THE LOVE ΟΓ GOB
and the

CKOSS OF JESUS
By
The Rev. REGINALD GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, O.P.

Translated By

SISTER JEANNE MARIE
MARYKNOLL

VOLUME ONE

B. HERDER BOOK CO.
is & 17 SOUTH BROADWAY, ST. LOUIS z, MO.

AND

3 3 QUEEN SQUARE, LONDON, W. C.
1948

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Printed in U.S.A.

NIHIL OBSTAT

Innocentius Swoboda, O.F.M.,

Censor Librorum

IMPRIMATUR

ψ Joseph E. Ritter, S.T.D.,
Archiepiscopus

Sti. Ludovici, die 8 Oct. 1947

Copyright IQ47
B. HERDER BOOK CO.

Second Impression

Vail-Ballou Preus, Inc., Binghamton and New York

CONTENTS
PAGB

Introduction...................................................................................i
PART I

GOD’S LOVE FOR US, OUR RETURN OF LOVE, AND
THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS
CHAPTER

I. God’s Love

for

Us; Our Return

of

Love .... 29

II. The Problem of Pure Love.......................................... 55
Art. I. Statement of the Problem............................... 58
Art. II. The Views of St. Bernard and Richard of
St. Victor..................................................... 68
Art. III. St. Thomas’ View........................................ 85
Art. IV.St. Thomas and Newton................................ 126

III. Love of God and the Indwelling of the Blessed
Trinity......................................................................... 136
Art. I. The Special Presence of the Blessed Trinity
in the Just................................ 136

Art. II. The Nature of Man’s Quasi-experimental
Knowledge of God................154
IV. Love of God and the Mystery of the Cross .

Art.

.

. 174

I. Our Lord’s Fullness of Grace and Ardent
Desire for the Cross................................... 175

Art. II. The Passion and Peace of Christ .... 189
V. The Love of God and the Mystical Body of Christ 224

CONTENTS

iv

PART II
THE LOVE OF GOD AND MORTIFICATION
CHAPTER

VI.

PAGE

Mortification or Active Purification

.... 245

Practical Naturalism......................... 246

Art.I.

Art. II.The Necessity of Mortification........................ 250
Art. III. Principles of St. Thomas and St. John of the
Cross...........................................254

VII. Mortification
Art.

and the

Results

of

Original Sin .

. 261

I. The Results of Original Sin in the Baptized 263

Art. II. The Nature of the Wounds Resulting from
Original Sin.......................... 267
Art. III. The Gradual Healing of the Wounds of
Original Sin................................ 271

VIII. Mortification

and the

Results of Personal Sin .

. 275

Art. I. The Remission of Sin....................... 276
Art. II. Mortification and the Remission of Punish­
ment Due to Sin ...
. 278
Art. III. Destruction of the Remains of Sin by Mor­
tification ..................................... 281
Art. IV. Resistance to Temptation..............................283

IX. Two Methods
Art.

of

Examination of Conscience .

. 287

I. An Examination of Conscience with Refer­
ence to the Seven Capital Sins
. 288

Art. II. Examination of Conscience with Reference
to the Hierarchy of Virtues.....292

X.

Mortification
Art.

and

Our Supernatural End .

.

. 299

I. Mortification and Our Inordinate Tendencies 301

Art. II. Mortification of Natural Activity .... 309

v

CONTENTS
CHAPTER

ΓΑ01Β

XI. Imperfection............................................................ ·

3*^

XII. The Flower of Mortification: Consecrated Vir­
ginity
......................................................................... 345
PART III

THE LAWS OF PROGRESS IN LOVE OF GOD

XIII. St. Thomas’ Doctrine on the Increase of Charity
and Meritorious Acts.............................................. 365

Art.

I. The Growth of Charity................................... 365

Art. II. The Acts and Growth of Charity .... 370
XIV. Charity and Venial Sin.............................................. 381
XV.

Normal Spiritual Progress

and

Daily Communion 387

INTRODUCTION

Great speculative theologians and great mystics have writ­
ten so many excellent books on the love of God that we have
only to get at the truth which they contain, for we can desire
nothing better than to understand them well. But the works
of the great masters of theological speculation, like St.
Thomas, and those of the mystics strictly so-called, like St.
John of the Cross, present serious differences, both in form
and in point of view. We may, then, profit by comparing
them, not to establish a harmony between them which would
destroy both their difference and their individuality, but to
see if, by reason of this very difference, these works do not
mutually clarify one another. Such is the purpose of the pres­
ent investigation.
In a preceding work, Christian Perfection and Contempla­
tion, we saw that Christian perfection consists especially in
charity, or the love of God and of neighbor. And we noted
that the perfection of this virtue falls under the precept of
love, not as matter, or that which is to be immediately real­
ized, but as the end toward which all men ought to tend, each
according to his condition. We said further that the gifts of
the Holy Ghost, particularly the gifts of understanding and
of wisdom, the principles of infused contemplation, are con­
nected with charity and develop with it, so that infused con­
templation belongs to the normal growth of holiness. St. John
of the Cross has, in fact, shown that contemplation, which is
I

2

THE LOVE OF GOD

quite distinct from such extraordinary graces as visions, reve­
lations, and interior words, begins to grow ordinarily at the
outset of the illuminative way and comes to full flower in the
unitive way. This first work was an exposition of the prin­
ciples of ascetical and mystical theology; it might have been
called “The Love of God and Contemplation.”
In the present work, entitled The Love of God and the
Cross of Christ, we are not taking up again the study of those
problems already dealt with ; we presuppose their solution as
given in the light of the principles of St. Thomas and of St.
John of the Cross. Here we shall confirm that solution by
what the two great masters teach on the love of God and the
mystery of the cross. Plainly, the subject touches what lies
deepest in the interior life of our Lord Jesus Christ and con­
sequently in the life of every Christian who would imitate
Him. It is only by the royal road of the cross that the Christian
soul truly enters into supernatural contemplation of the mys­
teries of faith and lives lovingly and deeply by them.

Division of the subject
In the first part of this work we treat in a general way of
God’s love for us, the response He expects from us, and the
mystery of the cross. It contains a study of the problem of love,
which comes to this : Is pure or disinterested love of God pos­
sible, and, if it is, what is its relation to love of self ? In other
words, does the primordial inclination of our nature lead us
to love ourselves above everything else, or to love God still
more? We shall study this problem in the light of St.
Thomas’ principles, which contain virtually the metaphysics
and theology of love; we shall also see the relation of these
principles to the mystery of the cross in our Lord and in His

INTRODUCTION

3

mystical body. Then we shall discover what the progress of
the love of God ought to be in a truly faithful Christian, a
progress by means of mortification made necessary by the re­
mains of original and personal sin, as well as by the infinite
loftiness of our supernatural end.
We shall examine the laws of the progress of love or of the
increase of charity, obtained by our meritorious acts and by
Holy Communion. We shall see how, in principle, this prog­
ress ought, without haste, waste, or worry, to become ever
more and more rapid.
Having done this, we shall be the better prepared to under­
stand the crosses of the sensitive powers and of the spirit, the
role of these purifying graces, and the way we should act dur­
ing such trials. Finally we shall speak of the life of union, of
its relation to the indwelling Blessed Trinity, together with
the influence of the humanity of the Savior and of Mary our
Mediatrix.
These pages are, then, a treatise on God’s purifying graces,
preceded by an introduction on His love for us and the re­
turn He expects from us. We have developed, especially un­
der the title of “The Cross of the Senses” and “The Cross of
the Spirit,” the teaching of St. John of the Cross on the pas­
sive purifications of the senses and of the spirit, and of die
states preceding and following them.
Although St. Thomas did not treat these purifications ex
professo, he has given us, in the questions on grace, the theo­
logical virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost which accom­
pany them, principles that make the description of the Doctor
of Carmel more understandable by throwing light on diem
from above, so to speak. These descriptions reproduce and en­
rich those already given by St. Gregory in his reflections on

4

THE LOVE OF GOD

the book of Job, and later those of Hugo of St. Victor and of
Tauler.
Instead of “passive purification” we have chosen to use the
more general and profound term, “the cross,” in the sense our
Lord Himself gave it in the gospel, so frequently explained by
the Fathers and so beautifully chanted in the liturgy, especially
during Passiontide. St. Thomas, in treating of this divine Pas­
sion, has left us some profound considerations on the love of
God and the mystery of the cross. These considerations,
united to his doctrine on charity, on living faith, and on the
purifying role of the gifts of knowledge and understanding,
help us to get a better grasp of the meaning and implication
of the words of St. John of the Cross. These two great masters
throw light on each other, the abstract considerations of St.
Thomas showing us the profound essence of those things the
great mystic of Carmel describes so concretely and vividly.
Through this association the doctrine of the Summa theo­
logica gains in life, throwing open vast perspectives before us,
and the doctrine of The Darl{ Night reveals itself as much
more theological than at first sight it seems to be. St. Thomas
has made it his special task to lay bare the essence or nature of
the infused virtues and of the gifts, reasoning to their proper­
ties and mutual relationships; and St. John of the Cross has
described their progress to perfect development.
It is to our advantage to note at the start what each possesses
unshared and what both hold in common.

