all bitterness, all passion and anger, harsh words. slander, and malice of every kind. In place of these be kind to one another, compassionate, and mutually forgiving, just as God has forgiven you in Christ.
Ephesians, 4. 29-32.