In quibus amorem Dei stare credendum sit.
The Will as the True Measure of Love
Love of God is to be judged not by fleeting emotions but by the steadfast will that conforms to God's will, united to Him through the Holy Spirit and tested by patient endurance and faithful obedience.
So, as we've said, the love of God isn't to be judged by these passing emotions — which, as anyone on the spiritual path knows, are barely under our control — but by the steady quality of the will itself. To unite your own will with God's will — so that whatever God's will sets forth, your will consents to it, with no other reason for choosing this or that except that you know God wills it — that is truly what it means to love God. For the will itself is nothing other than love; nor should good or evil wills be called anything other than good or evil loves. In short, the very will of God is his love — which is nothing other than his Holy Spirit, through whom love is poured into our hearts.✦ This outpouring of love is both the joining of the divine will and the human will. This happens when the Holy Spirit — who is indeed the will and love of God, and is God — enters into the human will and pours himself into it, lifting it wholly from lower things to higher things, and transforms the whole of it into his own character and quality, so that, clinging to him by the unbreakable bond of unity, it may be made one spirit with him. The Apostle states this same truth more clearly when he says, 'Whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him' (1 Cor.✦ 6). This will is to be judged by two criteria — namely, suffering and action: whether one patiently endures what God has inflicted or allowed to be inflicted, and fervently carries out what he has commanded.
Works as Evidence of Love
Drawing on Gregory and the Gospel of John, Bernard insists that love of God must be confirmed by obedience to His commandments, and that even when a righteous person's desire seems to exceed God's will, the desire itself is ultimately caused by God.
Moreover, as B. says, Gregory (Hom. 30), no one should believe whatever answer his mind gives him about the love of God without the evidence of works. For the opinion belongs to one who does not lie: "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me" (John✦ xiv). So then, however these unfamiliar affections, inner visitations, and judgments of God — which are a great deep — are dispensed, and through whatever causes, to those who neither seek nor knock — sometimes, so to speak, they are suddenly poured in, even though they are withdrawn from those who strive with every effort to obtain them — yet in anyone whose will agrees with God's will, who patiently bears whatever God has brought upon them and zealously carries out whatever God has commanded, such a person must be said to love God without any hesitation.✦1 Otherwise, if our love is to be measured by these affections, so that we would then be said to love God or anyone at all only when we experience this kind of feeling, then we must say that we love not continuously but only at the rarest intervals. Yet it must be said that if by chance a righteous person sometimes wishes, for example, someone's salvation — something God does not will — their will still does not disagree with God's will, since the very fact that they wish this is assuredly brought about by God's will, who wills all people to be saved (1 Tim.✦2
Tasting Without Loving, Loving Without Tasting
Bernard distinguishes sharply between the spiritual sweetness sometimes poured into the mind and the true love of God, which consists in obedience to His commandments even when no such sweetness is felt.
ii), because it is something that makes it desired by those close to him. This love has, moreover, its own beginning, its own progress, its own perfection. To discuss all these matters more thoroughly is perhaps neither the task of this time nor within our ability. So then, to feel those affections is not, as you suppose, the same as loving God; it is rather to perceive — offered and even poured into the mind — a certain drop of that sweetness, as if present to the inner palate, through the sweet anticipation of its attraction. For it is one thing for someone eager for honey's sweetness to labor with all his strength to obtain it, and another thing if sweetness has been poured into the lips of someone who neither sought nor loved it — he can't escape the sense of that sweetness. The first does not taste, yet loves; the second does not love, yet tastes. So then, to use simpler words so that you may more easily understand: the person who presses forward as much as he can, holding fast to God by obeying His commandments and living soberly, justly, and piously according to apostolic and evangelical precepts — even if he tastes nothing of this sweetness — is nevertheless to be called one who loves God, since He Himself bears witness, saying: 'Whoever keeps my commandments is the one who loves me' (John 14).
The Final Contrast
The chapter closes with a decisive contrast: the one who experiences spiritual affection but disobeys God does not truly love Him, while the one who obeys truly loves.
But the person who daily experiences this affection and nevertheless places his own desires before the will of God — he is not to be thought to love God, but only to perceive the spiritual taste poured into his mind by divine dispensation.345 »
Read the original Latin
« Igitur, ut diximus, non secundum hos momentaneos affectus, quos minime nostrae subesse voluntati, nullus spiritualis ignorat, Dei aestimandus est amor, sed potius secundum continuam ipsius voluntatis qualitatem. Suam enim voluntatem Dei voluntati conjungere, ut quaelibet voluntas divina praescribat, his voluntas humana consentiat, ut nulla sit alia causa, cur hoc aut illud velit, nisi quia hoc Deum velle cognoscit: hoc utique Deum amare est. Nam ipsa voluntas nihil est aliud quam amor; nec aliud dicendae sunt bonae aut malae voluntates, quam boni vel mali amores. Denique ipsa Dei voluntas amor est ejus: qui nihil est aliud quam sanctus Spiritus ejus, per quem diffunditur charitas in cordibus nostris. Quae charitatis diffusio divinae est et humanae voluntatis conjunctio. Quae tunc fit, cum Spiritus sanctus, qui utique Dei voluntas et amor est, et Deus est, humanae se voluntati ingerit et infundit, eamque ab inferioribus ad superiora sustollens, totam ipsam in sui modum qualitatemque transformat, ut ei indissolubili glutino unitatis adhaerens, unus cum eo spiritus efficiatur, Apostolo hoc idem manifestius intimante: Qui adhaeret, inquit, Domino, unus spiritus efficitur (I Cor. vi). Sane haec voluntas secundum duo quaedam judicanda est, passionem scilicet et actionem, si videlicet ea quae Deus intulerit, vel inferri permiserit, patienter sustineat, et ea quae jusserit ferventer adimpleat.