The theology of St. Thomas and the spirituality
of St. John of the Cross

Anyone frequently consulting the works of St. Thomas
and meditating on those of St. John of the Cross can easily

INTRODUCTION

5

see that fundamentally they agree. Although mystics often
have a disdain for scholastic theology, St. John of the Cross,
who knew it well, had great respect for it, and especially for
the Angelic Doctor, whom he follows with particular care on
questions relative to habitual and actual grace, the infused
virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Some writers find a
perfect harmony between their doctrines difficult. They say
that St. Thomas, following Aristotle, has as his characteristic
the mean and defends the value of everything human without
in the least failing to recognize the infinite greatness of God.
St. John of the Cross, they maintain, is the representative of
excess, continually reminding us that no measure can exist
for a love that should be measureless, placing the value of
divine union in such strong relief that he seems to put too
little value on things human.
If we forget the difference between scholastic terminology
and the language of mysticism, we may come to suppose a
wide doctrinal divergence between them; and this will widen
if we understand St. Thomas’ “mean” as a designation for
the mediocre or the halfway, lying at an equal distance from
philosophical and theological minimum and its opposite ex­
treme.
We often find the fundamental theses of Thomism pre­
sented in this very way. In philosophy men assign them a
place midway between Empiricism and idealistic Platonism,
between materialism and exaggerated spiritualism; in theol­
ogy, between Pelagianism and predestinationism ; and in
morals, between the laxist and rigorist, the liberal and author­
itarian, points of view. A writer can easily slip into making
such antitheses, frequently refuting the first of two extremes
by the second and then the second by the first just to keep to

6

THE LOVE OF GOD

a vague middle course that oscillates first this way and then
that, depending on tire moment’s need. As a result, agnostics
say that the antinomies are insoluble, and any thinking man
could rightly label such a middle course eclecticism and, in
die practical order, opportunism.
If this were St. Thomas’ doctrine, it certainly would differ
from the thought of St. John of the Cross: insisting on this
is pointless. But does this idea belong to Thomism, or to the
eclectics treading their aloof and careful way between those
who exaggerate and those who minimize ? It is dieir darling.
St. Thomas’ “mean” is a summit lifting its great shoulders
high above the crooked course of error that splays out in ever­
lengthening lines to far, flat extremes.
A truth is not on the same horizontal plane, on the same
level, as die two contrary errors it opposes. It rises far above
diem like a great peak radiant with principles. Eclecticism
has never reached it, for eclecticism seeks, in its oscillations, to
remain at an equal distance from the apex of this height and
those errors which are like the two extremities of its base.
Progress towards truth should not be a fluctuation between
extremes, but an ascent, deviating neither to the right nor to
the left, like the padi drawn by St. John of the Cross in the
ascent of Mount Carmel.
If time permitted, we could easily show that this is die char­
acter of St. Thomas’ progress toward the heights of truth and
of the mean typical of his doctrine. The problems of becom­
ing and of being, of knowledge, of the union of soul and
body, of the relationship between intellect and will, and
many others, could all be examined with this in mind; but,
obviously, we would then be wandering too far afield from

INTRODUCTION

7

the subject in hand, the spirituality of St. John of the Cross.
This great mystic, Thomistically trained at Salamanca and
consciously faithful to that training, has confined himself to
treating of the soul’s intimate relation with God, preparation
for divine union in this life, and that union itself. To compare
his doctrine with that of St. Thomas, we must, then, consider
chiefly die terms of the divine union: God in His intimate
life, the author of grace, and the human soul supernat­
uralized by grace, the infused virtues, and the gifts. Viewed
in this light, the apparent distance separating these two con­
ceptions contracts; more than that, St. John of the Cross
brings out in a wonderful way the wealth of lofty truths ex­
pressed only virtually by St. Thomas and turns out before our
eyes the hidden richness of his highest principles. The An­
gelic Doctor certainly does uphold the value of human things
but always points to its infinite smallness when weighed
against die infinite greatness of God. And St. John of the
Cross, in all his works, never ceases praising God’s infinite
greatness by insisting on the purifications necessary to ap­
proach the inaccessible light of God and the conditions indis­
pensable for divine union in this world. We do well, by the
way, to remember diat even here and now divine union be­
longs to the normal development of the life of grace—by
right if not, because of human weakness, in fact.
When it is a question of God, the first cause, probably no
one holds that St. Thomas’ thought lies halfway between the
unlikely attenuations of the minimists and the exaltation of
the great mystics. None have excelled the Angelic Doctor in
dealing with the subject of God’s sovereign dominion over
all creation. Nor has anyone set forth the universality of the

8

THE LOVE OF GOD

divine causality and the infinite sublimity of our supernatural
end better than he. According to him, divine causality, by rea­
son of its intrinsic and transcendent efficacy, infallibly moves
us not only to will the good in general but to choose a partic­
ular salutary good. And, far from injuring our liberty, it ex­
tends to the free mode of our determination.1
The Thomistic doctrine of grace is not only at an equal
distance from Pelagianism and predestinationism as revived
by Calvin, but it also rises above all such mediocre concep­
tions as the different forms of congruism. In one way or other,
these put limitations on the universal causality of the First
Agent and the sovereign efficacy of grace. They rob some or
all of their meaning from St. Paul’s words: “For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not re­
ceived ?”2 “For it is God who worketh in you, both to will
and to accomplish, acording to His good will.”3
On this fundamental point, St. John of the Cross, like the
Carmelites of Salamanca, is the faithful disciple of St.
Thomas. Few souls have actually lived the doctrine as deeply
as he did. What the prince of theologians says speculatively
about the intrinsic efficacy of grace, St. John of the Cross ex­
perienced, especially in the passive purification of the spirit,
wherein men undergo temptations against the theological
virtues such as God alone could vanquish by His grace. This
He gives not only to precede our choice but to infallibly pro­
duce it in and with us. “Lord,” says the saint, “if to grant what
I ask You await my works, give them to me, accomplish them
in me, and join to them the sufferings You will to accept from
1 See Summa theol., la, q.19, a.4; a.8, ad aum; q.83, a.i, ad 311m; la Dae, q.io,
a. 4, c. et ad 311m.
2 I Cor. 4: 7.
* Phil. 2:13.

INTRODUCTION

9

me.” 4 This thought recurs often in the Oracion de alma ena­
morada, preserved in an autographed manuscript at Andujar.
The author of The Dark, Night and The Living Flame has
grasped particularly well the consequences of the deep and
often misunderstood distinction made by St. Augustine and
St. Thomas between operating grace, by which the soul is
moved without, properly speaking, moving itself, and coop­
erating grace, by which the soul both is moved and moves it­
self through its own proper activity.®
Like all the best Thomists,® St. John of the Cross has recog­
nized that through operating grace, through tliat divine in­
spiration dominant in the passive state, man can act not only
vitally but also freely and meritoriously without, properly
speaking, acting deliberately, that is, as the result of discursive
deliberation. Such is the act of the gift of piety inspired by
the Holy Ghost. It is superior to the act of the virtue of re­
ligion under the guidance of Christian prudence. We can re­
cite the Rosary but cannot have at will that filial lifting up of
the heart that reaches to our Father in heaven. Of itself, by its
own proper activity, the soul does not attain to acts of the gifts
or purpose in advance to accomplish them. The Holy Ghost
leads the soul to perform them without deliberation but with
free consent to receive the divine inspiration. Like the most
acute interpreters of St. Thomas, St. John of die Cross under* E. A. Peers, tr., The Complete Works of St. John of the Cross (London: Burns
Oates & Washbournc, 1935), III, 243. See also pp. 244, 246. “The soul tliat is
hard becomes harder through love of its own self. If in Thy love, O good Jesus,
Thou softenest not the soul, it will persist for ever in its natural hardness. . . .
Thou, Lord, returncst gladly and lovingly to exalt him that offends Thee, and I
return not to exalt and honour him that angers me."
5 la Ilae, q. rn, a.2.
• Cf. Del Prado, O.P., De gratia et libero arbitrio, II, 220, 223. This subject has
already been treated in Christian Perfection and Contemplation, tr. Doyle (St Louis:
Herder, 1939), pp. 80 ff.

ΙΟ

THE LOVE OF GOD

stood this and made it the principle of his mystical doctrine.
He clearly distinguishes between the acts that the soul effects
by its own activity under common and cooperating actual
grace and those higher acts lying beyond the reach of the
soul’s capacity and in the power of God alone. Infused con­
templation and the love flowing out from it are, for example,
vital, free, and meritorious acts not only during times of griev­
ous purification but even in ecstasy and rapture.
Living this doctrine deeply, St. John of the Cross admits
without difficulty St. Thomas’ teaching on the gratuitousness
of our predestination to glory. We ought to remark this at­
tentively that we may not misunderstand his statement that
the call of interior souls to contemplation is a part of the nor­
mal way of sanctity. Of eternal life, the normal fulfillment of
the life of grace, the Gospel says: “For many are called, but
few are chosen.” 7 The same is true of divine union, its normal
prelude in this life, as St. John of the Cross and St. Thomas
perfectly agree. We read in The Spiritual Canticle: “In the
. . . day of eternity God predestined the soul to glory, and
therein determined the glory which He would give her, and
gave it to her freely, without beginning, before He created
her. And this ... is proper to this soul, in such wise that no
happening or accident, high or low, will suffice to take it from
her for ever ; but she will come to possess without end that to
which God predestined her without beginning.” 8 We find
the same thought again in The Ascent of Mount Carmel:
“For, although it is true that a soul, according to its greater or
smaller capacity, may have attained to union, yet not all do so
in the same degree, for this depends upon what the Lord
7 Matt. 22:14.
8 The Spiritual Canticle, str. 38.

