CHAPTER VIII.
HOW MUCH GOD DESIRES WE SHOULD LOVE HIM.
ALTHOUGH our Saviour's redemption is applied to us in as many
different manners as there are souls, yet still, love is the universal
means of salvation which mingles with everything, and without
which nothing is profitable, as we shall show elsewhere. The
Cherubim were placed at the gate of the earthly paradise with
their flaming sword, to teach us that no one shall enter into the
heavenly paradise who is not pierced through with the sword of
love. For this cause, Theotimus, the sweet Jesus who bought
us with his blood, is infinitely desirous that we should love him
that we may eternally be saved, and desires we may be saved
that we may love him eternally, his love tending to our salvation
and our salvation to his love. Ah! said he:
I am come to cast
fire on the earth; and what will I but that it be kindled?1 But
to set out more to the life the ardour of this desire, he in
admirable terms requires this love from us.
Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and
with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.2 Good God! Theotimus, how amorous the divine heart
is of our love. Would it not have sufficed to publish a permission giving us leave to love him, as Laban permitted Jacob
to love his fair Rachel, and to gain her by services? Ah no! he makes a stronger declaration of his passionate love of us, and
commands us to love him with all our power, lest the consideration of his majesty and our misery, which make so great
a distance and inequality between us, or some other pretext,
might divert us from his love. In this, Theotimus, he well
shows that he did not leave in us for nothing the natural
inclination to love him, for to the end it may not be idle, he
urges us by this general commandment to employ it, and that
this commandment may be effected, he leaves no living man
without furnishing him abundantly with all means requisite
thereto. The visible sun touches everything with its vivifying
heat, and as the universal lover of inferior things, imparts to
them the vigour requisite to produce, and even so the divine goodness animates all souls and encourages all hearts to its love, none
being excluded from its heat. Eternal
wisdom, says Solomon,
preacheth abroad, she uttereth her voice in the streets: At the head
of multitudes she crieth out, in the entrance of the gates of the city
slue uttereth her words, saying: O children, how long will you love
childishness, and fools covet those things which are hurtful to themselves, and the unwise hate knowledge? Turn ye at my reproof behold I will utter my spirit to you, and will show you my words.3 And the same wisdom continues in Ezechiel saying:
Our iniquities
and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them: how then can
we live? Say to them: As I live, saith the Lord God, I desire not the
death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way, and live.4
Now to live according to God is to love, and
he that loveth
not abideth in death.5 See now, Theotimus, whether God does not desire we should love him!
But he is not content with announcing thus publicly his
extreme desire to be loved, so that every one may have a share
in his sweet invitation, but he goes even from door to door,
knocking and protesting that, if any man shall hear my voice,
and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with
him, and he with me:6 that is, he will testify all sorts of good will towards him.
Now what does all this mean, Theotimus, except that God does
not only give us a simple sufficiency of means to love him, and
in loving him to save ourselves, but also a rich, ample and
magnificent sufficiency, and such as ought to be expected from
so great a bounty as his. The great Apostle speaking to
obstinate sinners: Despisest thou, says he, the riches of his goodness, and patience, and long-suffering? Knowest thou not that the benignity of God leadeth thee to penance? But according to thy
hardness and impenitent heart, thou treasurest up to thyself wrath,
against the day of wrath and revelation of the just judgment of
God.7 My dear Theotimus, God does not therefore employ a simple sufficiency of remedies to convert the obstinate, but uses to this end the riches of his goodness. The Apostle, as you see, opposes the riches of God's goodness against the treasures of the impenitent heart's malice, and says that the malicious heart is so rich in iniquity that he despises even the riches
of the mildness by which God leads him to repentance; and mark that the obstinate man not only contemns the riches of God's goodness, but also the riches which lead to penance, riches whereof one can scarcely be ignorant. Verily this rich, full and plenteous sufficiency of means which God freely bestows upon sinners to love him appears almost everywhere in the Scriptures. Behold this divine lover at the gate,
he does not simply knock, but stands knocking; he calls the soul,
come, arise, make haste, my love,8
and puts his hand into the lock
to try whether he cannot open it. If he uttereth his voice in
the streets he does not simply utter it, but he goes crying out,
that is, he continues to cry out. When he proclaims that every
one must be converted, he thinks he has never repeated it
sufficiently.
Be converted, do penance, return to me, live, why
dost thou die, 0 house of Israel?9 In a word this heavenly
Saviour forgets nothing to show that his mercies are above all
his works, that his mercy surpasses his judgment, that his redemption is copious, that his love is infinite, and, as the Apostle
says, that he is
rich in mercy, and consequently he will
have allmen to be saved; not willing that any should perish.10