Caeterum, ut ait B. Gregorius (Hom. 30), nemo credat quidquid sibi mens sine operibus de Dei amore respondeat. Ejus est enim sententia, qui non mentitur: Qui habet mandata mea, et servat ea: hic est qui diligit me (Joan. xiv). Quocunque igitur modo insuetos hos affectus, internasque visitationes, judicia Dei, quae sunt abyssus multa, dispensent, quibuscunque etiam causis, his non quaerentibus nec pulsantibus, nonnunquam, ut ita dixerim, subito infundantur, illis omni licet conatu in earum acquisitione laborantibus subtrahantur, cujuscunque voluntas Dei voluntati concordat; eaque quae Deus intulerit sustinet patienter, et ea quae jusserit exsequitur ferventer, Deum diligere sine omni cunctatione dicendus est. Alioqui, si secundum hos affectus noster metiendus est amor, ut tunc solum Deum vel hominem quemlibet amare dicamur, cum hujusmodi affectum experimur, non utique continue, sed per rarissima quaeque intervalla amare dicendi sumus. Dicendum sane quod si forte homo justus aliquando velit, verbi gratia, salutem alicujus, quod tamen nolit Deus, non tamen ejus voluntas a Dei voluntate discordat, quandoquidem, ut hoc velit, Dei utique operatur voluntas, qui ideo vult omnes homines salvos fieri (I Tim.
ii), quia a suis id facit optari. Habet praeterea amor iste inchoationem suam, profectum suum, perfectionem suam. De quibus omnibus enucleatius disserere, nec hujus temporis forte, nec nostrae est facultatis. Proinde affectus illos sentire, non ita, ut autumas, Deum amare est, sed oblatam, imo infusam menti quamdam dulcedinis illius guttam, interioris palati quasi praesentem, suavi praesentire attractu. Nam aliud est melleae dulcedinis cupidum in ejus acquisitione pro viribus laborare, aliud si cujuslibet non quaerentis nec amantis infusa fuerit labiis, sensum dulcedinis illius non posse effugere. Ille non gustat, amat tamen; iste non amat, tamen gustat. Ut ergo simplicioribus verbis utar, quo facilius intelligas; qui quantumcunque potest, insistit, ut Deum habeat, mandatis videlicet illius obtemperando, et secundum apostolica et evangelica praecepta sobrie, et juste, et pie vivendo, etsi nihil hujus dulcedinis gustet, Deum tamen diligere dicendus est, ipso attestante, qui ait: Qui mandata mea custodierit, ille est qui diligit me (Joan. xiv).
Qui vero quotidie hunc experitur affectum, et nihilominus divinae voluntati sua desideria praeponit, non quidem Deum diligere, sed ingestum suae menti divina dispensatione spiritualem saporem non nisi sentire posse, credendus est. »
Scripture echoes
- ↩Rom.5.5 — And hope does not put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
- ↩1Cor.6.17 — But the one who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
- ↩John.14.21 — The one who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And the one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.
- ↩Ps.42.7 — Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.
- ↩1Tim.2.4 — who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Notes
- 1 ↩abyssus multa: literally 'a great abyss,' echoing the language of divine depth and mystery; rendered as 'a great deep' to preserve concreteness without archaism.
- 2 ↩The double tamen structure (quod tamen nolit Deus / non tamen ejus voluntas... discordat) creates a concessive chain: the righteous person's wish may diverge from God's in one instance, yet the deeper alignment of wills holds.
- 3 ↩affectum rendered as 'affection' in the sense of an interior feeling or movement of the soul, not mere sentiment.
- 4 ↩The contrast here is between loving God (an act of the will aligned with God's will) and merely tasting a spiritual sweetness infused by God's ordering — the latter without the former does not constitute true love of God.
- 5 ↩non quidem … sed rendered as 'not … but' to preserve the adversative force distinguishing the two infinitival clauses.
Speculum caritatis (The Mirror of Charity) companion
Reorder one love at a time, daily
Use the study map with the free Chosen Portion app's daily readings to work through Aelred at a sustainable pace.
Aelred wrote the Mirror as a rule for daily interior discipline in community, and Chosen Portion carries that discipline forward as a short ordered reading each day.
- All 3 books and 102 chapters mapped into 4 weekly themes with page-level pointers
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