INTRODUCTION

II

desires to grant to each one. It is in the same way that souls see
God in heaven.” 9
This accord of St. John of the Cross with St. Thomas on the
doctrines of grace and of predestination, certainly neither
accidental nor material, is essential and formal, truly funda­
mental, reaching to the very spirit and orientation of their
doctrines. No less agreement exists between them on another
subject that concerns God Himself: the infinite sublimity of
our supernatural end. The sentimentalism of the Modernists,
through conforming to the method and doctrine of imma­
nence, shows an unmistakable tendency to confound the order
of grace with the order of nature, our higher with our merely
sensitive faculties. This confusion leads a man to deny the
necessity of mortification and the cross. Following St. Thomas,
St. John of the Cross, on the contrary, states in the strongest
terms that the order of nature is infinitely below the order of
grace and declares the latter absolutely inaccessible to the
natural powers of man or angel, no matter how fully those
powers are developed. Because he believes so firmly in the
infinite transcendence of the supernatural order, he insists,
more than anyone else has ever done, on the necessity of the
passive purification of the spirit to free the acts of the theolog­
ical virtues from every natural alloy. Because together with
St. Thomas and contrary to nominalist empiricists he is fully
convinced of the absolute superiority of our intellect enlight­
ened by faith and of our will animated by charity over our
imagination and sensitive appetite, he insists on the necessity
of the passive purification of the senses. These three orders,
infinitely distant from one another, are so constituted—not in
virtue of a free decree of God, as Duns Scotus would have it,
9 The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Bk. Π, chap. 4.

12

THE LOVE OF GOD

but by their very nature, because of the very nature of God and
of His intimate life, inaccessible to the natural powers of every
created intellect, actual and possible alike.
Like St. Thomas, St. John of the Cross keeps repeating that
imagination and emotion could be developed to infinity
within their own order without ever attaining to the lowest
degree of intellectual or moral life, just as the intellectual and
volitional powers natural to men and angels too, could con­
tinue growing steadily and constantly without becoming
worth the least degree of that grace, infused faith, and charity
to be found in a baptized infant. St. Thomas says: “The good
of grace in one is greater than the good of nature in the whole
universe.”10 These primordial truths so clearly stated by
St. Thomas have been misunderstood by the nominalist theo­
logians and their successors and more recently by the Modern­
ists, even when writing about “the dark night.” No one,
perhaps, has had a deeper insight into the practical conse­
quences of these truths on the supernatural life than St. John
of the Cross. The same cannot be said of Baruzi, whose recent
work testifies to his bondage to the principles of idealistic
immanentism.
Besides, so convinced is the author of The DarJ^ Night of
the Soul that these great truths cannot find sufficient expres• sion in our human language, that to make us understand
them better he often has recourse to mystical hyperbole.
His terminology thus differs from that of St. Thomas and
the Scholastics. Difference of expression is, however, anything
but doctrinal divergence. Indeed St. John of the Cross, in­
tending to make us fully understand their value and to win
us from our habit of bringing all things, even the most spiritw Ia Hae, q. X13, a. 9, ad aum.

INTRODUCTION

13

ual, down to the level of the material, accentuates precisely
those things in theology which are the very soul of the doc­
trinal body.
Readers not familiar with his style believe that he, unlike
the moderate St. Thomas, exaggerates the necessity of aus­
terity and purification. They forget that St. Thomas himself
recognized the legitimate use of mystical hyperbole as a means
of expression and that, moreover, spiritual writers who use
it have Holy Scripture as their model.11 An expression like
“the nothingness of creatures” helps us to realize how trifling
is the most gifted creature in comparison to God. The style
of the mystic is a telling style, an apt instrument wisely used
for a definite purpose. Our Lord Himself said, “If thy eye
scandalize thee, pluck it out . . . thy hand, . . . cut it off.
. . .”12 The spiritual or mystical style is not the scholastic
style. It would be an error, for example, to maintain as
scholastically true those propositions about the nothingness of
creatures, true only in mystical language, where we expect
and properly interpret the use of hyperbole. Were we to take
“the nothingness of creatures” literally, we would be granting
that, strictly speaking, creatures are absolutely nothing and
God alone exists, a position that entails the denial either of the
dogma of creation or a fusion and confusion of the being of
creatures with the being of God, the error of pantheists and
immanentists. Logically there follows the denial of created
free will and consequently of sin. If some mystics have gone
off in this direction, if Master Eckhart’s thought approaches
or approximates this dangerous position, nothing is more con­
trary to the doctrine of St. John of the Cross. He repeatedly
11 Cf. St. Thomas, In Isaiam, 5, 13.
“Zlatt. 18: 8 f.

i4

THE LOVE OF GOD

insists upon the infinite distance between the created and
the Uncreated, the existence of sin, and the necessity of
profound purification for the soul. St. Thomas expresses this
distance by saying that God alone is self-subsisting Being,
“I am who am.” In Him alone are essence and existence
identical; in every creature they are really distinct.13 In these
entirely speculative domains, perfect harmony exists between
St. John of the Cross and St. Thomas; this is true in equal
measure in the practical order, as we are about to see.
A close study of the Angelic Doctor’s answers to the two
most important questions in the spiritual life reveals no doc­
trinal disagreement between St. John of the Cross and him­
self. These questions are: (i) Do the virtues consist in an
exact mean ? (2) How should the virtues grow ? Let us see if, in
this connection, the enthusiasm of St. John of the Cross is
opposed to the perfect mean of St. Thomas Aquinas.
If St. Thomas says that the moral virtues, either acquired or
infused, consist in an exact mean between too much and too
little and generally between two contrary vices, this is certainly
not the golden mean of die Epicureans. They avoid vice to
escape its inconvenient consequences and not out of love for
the true good transcending the useful and delectable alike.
The moral mean, as St. Thomas conceived it, is a summit as
well, the culminating point of the life of reason. It is above
the opposing forms of the irrational and the evil.14 The more
virtue grows, the higher this exact mean becomes, without
deviating either to the right or to the left. Fortitude, for ex­
ample, remains at an equal distance from cowardice and
from rashness, but at the same time it is ever reaching new
18Summa, la, q.3, a.3, 4; q.7, a. 2, ad mm. Cf. also De potentia, q.3, a.i, ad
1711m.
14 Summa, la Hae, q.64, a.i, c. el ad rum.

INTRODUCTION

15

heights. Infused fortitude is a higher mean than acquired
fortitude; the gift of fortitude is higher still.15 Likewise St.
Thomas admits, without any difficulty, that the different
phases of the soul’s ascent to God are marked by the progress
of the Christian moral virtues, especially with the help of
the gifts. This is what he tells us when speaking of the per­
fecting virtues and the virtues of the perfect soul, those clear
likenesses of the divine virtues, the supreme exemplars of our
own. What St. Thomas merely indicates on this subject in one
article,1® St. John of the Cross develops throughout The
Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark, Night in regard to
the theological virtues and the gifts accompanying them.
The harmony of these two doctrines is particularly apparent.
St. Thomas teaches that, because these virtues immediately
concern our last end, God Himself, they cannot consist es­
sentially in an exact mean and that consequently they far
surpass even the noblest moral virtues. God Himself in His
infinite truth and goodness is the primary object and formal
motive of faith, hope, and charity. Therefore we cannot be­
lieve too much in Him, hope too much in Him, or love Him
too much. It is true that, as far as we are concerned and in
an entirely accidental way, by relation to some material and
secondary object, faith is to be found between unbelief and
credulity. In the same way, hope has a middle position be­
tween despair and presumption. But deviations from the
theological virtues do not originate in any limitation in their
primary object or formal motive, as though development of
ls St. Thomas' doctrine about the mean of certain moral virtues, such as
humility and magnanimity, religion and penance, is closely related to the teaching
of the great mystics. Cf. Ila Ilae, q.81, a.6, ad 311m; q.93, a.2; q. 129, a.3, ad
turn and ad 4um; q.161, a.1, a.3; Illa, q.85, a.2, a.3.
16 la Ilae, q.61, a. 5.

i6

THE LOVE OF GOD

these virtues reached boundaries beyond which it cannot pass
without falling into excess. Departures from the virtues orig­
inate in a bad application of their motive to some secondary
matter that is unfitting; for example, we can hold as revealed
what is not revealed or we can hope for the grace of a happy
death and yet have no will to realize its necessary condition,
a good life.
So not only is it true that we cannot believe in God too
much, hope in Him too much, or love Him too much, but it
is also true that we cannot believe in Him, or hope in Him, or
love Him enough.17 Hence we are not only counseled but
required to grow in virtue until death. In this matter the exact
mean no longer characterizes St. Thomas’ doctrine; at these
great heights he says with all the great mystics that the meas­
ure of our love of God is to have no measure. “Now the love
of God and of our neighbor is not commanded according to
a measure, so that what is in excess of the measure be a mat­
ter of counsel. This is evident from the very form of the com­
mandment, pointing, as it does, to perfection, for instance, in
the words, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole
heart.’ . . . The reason of this is that the end of the com­
mandment is charity . . . and the end is not subject to a
measure but only such things as are directed to the end, as
the Philosopher observes.” 18 The perfection of charity falls
under the first and greatest commandment not as matter, as
that which is to be immediately realized, but as the end
toward which all Christians should advance, each according
to his condition. Here, as St. Thomas says, the objective meas­
ure of our acts is no longer created but uncreated and, there17 Ibid., q.64, a. 4.
18 Ila Dae, q.i84, a. 3.

INTRODUCTION

17

fore, infinite and impassable.10 In every one of his works, St.
John of the Cross repeats the same thing.
The essentially supernatural and naturally inaccessible
character of the uncreated formal motive of the three theo­
logical virtues should receive particular attention because of
its importance. Once we have appreciated this, then the more
we read The Dark, Night of the Soul and The Living Flame
and compare them with St. Thomas’ treatises on the theologi­
cal virtues and the gifts accompanying them, the more we
see how these two dissimilar works mutually clarify each
other. St. Thomas shows us the nature and properties of the
infused virtues and of the gifts; St. John of the Cross holds
up before us the wonder of their growth and strengthening—
the loveliest thing in the world. This takes place in the midst
of those passive purifications which bring into strong relief
the wholly supernatural, formal motive of the theological
virtues: God, the first revealing truth, God all-powerful, ever
merciful and ready to help, God infinitely good in Himself.
Nowhere is the full development of the theological virtues
and of the gifts of wisdom and understanding better presented
than in the works of this great saint. In his treatment of these
lofty and difficult subjects lies his claim to that greatness the
Church recognizes in conferring upon him the title of Doctor.
To appreciate fully the penetration of these two great mas­
ters, we must consider that for them—contrary to Scotus, the
nominalist theologians, and their numerous followers—the
infused Christian virtues and especially the theological vir­
tues are supernatural not only quoad modum, by the mode
of their production, like the resurrection of the dead, when
19 la Ilac, q.64, a.4, ad 2um; “The theological virtues perfect (our intellect and
will) in relation to an uncreated rule and measure.”

ι8

THE LOVE OF GOD

natural life is supernaturally restored to the body; but they
are supernatural quoad substantiam, by their very essence,
like sanctifying grace, the physical and formal participation in
the nature of God. These virtues have their source in sanctify­
ing grace as its properties, and are specified by an essentially
supernatural formal object and motive, inaccessible to the
natural competence of any human or angelic intellect, how­
ever powerful. “In the object of faith,” St. Thomas says,
“there is something formal, as it were, namely, the First Truth
surpassing all the natural knowledge of a creature, and some­
thing material, namely, the thing to which we assent while
adhering to the First Truth. With regard to the former, before
obtaining the happiness to come, faith is common to all
(whether men or angels) who have knowledge of God, by
adhering to the First Truth.” 20 “A heretic does not hold the
other articles of faith, about which he does not err, in the
same way as one of the faithful does, namely, by adhering
simply to the Divine Truth, because, in order to do so, a man
needs the help of the habit of faith.” 21 This faith, essentially
supernatural by reason of the formal motive and the primary
object specifying it, is altogether different from the acquired
faith of the demons who, forced by the evidence of miracles,
believe while trembling: “compelled by the evidence of signs.
Whence ‘believing’ is used equivocally of the faithful and
of demons; in them faith is not due to any infused light of
grace, as it is in the faithful.” 22
Without the infused light of faith, man, when face to face
20 Ila Ilae, q.5, a.x.
21 Ibid., a.3, ad 111m.
22 De veritate, q. 14 a. 9, ad 411m. The question of the essentially supernatural
character of infused faith has already been treated at length in De revelatione, I,
458-515·

INTRODUCTION

19

with the gospel, is like a tone-deaf listener at a symphony;
he hears it but cannot perceive its beauty. As St. Paul says:
“But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of
the Spirit of God. For it is foolishness to him; and he cannot
understand, because it is spiritually examined.” 23 Faith is
“the gift of God,” 24 “the substance of things to be hoped
for,” 28 the seed of eternal life.
Very few souls have understood this statement of St. Paul
as fully as the author of The Dark, Night. For a real com­
prehension of his splendid commentary on it, let us recall that
the historical and critical study of the gospel and the phil­
osophical examination of the miracles confirming it can
give us evidence of die credibility of the mysteries of faith.
They can bring us to a rational certitude that God, the author
of a naturally knowable miracle, is also the author of the
gospel. This rational certitude, however, does not have the
same formal motive as infused faith, for it rests on the first
principles of natural reason and not on the revealed and re­
vealing First Truth.
In itself, the First Truth is the cause of faith, being that
which and that by which we believe,2® making us adhere
by the infused light of faith to the mysteries of faith revealed
to us. By God I believe in God, my single “Credo” acknowl­
edging Him who reveals and is revealed in one and the same
essentially supernatural act.27
This is a new domain, the kingdom of God, infinitely be­
yond the natural knowledge of every actual or even possible
23 I Cor. 2: 14. See St. Thomas’ commentary on this text.
24 Eph. 2:8.
26 Heb. it : I.
23 Cajetan, in Ham Hac, q.l, a. I, xi.
27 Ha Hae, q.2, a. 2.

20

THE LOVE OF GOD

creature. In this realm, by an act of obscure but wholly
supernatural faith, man infallibly clings to God. In a divine
obscurity far above the reach of human reasoning, the created
intellect finds refuge in the immutable.
When the act of faith, infinitely superior to the natural
activity of both our reason and the angelic intellect, is illu­
mined by the gifts of understanding and wisdom, we shall
have infused contemplation of the revealed mysteries and the
understanding and delight of a spirit of great faith.28 Infused
contemplation proceeds from faith and the enlightening gifts,
as both die Carmelite Joseph of the Holy Ghost and Cajetan
have brought out so well.29
Certain theologians who forget this great teaching and
follow the nominalists come to consider our act of faith as
a kind of discursive and substantially natural act invested
with a supernatural modality. They think that it rests formally
on the natural evidence of miracles and the other signs that
confirm revelation and therefore they regard it as substantially
natural although invested with a supernatural modality and
efficacious for salvation. The supernatural would not be, ac­
cording to this view, a new and essentially divine life, but
a sort of finish, a pretty process of supernatural gold plating,
as it were. If this is said of the act of faith, it must logically be
asserted of the acts of hope and of charity as well. Then charity
would no longer be the same on earth as it is in heaven, since
in heaven alone would it be essentially supernatural. This
sort of supernatural is but an imitation diamond. We seek the
genuine.
28 Ibid., q. 8, a. 45.
29 Joseph of the Holy Ghost, Cursus theol. scolast. mysticae, Π, dise 13, p. 395.
See also Father Gardeil’s recent and excellent work, La structure de l'âme et
l'expérience mystique, Π, 173 fi.

INTRODUCTION

21

What nominalist theologians and their followers failed
to see, St. John of the Cross, walking in the way of St.
Thomas, has comprehended in a masterly way. The doctrine
that there are acts essentially supernatural because of their
formal motive and inaccessible to both the human and the
angelic intellects serves as the basis for all he has written
on faith, hope, and charity. Few others have possessed the
same insight into the meaning and implication of our Lord’s
words: “No man can come to Me except the Father, who hath
sent Me, draw him. . . . Amen, amen, I say unto you: He
that believeth in Me hath everlasting life.” 30 “My sheep hear
My voice.”31 “The school in which God teaches and is
heard,” says St. Augustine, “is far from the realm of the
senses. We see many men come to the Son of God, since we
see many who believe in Christ; but when and how they have
learned this truth of the Father we do not see; too intimate
and too secret is this grace.” 32 “He who has supernatural
faith,” says St. Thomas, “cleaves through the influence of an
infused light, to the First Truth revealing.” 33
St. John of the Cross always keeps before us the increasing
intensity of this infused light. He says: “From what has been
said it is to be inferred that, in order for the understanding to
be prepared for this Divine union, it must be pure and void
of all that pertains to sense, and detached and freed from all
that can be clearly perceived by the understanding profoundly
hushed and put to silence, and leaning upon faith, which
alone is the proximate and proportionate means whereby the
soul is united with God ; for such is the likeness between itself
80 John 6: 44, 47.
81 John 10: 27.
32 De praedestinatione sanctorum, P.L., XLIV, 970; XLIII, 1019.
88 St. Thomas in Joann., c. IV, lect. V, 2.

22

THE LOVE OF GOD

and God that there is no difference, save that which exists
between seeing God and believing in Him. . . . And thus, by
this means alone, God manifests Himself to the soul in Divine
light, which surpasses all understanding. And therefore, the
greater is the faith of the soul, the more completely is it
united with God . . . beneath this darkness [of faith] the
understanding is united with God, and beneath it God is
hidden.” 34
This evidendy means that the primary object and the formal
motive of infused faith infinitely surpass the natural powers
of every created intellect. But in his immortal pages on the
passive purifications of the spirit St. John of the Cross re­
vealed to best advantage one of the highest consequences of
this doctrine. St. Thomas had already given the principles
and traced the course to be followed when he showed tliat
the gift of understanding progressively purifies faith from
every human alloy by freeing our mind from speculative and
practical errors and from attachment to sensible images.35
St. John of the Cross showed us how, in the night of the spirit
under the two contrary influences of God and Satan and
through purifying, redeeming, and almost overwhelming
suffering, the three formal motives of the theological virtues
grow brighter and brighter in spite of the darkness. In all their
uncreated and supernatural sublimity these are like three
great spiritual diamonds—God the revealing First Trudi, God
able and willing to help us, God infinitely good and eminently
lovable. St. Thomas had declared that these three formal mo­
tives are inaccessible to the natural intellectual powers of any
actual or possible creature. St. John of the Cross made known
34 The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Bk. II, chap. 8.
35 Ila Ilac, q.8, a. 7-

INTRODUCTION

23

to us how the Holy Ghost, by purging the theological virtues
of every natural impurity through the light of His gifts,
gives them the capacity to cleave with great purity to God and
to His intimate life, unattainable by the natural knowledge
of even the greatest angel.
Such is the immediate preparation for transforming union:
wherein, in this life, the soul is divinized by being made to
share in the very nature of God; wherein it enjoys, through
the gift of wisdom, the quasi-experimental and almost con­
tinual realization of the indwelling Trinity; and wherein it
loves with a pure and generous love the infinitely good God
and, in Him, the souls of men. In this state God touches the
soul deeply, substantially. The Holy Spirit breathes His most
secret inspirations into its depths. This is the supreme, the
normal, development of the life of grace, eternal life begun
in time. “Amen, amen, I say unto you: he that believeth in Me
hath everlasting life.” 38
The doctrine of St. John of the Cross is, then, in full har­
mony with the principles formulated by Thomas Aquinas
and unfolds all their rich virtuality in the order of the mystical
life. It has the great merit of joining to the theology of the
theological virtues and the gifts the mystical states that St.
Teresa contented herself with describing. It gives a scientific
knowledge of these states by designating their four causes—
their immediate subject, their formal constituent, their prin­
ciple, and their end. It has another merit no less great. It
draws a clear-cut distinction between infused contemplation
(which proceeds from faith united to charity and from the
gifts of wisdom and understanding) and those extraordinary
favors tliat sometimes accompany it (visions, revelations, in36 John 6: 47. Cf. The Living Flame, str. 2, v. 5.

24

THE LOVE OF GOD

terior words). And it shows that the first alone belongs to
the normal way of sanctity and is greatly to be desired. St.
John of the Cross is one of the masters who do most to warn
souls against the desire for extraordinary favors while, at
the same time, making them desire more and more the full
perfection of charity, together with infused contemplation of
the mysteries of faith, which usually accompanies it. He even
insists that the desire for revelations turns the soul from true
contemplation, from the divine darkness of faith.37 In this
he again faithfully follows St. Thomas, who has taught us that
the grace of the virtues and the gifts is far superior to the
gratuitous graces {gratis datae} which are, in a sense, ex­
ternal, like the gift of miracles or of tongues, or the prophetic
knowledge of future events.38
St. John of the Cross has merited the title of Doctor of the
Church because of the absolute trustworthiness and the great
sublimity of his doctrine. Many things in mystical doctrine
and in the works of his great predecessors become clear to us
when we read him. He floods new light upon every subject.
With him speculative mystical theology becomes a definitive
science; and, instead of separating itself from general theol­
ogy, is incorporated within it, becoming its highest and most
beautiful branch.
So, in perfect fidelity to tradition, the work of St. John
of the Cross marks a great step forward in doctrinal mystical
theology. He has, indeed, what is very unusual, the double
authority of a sure theologian and a great mystic who has had
deep and experimental knowledge of the divine things about
which he speaks. For this reason he is far ahead of most
87 The Ascent of Nit. Carmel, Bk. Π, chap. 27.
88 la Ilac, q. in, a.5.

INTRODUCTION

25

authors who have written on the same subject. He speaks of
these things as only the great masters can. In his writings
we are aware of the continual influence of the gifts of wisdom
and understanding. His words flow freely from their source,
the Holy Ghost, “a fountain of water, springing up into life
everlasting.” 39
When we have meditated on this doctrine and have ob­
served at close range souls that, during the trials of the night
of the spirit, live, and live deeply, by it, we return with new
joy to St. Thomas’ treatises on grace, the theological virtues,
and the gifts. And we realize that the best commentators have
not told us all they contain. We discover new treasures in
them. We see that the principles which the Angel of the
Schools formulated on faith, hope, and charity are fully
verified only in the mystical life. And we are convinced
that doctrinal mysticism is nothing else but the full flowering
of speculative theology, just as experimental mysticism is the
normal and full development of the grace of the virtues and
of the gifts in a truly faithful, interior soul.
May these two great masters obtain for us light to under­
stand them well and fidelity to follow them closely.
89 John 4:14.

PART I
God’s Love for Us,
Our Return of Love,
and the Mystery of the Cross

In this first part we shall consider God’s love for us as the
ultimate foundation of the love we ought to have for Him.
We shall consider the problem of the relationship between
our love of God and our love of self and St. Thomas’ solution
of the problem. Then we shall study the bearing of the love
of God upon two mysteries, namely, the indwelling of the
Blessed Trinity in our souls, and the Cross.

CHAPTER I
God’s Love for Us; Our Return of Love

Let us therefore love God: because
God first hath loved us. I John 4:19

Man naturally desires to be happy, and true wisdom con- ·
sists in seeking, not apparent, but real happiness, to be found
not in tire fleeting but in the immutable, in possessing and
loving the infinite Good, who alone can satisfy the deepest
longing of our hearts.

The basis for the Great Commandment
The First Commandment of God accords with these long­
ings. Besides being the principle and end of all the other
commandments, it is the end of the evangelical counsels as
well. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole
heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength and
with all thy mind ; and thy neighbor as thyself.” 1 St. Paul
calls the love of God and neighbor “the bond of perfection” 2
because it unites our souls to God, our last end, and tends to
make all our powers center in Him. Divine charity has
sovereignty over all the other virtues, informing, animating,
and ordering them toward their last end.3 All the exploits
of the other virtues are attributed to it, the general of the army
1 Luke xo: 27.
2 Col. 3:14.
8 Summa, Ila Hae, q.23, a. 8.
29

30

THE LOVE OF GOD

of virtues, the principle of merit. So true is this that without
charity we are, according to St. Paul,4 personally nothing,
even though we might have, for the good of our neighbor, the
gifts of prophecy and of miracles and tire knowledge of the
angels. We,are personally nothing in the order of salvation,
because without charity our soul is in a state of death, devoid
of merit, and our will is turned aside from the divine will,
directed away from God, our last end. On the other hand,
true charity suffices, in a sense, for everything, because it
necessarily presupposes the faith and hope it vivifies and be­
cause it implies all the infused moral virtues subordinated to
it and animated by it.5 In this sense St. Augustine could say:
“Love and do what you will”—provided you love in truth. In
the same vein St. Paul has written: “Charity is patient, is
kind ; charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely, is not puffed
up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked
to anger, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never falleth
away: whether prophecies shall be made void or tongues shall
cease. . . . And now there remain faith, hope, and charity,
these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” 8
From this revealed doctrine, St. Augustine and St. Thomas
have concluded that Christian perfection in this life consists
neidter in knowledge of God nor in wisdom, so highly ex­
tolled by philosophers, nor yet in fortitude, so much admired
by the heroes of paganism, nor in the external austerities and
solitary life of the anchorites, nor in the acts of divine worship
and of religion. For St. Augustine and St. Thomas, Christian
4 I Cor. 13:1.
8 Ila Ilae, q.23, a. 6, 7, 8.
81 Cor. 13: 4-13.

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

31

perfection consists essentially and particularly in the increas­
ingly faithful observance of the two commandments of the
love of God and of neighbor, secondarily and instrumentally
in the evangelical counsels, since these are ordered to the
destruction of whatever hinders the perfect exercise of char­
ity.7 They add that the first and greatest commandment has
no limits and that the perfection of charity falls under the
precept not as matter or that which is to be immediately
realized but as the end toward which all men, each according
to his condition, ought to tend.8
Such,js the first and greatest commandment. What is its
basis? We find the answer in the words of St. John: “Xxt^us
therefore love God, because God first hath loved us.” 8 For
our deeper understanding of charity, let right reason first tell
us what love is due to God in the purely natural order. Then
supernatural revelation will teach us what it alone can: the
intimate nature of the supernatural love we owe to God. In
this way we shall see more clearly the basis for the first and
greatest commandment.
Reason and the love of God

Free from error, reason alone suffices to tell us that our
hearts, made as they are to love the good, ought to love the
Sovereign Good, the principle of all others, before and above
them all. Not without purpose did God grant to us the in­
telligence He denied to animals. Fashioned to know the truth,
our intellect finds complete repose only in the knowledge
of the supreme truth upon which all others depend. Since
7 Summa, Ha Ilae, q. 184, a. 3.
8 Ibid., ad 2um and ad 311m. See also St. Augustine, De. perfectione justitiae,
c. viii.
0 I John 4: 19.

32

THE LOVE OF GOD

it knows the good, it knows not only the sensible, delectable
good possessed by animal and libertine alike, not only the
useful good sought after by the man of affairs as a means to
an end, but the true good that has its perfection within itself,
independently of the pleasure or advantages derived from it.
Justice in every form is such a good, as is truthfulness as
opposed to falsehood, courage and patience too, in fact, the
whole harmony of the virtues that make a man a good man.
Our intellect, having an idea of the true good, conceives it
without limitations. Above and beyond justice mixed with
imperfection, we conceive of justice without a shadow, a
limit, or a restriction. Transcending every particular, our
thoughts reach pure Good, Supreme Good, which, by its
essence, is identical with Beauty, that Beauty spoken of by
Plato in The Banquet as “everlasting, not growing and decay­
ing, or waxing and waning . . . not fair in one point of view
and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or one
place fair, at another time or in another relation of at another
place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others ... or existing
in any other being, as, for example, in an animal or in heaven
or in earth or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate,
simple, and everlasting, which without any diminution and
widiout increase, or any change, is imparted to the evergrowing and perishing beauties of all other things.” 10
Our intellect, seeing itself superior to blind matter, realizes
that it could not have come from matter. Is there any greater
absurdity than to maintain that the intellect of a St. Augustine
could be produced by blind material fatality, that life could
spring up from absence of life, that order and the principle of
order could rise out of lack of order? The greater does not
10 Symposium, an, ed. Jowett (New York: Random House, 1937), pp. 334 f.

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

33

come from the less. Furthermore, our intellect, seeing its
own dependence and the dependence of all other intellects on
the true, realizes that it owes its existence to a higher Intellect
identified with the Truth itself always known. Likewise
our will, which seeks the good, owes its existence to a higher
Will identified with the Sovereign Good always loved. And
the Sovereign Good cannot be distinct from the Supreme
Truth and from Being itself—self-defined for Moses as “I
am who am.”
When our intellect has a notion, however imperfect, of
limitless goodness and beauty, the will, following the intel­
lect, desires that good. Made to love and desire the good, die
will Ought to love first and most the Sovereign Good, the prin­
ciple of all others.11 Nothing could be more obvious. St.
Thomas goes so far as to say that in our will there is a natural
tendency to love God, the author of our nature, more than
ourselves. The reason given by the holy doctor for this is
profound, taken from the very nature of things.
Now in natural things everything which, as such, is dependent
upon and naturally belongs to another,12 is principally and more
strongly inclined to that other to which it belongs than toward
itself. . . . For we observe that the part naturally exposes itself in
order to safeguard the whole; as, for instance, the hand is without
deliberation exposed to the blow for the whole body’s safety. And
since reason copies nature, we find the same inclination among the
social virtues; for it behooves the virtuous citizen to expose him­
self to the danger of death for the public weal of the state; and if
11 Summa, la Ilac, q.2, a. 7, 8; a. 4, 8.
12 The words “its entire being” mean its conservation as well as its first pro­
duction in being. A son depends on his father for his generation but he can keep
on living after his father dies. The relationship of creatures to God is entirely dif­
ferent. They depend on Him for their very existence; if He did not will to conserve
them in being, they would be annihilated. Cf. la, q. 104, a. I.

34

THE LOVE OF GOD

man were a natural part of the city, then such inclination would
be natural to him and not acquired. Consequently, since God is
the universal good,13 and under this good both man and angel
and all creatures are comprised (because every creature in regard
to its entire being naturally belongs to God, its creative and con­
serving first cause), it follows that from natural love angel and
man alike love God before themselves and with a greater love.
Otherwise, if either of them loved self more than God, it would
follow that natural love [given by the Author of nature] would
be perverse, and that it would not be perfected but destroyed by
charity.14

We shall take up this point at some length in the next
chapter in order to determine the true relationship between
love of God and legitimate love of self. For the moment, it
is enough to ask: Since the Sovereign Good is the principle
of every other good, is it not infinitely better and more worthy
of love than we are ?
Our natural inclination to love God above all things is no
doubt weakened by the effects of original and personal sin.15
Moreover, as we actually find ourselves, it does not bring us
to love God, the author of our nature, efficaciously by ob­
serving the whole natural law.1® Nevertheless it does subsist
in the very core of our will, for it is identified with the will’s
very nature. And it exists in the damned and contributes
much to their suffering. In them there is a grievous quasi­
contradiction between their natural inclination still leading
18 What is meant here is universal good in essendo et in causando, non in
praedicando, that is, goodness in its very essence and not goodness as attributable
to all good things.
14 la, q.6o, a.5; Ila Ilae, q.109, a.3.
15 la Ilae, q.85, a.I.
^Ibid., q.109, a.3. Gratia sanans is the same as gratia elevans, being habitual
or sanctifying grace.

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

35

(hem to love existence and life and God, the author of life,
and the pride, disobedience, and hate that persist in turning
them from God.
Thus right reason shows us that only the Sovereign Good
can really allay our natural thirst for happiness and satisfy
our heart’s deepest yearnings. This fact is a proof of the
existence of God; since, if He did not exist, these natural
inclinations would be absurd.17 The two greatest philosophers
of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, put this truth into words
when they placed beatitude in the natural knowledge of God
and in a certain natural love of the Sovereign Good.
What right reason can establish is daily confirmed by ex­
perience. Whenever we think we have found happiness in
some created good—some situation, the knowledge of some
science, an intimate and fine friendship—it is not long before
we discover that what we have is still only a finite good, in­
capable of fully satisfying a mind with a capacity to know
and desire infinite good. The profound boredom so often ex­
perienced by worldlings, whose pleasure-seeking footsteps
are everywhere dogged by it, testifies that their hearts are
made for a good infinitely greater than die joys they pursue.
Their continual need for change and the disillusionment that
drives them from one creature to another make it evident
that only God can fill the infinite void within their hearts.
Our will, made to love the good in general and the Sovereign
Good most of all, has depths that are, in a sense, infinite.
Finite goods can do no more dian move its surface. It is free
to respond to their attraction or not.18 Only God, seen face
to face, can exercise an attraction upon it that is irresistible
17 This has been covered elsewhere: God: His Existence and His Nature, tr. Rose
(St. Louis: Herder, 1934), I, 302 if.; Π, 55-57.
18la Ilae, q. 10, a.2.

THE LOVE OF GOD

36

and perfectly adequate to its capacity for loving. That is why
in heaven love of God is not free but follows necessarily upon
the beatific vision.19 It is above liberty, as the very first move­
ments of our emotions are below it.
God alone can fully satisfy our thirst. The living waters
flow from Him, their source. The realization of this truth
made St. Catherine of Siena say that, if we wish to quench
our thirst at the cup of a lasting friendship, we must keep it
refilled from the source of living water or, soon exhausted,
it will fail us and we shall go thirsty.
Even alone, when unerring, reason can reveal to us the
possibility and, more than that, the necessity of loving God
the author of our nature. In this, experience confirms reason.
Reason points to the commandment of love of God as the first
of the natural law and shows that it virtually contains all the
others.20 As love of truth is the scholar’s principle of life; love
of art and beauty, the artist’s; love of country, the soldier’s;
so love of God seems to be the principle of every human life.
To love God is natural. Reason, even when left to its own
' resources, realizes that man should love God. Great phi­
losophers have sung the praises of this natural love. And poets,
whose lives may have left much to be desired, have, by think­
ing about tire beauty of the divine perfections, attained to an
inefficacious act of natural love of God, to admiration of Him
that is full of velleities, and only of velleities.
For us, as we actually are after the Fall, to have an efficacious
love of God, the author of our nature, we must have the help
of grace and we must ask for it.21 Without it, we can under­
stand the necessity of such a love; but we cannot succeed in
19 Ibid., q.5, a. 4.
20 Ibid., q.109, a. 3, 4.
21 Ibid., a. 3, 7.

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

37

making our own love efficacious. Even if, without grace, we
succeeded in loving God, author of our nature, efficaciously
and above all things, and managed to observe the natural law
in its entirety, our natural love of God would remain infinitely
removed from divine and Christian charity. For charity is
essentially supernatural and has for its primary object God,
the author of grace, in His intimate life.
God’s love for all, the basis of our love for Him

No man of genius, no angel, can by his unaided intellect
alone, comprehend or conceive of supernatural charity, the
loving friendship between God and man.
Often in the Old Testament just men like the patriarchs
and prophets are called “friends of God.” 22 The Canticle
of Canticles speaks symbolically of this strong and tender
love of friendship.23 Our Lord Jesus Christ, by bringing us
the fullness of divine revelation, has made it clearer to us than
anyone else could by telling us: “I will not now call you serv­
ants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But
I have called you friends : because all things whatsoever I have
heard of My Father, I have made known to you.” 24 Just be­
fore this He had said : “As the Father has loved Me, I also have
loved you. Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments
you will abide in My love, as I also have kept My Father’s
commandments, and abide in His love. These things I have
spoken to you that My joy may be in you, and that your joy
may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man
22 Judith 8: 22; Isa. 41: 8; Wisd. 7: 27; Ps. 138: 17. Ln John 3: 29, St. John the
Baptist is called the friend of the bridegroom.
23 Cant. 1: 15.
24 John 15: 15.

38

THE LOVE OF GOD

hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are My
friends if you do the things that I command you.”
Philosophers who recognize the realm of spirit but have
not come to the Christian faith sometimes say: “We cannot
understand a love of friendship, such as you describe, between
man and God. We can certainly have sentiments of admira­
tion, respect, gratitude, and obedience towards God. We can
worship Him interiorly and even exteriorly. But how can we
love Him as a friend? We have never seen Him. He is so
far above us as to be invisible and incomprehensible by His
very nature. We obviously owe Him all we have and are; yet
we can do nothing for Him in return. Friendship presupposes
mutual good will, the possibility of doing good to one an­
other, a certain intercourse or community of life, a common
life, if it may be so expressed, that demands mutual revelation
of intimate thoughts, a common quest for the same good, and
the shared pursuit of one ideal.” 25 Between God and us love
and intimacy like this seem to be impossible. So argues reason
when left to itself.
What reason cannot discover, what the angelic intellect by
its own natural powers cannot know, has been revealed to us
by God in the days of the Old Testament and brought to us
in its fullness by our Lord Jesus Christ. He has made known to
us the infinite love of God, who wills our participation in His
own intimate life through grace. He has taught us that to
make our Father in heaven a fitting return we have only to
model our love on His, who first loved us. As St. John says:
' “By this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because
God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we
26 Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VIH, cd. McKeon (New York: Random
House, 1941).

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

39

ma[ live by Him. In this is charity: not as though we had
loved God, but because He hath first loved us, and sent His
Son to be a propitiation for our sins. My dearest, if God hath
so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 26
From· this text St. Thomas Aquinas concluded that divine
charity/ uniting us to God and to one another in Him, is true
love of friendship. It certainly implies mutual good will, for,
God wills our good, our eternal salvation, and we will His
|glory|.that .He be known and^ loved £S He deserves now and
forever* Besides, the charity that unites us to Him is founded,
like all true friendship, on real community of life, since He
communicates to us a participation in His own intimate life,
sançtifyjpg^graçe, thef seed jof eternal life and happiness, by
which we shall be forever associated in the intimate life of
God. Then we shall see Him without intermediary, as He
sees Himself; and, so seeing, we shall love Him as He loves
Himself.27
To have a deeper understanding of God’s uncreated love,
the basis of our own supernatural charity, let us consider the
nature of true and generous love. Then let us take away all
limitations from its qualities, making them infinite, and we
shall catch a far, faint glimpse of what God’s love is like.
When we love another truly we love him for his own sake,
not for ours, not regarding him as something to be used
or enjoyed but wishing him well, willing him well. True
love is not mere emotion, rising spontaneously at the sight
of a lovahle object; it is a love of well-wishing and well-doing.
By it we desire and do good to another, loving actively, ef­
fectively, and generously.
20 I John 4: 9 f.
27 Ila Ilac, q.23, a.i; ibid., ad 2um.

40

THE LOVE OF GOD

Love usually demands three things of us: that we go out
of self by tending toward the one to whom we would do
good jhat we be united to him by a close communion of ideas,
sentiments, and desires ; that we devote ourselves to him, give
ourselves to him, and, if need be, sacrifice ourselves for him,
that he may be made better and may reach his final goal.28
A real mother images this kind of love. No mere emotional
delight in the lovableness of her child contents her. She must
both will and do him good, going out of herself, forgetting
herself, abandoning all the preoccupations of self-love and
egotism to reach out to her little one. When she takes him up,
puts her arms around him, and holds him close, it is as
though she would become one with him. Wholly and always
devoted, her love leaps up to meet his every need, and when
he is ill nothing can take her from his side where, day and
night, she cares for all his wants. From her he learns to walk
and talk and pray; she it is who first awakens his mind, his
heart, his soul.
By endowing these qualities of truly generous love with
infinity, we can discover something of the meaning of God’s
love for us. Rightly did Isaias compare His mercy to the
tenderness of a mother for her child, because die tenderness
of a mother’s heart has its source in the infinitely greater
goodness of God.
God’s uncreated charity for us has ever been and ever will
■ be a benevolent, bountiful, and essentially active love. Such
love could not be a merely affective, passive pleasure in what28 Cf. la Ilae, q. 26, a. 4, for the distinction between the love of concupiscence
and the more perfect love of friendship, which leads a man to will for his friend
|T what is good for him. In q.28, a. 3, St. Thomas says that love, especially the love
>j of friendship, draws us out of ourselves and (ibid., a. 1, 2, 3) unites us to our
friend, makes us live in him and hold his interest so dear that we are willing to
sacrifice our own good for his.

I

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

41

ever is lovable in us. All that makes us lovable in God’s eyes
comes from Him and is given to us only by His sovereignly
free and gratuitous love. Whatever is lovable is good, and
every good of every order can come only from the source of
all good things, Goodness itself. From all eternity God neces­
sarily loves this infinite Goodness which is Himself. In it He
finds His essential beatitude. He had no need to create us, for
He is no greater, no happier, no wiser for having created the
universe.29 Freely He willed to manifest His goodness, to have
us participate in His own inner riches. He willed to radiate
goodness as He made the sun to radiate light. The same God
who filled the air with the song of birds also willed the mighty
hymn of His infinite praises to roll out from Him to other
minds and other lives. “The heavens show forth the glory of
God.” God’s love is creative. Far from supposing lovableness
in those He loves, He creates it in them by His pure, sover­
eignly free, and gratuitous benevolence.30
Out of wholly gratuitous love God has given us existence,
the life of the body and of the spiritual and immortal soul ; He
keeps us in existence and gives us, besides, the help necessary
at each moment to make those intellectual and volitional acts
indispensable for attaining goodness and truth. Even what
seems most exclusively our own—the free determination to
choose good rather than evil—comes to us from Him. The
disorder and failure so often adulterating our acts comes from
us exclusively, for it requires only a defective cause.31 When
we choose the good, then God, as first cause, first intellect, first
liberty, and source of every good, makes us choose it by an act
20 la, q. 19, a.3.
20 Ibid., q. 20, a. 3, 4.
21 la Ilae, q.79, a.i, 2.

42

THE LOVE OF GOD

at once vital and free.32 He is closer to us than we are to our­
selves. If all that comes to us from Him were taken out of
our lives, we would be, in the strictest sense of the term, ab­
solutely nothing. Two dogmas serve as the basis for Christian
humility: creation ex nihilo and the necessity of grace for the
least act effective for salvation.
God has loved us from all eternity. He made His love mani­
fest at the moment of creation. And in the daily creation of
souls, In the creation of my individual soul, which He freely
maintains in existence at this instant, He renews and re­
enacts that moment. In the beginning He gave the first man
natural life, a gift of love. This gift Adam was to transmit to
us all. By a still more gratuitous love, He gave him also some­
thing immeasurably above the natural life of men and angels
alike, the life of grace, a participation in the divine life prop­
erly so called. The gift of eternal life, of seeing and loving
God as He sees and loves Himself, was given to the first man
to be passed on to all his children.
Just as he had received it for himself and for us,33 the first
man “lost for himself and for us” 34 the seed of glory, sanc­
tifying grace. He failed to appreciate the value of divine life
and in his blindness preferred the infinitely inferior life of
“the knowledge of good and evil.” He chose a life which, so
the temptation said, was to be his own to lead, free of any
necessity to ask God for light or to obey Him. To living faith
and infused wisdom, to divine contemplation and super­
natural love of God united to humility and obedience, man
preferred a mode of knowledge of the natural order. He
32 Sec la, q.19, a.8; q.83, a. I, ad 3um; q.105, a.4, 5; la Ilae, q.10, a.4, c. and
ad 3um.
33 Council of Trent, sess. V, Dcnzinger, no. 789.
M la, q.95, a. I, 2, 3; q. too, a. 1, 2; Ila Ilae, q.8l, a. 1, 3.

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

43

chose to be his own master, to rely on himself and his selfcollected pseudo-data, instead of confiding in God, the first
truth and sovereign good. Through his own fault, he fell from
original justice and the heights of sanctity where the Creator
had placed him.
God’s love followed us in our downfall and misery. To
pardon us, God could have contented Himself with sending
a prophet to express His forgiveness. Freely He willed to do
infinitely more: “For God so loved the world as to give His
only-begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him may not
perish, but may have life everlasting.” 85 Infinite mercy could
do no more. At the same time, according to the decree of
the divine liberty, the utmost requirements of justice itself
were to be satisfied by the Savior’s sacrifice. “Mercy and truth
have met each other.” 38
We fell, and God willed to stoop down to us as a mother
stoops down to a hurt child. He chose to descend, in a sense, to
our level that He might raise us up to His. He stripped Him­
self, as it were, of the brightness of His glory, of His infinite
majesty, not willing to appear in the splendor of His mag­
nificence as He did on Mt. Sinai when He showed Himself to
Moses. He willed to empty Himself, so St. Paul put it,37 that
He might be found according to our measure. He took a body
and soul like ours and was seen in the form of a little child
in the lowliest circumstances, in the ranks of the poorest, that
all might come to Him without fear. For thirty years He who
could have forced everyone to accept Him by the ascendancy
of His mind, His character, and His miracles, lived the hid­
den life of a poor village carpenter of Nazareth.
80 John 3:16.
80 Ps. 84: II.
87 "Exinanivit semetipsum’’; Phil. 2: 7.

THE LOVE OF GOD

44

By His lowliness and abasement our God has made Himself
one of us. In flesh like ours, He shared our life, willed our
happiness, performed our duties, bore our sufferings, felt our
weariness, wept our tears. He has taken us into His arms. More
than that, on Holy Thursday He, the Word of God, of His
own will kissed our feet. Finally, by taking on Himself all our
offenses, He has given Himself for us, sacrificed Himself for
us. He has died a victim for us, shed His blood in cruel suffer­
ing, that the heritage of eternal life, which in our blindness
we despised and lost, might be once more ours.
Well might St. Paul speak of this as God’s “exceeding char­
ity,” 88 an “excess of love,” for it infinitely exceeds anything
within the natural compass of human reason or angelic intel­
lect. St. Paul can even call it “foolishness,” 39 for by it the
narrow calculations of human wisdom are, in a sense, re­
versed. As a mother, in the folly of her love, offers herself as
a victim that the son who has insulted and despised her may
i be brought back to the right path, so God, out of love, dies
For His own creature, who has despised and shunned Him.
This is the folly of the Cross beyond and above reason, the
remedy for another very real folly which falls far short of
reason, the folly of sin: of lust, avarice, envy, and pride, and
of forgetfulness and hatred of God.
The evil that destroys reason is far inferior to it; the remedy
that heals reason is infinitely above it. Rationalists make no
mistake in saying that reason, left to its own resources, cannot
understand it; for this so-called folly belongs to a higher order,
beyond the mind’s natural reach. In such abysses of love
reason is lost; only the supernatural discernment of the saints
88 Eph. 2: 4.
291 Cor. i: 18.

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

45

can penetrate these depths. Only in heaven shall we see the
sublime and the infinite fitness of the mystery of the redemp­
tive Incarnation. To grasp it as it is in itself, we need an im­
mediate vision of the divine essence and of the uncreated
personality of the Word made flesh, whom love led to die
for us.
In heaven we shall see that goodness is essentially commu­
nicative, and that the higher its order the more intimately and
fully it tends to communicate itself.40 We shall see that God
the Father, in the interior expression of His thought, com­
municates to the Word within Him, His Son, not only a
participation in His nature, but His whole indivisible nature
without loss or multiplication. He thus gives to His Word to
be “God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God.” He
begets His Son in that single moment which never passes,
the unique “now” of changeless eternity. We shall see that
the Father and the Son, by loving each other, spirate per­
sonal love, the Holy Ghost, die Third Person of the Blessed
Trinity, the flaming spiritual current that unites the first two
persons in intimate communion.41 The three live upon the
40 Bonum est essentialiter deffusivum sui. Cf. St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, Bk. IV,
chap, il, where he shows the truth of this principle in outlining the degrees of
being and finally by applying it to God Himself, in order to throw light on the
mystery of the Trinity. See also la, q.27, a. 1, ad sum.
41 We distinguish in God: (1) the c>£cnt$l love common to the three Persons
of the Blessed Trinity; (2) the notional love by which Fatlîêr*ànd Son spirate the
1 loly Ghost, an act analogous to the generation of the Word by die Father; and
(3) the personal love which is the term of this active spiration—the Holy Ghost.
Cf. la, q.41, a.fi.As the Council of Florence defined, the only real distinction in God
is the opposition of relations between the three divine Persons.
As to the love God bears for us, it is only virtually distinct from the essential
love common to the three divine Persons, by which They necessarily love the
divine goodness. Yet God's love for us, which led Him to create and preserve us.
is free, for God need not have created us and He would have been infinitely wise
and good and would have enjoyed infinite happiness just the same. Cf. la, q. 19,
a. 2,3,7.

46

THE LOVE OF GOD

same infinite Truth by the same intellectual act, upon the
same infinite Goodness by the same essential act of love. They
are distinct only through the relations of paternity, filiation,
and spiration, according to which they are “distinguished as
die opposite terms of a relation.”
Goodness being diffusive of itself and the more intimately
and abundantly so as it ascends in the various orders of being,
we shall also see that God has freely willed to communicate
Himself as much as possible to humankind by uniting Him­
self “in person” to the humanity of the Savior in such a way
that the Word of God and the holy soul and body of Jesus
together make but one and the same person, one and the same
being; somewhat as in each one of us the soul and body,
despite their distinction, constitute a single whole, a person
really one.42
Moreover, God has willed that the acts of love Christ made
for us as He hung dying on the cross should have an infinitely
meritorious and satisfactory value in the uncreated person of
the Word, who truly loved us in those acts of His human will
whereby He sacrificed Himself for us,43 while, in strict justice,
He merited for us as the constituted head of humankind.
“Therefore as by the offense of one, unto all men to condem­
nation; so also by the justice of one, unto all men to justifica42 Illa, q.i, a. i: “To each thing that is befitting which belongs to it by reason of
its very nature. . . . But the very nature of God is goodness. . . . Hence what
belongs to the essence of goodness befits God. But it belongs to the essence of
goodness to communicate itself to others. . . . HenceTt belongs to the essence of
the highest good to communicate itself in the highest manner to the creature, and
this is brought about chiefly by His so joining created nature to Himself that one
Person is made up of these three—the Word, a soul and flesh, as St. Augustine says
(De Trin., xiii). Hence it is manifest that it was fitting that God should become
incarnate." In us body and soul constitute one and the same person and also one
and the same nature, whereas in our Lord the divine and human natures, although
united in the same Person, remained infinitely distant from each other as natures.
43 Illa, q. I, a. a, ad turn.

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

47

tion of life.”44 Such is the priceless worth of the cross of
Christ.
But our Lord has, in a sense, gone even farther than this; He
has abased Himself yet more, united Himself even more
closely to us, given Himself to us still more generously in
the Eucharist. In this sacrament He is, in a way, emptied of
Himself, being willing to lie hidden under the humble ap­
pearances of bread and wine, docile alike under the hands
of the holy or the sacrilegious priest that He may be brought
to all, even the repentant criminal about to die. He has willed
to descend so low that the poorest missionary, with only a
bit of bread at his disposal, can make Him really and sub­
stantially present among the tribes he is evangelizing. Under
these poor appearances the sacred body of Jesus is present,
together with His soul and divinity. The host can be divided
in half, then in quarters, and so on until only a small particle,
almost imperceptible to bodily eyes, is left; and faith tells us
that under this particle are found the soul and body of the
Savior, His divinity and omnipotence, and all those infinite
riches He wills us to share more abundantly each day.
The Word made flesh is on the altar. During Mass He con­
tinues to offer Himself for us and to unite to Himself all
who desire to receive the Eucharist. To saints like Catherine
of Siena it has been granted to drink in ecstasy at the sacred
wound of the heart of Jesus; all Christians have the daily priv­
ilege of drinking spiritually at the same source through Holy
Communion.
Christ could not have given Himself to us any more than
He has, willingly becoming our food, being eaten by us. The
Eucharistic Bread, so superior to us, is not assimilated by us,
44 Rom. 5: 18. Cf. Summa, Illa, q. 19, a.4.

THE LOVE OF GOD

48

but it daily assimilates us more and more to Christ. It trans­
forms us into Him and increases our vitality as members of
the mystical body of which Jesus is the head.
We are accustomed to these marvels. Habit, degenerating at
times into routine, prevents us from admiring what is abso­
lutely gratuitous and sublime in the infinite mercy of our God,
who thus stoops down to our misery. Thomas Aquinas always
kept this admiration alive within him.
O res mirabilis: manducat Dominum
Pauper servus et humilis!
This goes beyond anything our reason could of itself con­
ceive or our heart naturally desire. Not only do the expressions
of God’s love as the author of grace satisfy our deepest natural
longings; they immeasurably exceed them and likewise sur­
pass the natural knowledge and desire of any angelic mind,
whether actual or possible.45 Going beyond our natural yearn­
ings, they arouse in us the higher and essentially supernatural
aspirations of infused hope and divine charity.

Our return of love
“Let us therefore love God; because God first hath loved
us.”46 It would be well for us to recall what return the saints
have made to God for His love, and then see what our own
response ought to be.
The saints are not content to love God emotionally, to ad­
mire His goodness intellectually, to think with poetic en­
thusiasm of His divine perfections. They understand Christ’s
words: “Not every one that saith to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall
enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doth the will
45 la, q.62, a. 2.
461 John 4: 19.

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

49

of My Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the king­
dom of heaven.”47 He gave this assurance especially for those
who do the will of God not merely through duty and with
resignation, those who, even in the midst of trials, do it out
of love and with generosity, courageously allowing themselves
to be loved and purified by God, refusing Him nothing and
truly following the example of our Savior who died for us. No
saint measures his charity by the sweetness of the sensible
consolations sometimes accorded in prayer, but loves deeply
with a love rooted in the will. The love of the saints lives
on in the midst of prolonged and barren aridity and is
nourished by the hard bread of tribulation as well as the milk
of consolation, is compounded of strength as well as of tender­
ness, and grows more and more generous by continually
giving even when it seems to be done with receiving. Love
like this makes the saints burn with desire to have God’s
name hallowed, His kingdom come, His will done on earth
as it is in heaven. They hunger and thirst for justice, not with
the brief flare of callow enthusiasm but with an ardor born of
the gift of fortitude and of charity that endures through
struggles and contradictions of all kinds. These they sur­
mount, or rather are lifted across and go on with God,
towards God, keeping their peace and sharing it with others.
A saint’s love.strives to reproduce whatever is imitable in
God’s love, to model itself on God’s love so as to make Him
a like return. God has come down to our level. In the ardor
of His love He has lowered Himself so far as to become the
man of sorrows, covered with our sins, “a worm and no
man,”48 an abasement we simply cannot comprehend. To
47 Matt. 7: 21.
48 Ps. 21: 7.

5o

THE LOVE OF GOD

make such love some return, the saints reduce themselves to
the level of this God who was made less than they. They go
down from the throne of their self-love to stand together with
their God, stripped of glory and emptied of self. They love
Him in His awful abasement more dian any prince has even
been loved in his most brilliant triumph.
St. Dominic went by preference into that part of Languedoc
where the Albigensians ridiculed and abused him in every
way. He experienced a holy joy in being so treated, the joy
of becoming more like die humiliated Christ. And thereafter
when he talked to those poor misguided people, it was no
longer a man who spoke to them but the Lord who spoke by
his mouth and gave him the power to convert their hearts.
St. Benedict Joseph Labre was as eager to follow those who
insulted him as he was to flee from those who praised him,
deeming himself unworthy of any good words. In different
ways all the saints find a need to abase themselves out of love
for our humiliated, scourged, and stricken Lord.
The Word of God united Himself to us and took on our
human ways that He might live with us. The desire of the
saints is to take on divine ways that they may live with Him.
Many of diem have retired into solitude to live in perpetual
recollection. Many others, kept in the world by duty, have,
like St. Catherine of Siena, made an interior cell in the core
of their hearts so that their conversation has been with the
indwelling Trinity, whom they have served as living temples.
They have preferred God to everything else besides, loved
Him above all other things, without division and without
exclusion, loving all men in Him, their legitimate affections
raised to a new level by their love of Him. Fired in the flame

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

51

of charity, natural love becomes a burning thirst for the salva­
tion’of souls.
Our Lord gave Himself to us on the cross. The saints give
themselves to God, often even by martyrdom, that His name
may be glorified, that His kingdom may come, and His will
be done. And when they do not shed their blood as a testimony
to Him, they may experience a martyrdom no less heroic, the
martyrdom of the heart, a kind of slow death in the midst of
daily griefs and trials of all kinds. In a wholly practical way
they understand and follow the example of St. Paul, who said:
“I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up those things
that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for
His body, which is the Church.”49 Nothing is lacking in the
divine Passion itself. It has infinite and superabundant value.
We alone lack something, the reflected reproduction of Christ
within us. This is ours to give our Lord by allowing Him to
assimilate us to Himself, by working in Him, with Him, and
by Him for the salvation of souls through the means He Him­
self has chosen, prayer and immolation. Our Lord is at once
a victim and a priest. He makes all His priests participate in
His priesthood and requires all His saints to share with Him
in some way His character of victim. Thus man’s growing
configuration to the crucified Word of God is effected and
God’s love receives a return of love from His saints.
What should our return be ? It should be love of the same
essentially supernatural quality as that received in baptism and
restored by absolution, if we have been so unhappy as to
lose it. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole
heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength and
48 Col. 1:24.

52

THE LOVE OF GOD

with all thy mind ; and thy neighbor as thyself.” 50 Conse­
quently, as we have already repeated after St. Augustine61
and St. Thomas,52 the perfection of charity falls under this
commandment not as matter or that which is to be imme­
diately realized, but as the end toward which all men ought
to tend, each according to his condition, one in marriage,
another in religious life, another in the priesthood. Everyone
in the world ought to grow in charity continually. Growth
in charity is progress towards God. As soon as we make up
our minds to stop before reaching the end of our journey, we
cease to be travelers toward eternity.53 Our souls become re­
tarded, like children who stop growing before reaching adult­
hood and so become dwarfs. The road toward eternity is for
travel, not for rest. The Fathers of the Church tell us that he
who does not go forward on the way to God goes back.
We shall even see that the progress of charity, effected
especially by daily Communion, ought in principle to advance
more and more swiftly. A stone falls faster and faster as it
nears the earth ; so should our souls advance more and more
quickly towards God as they draw nearer to Him and are
increasingly attracted by Him.54 The sublimity of the First
Commandment being what it is, we cannot doubt that actual
graces are progressively offered to us that we may attain its
end. Our Lord does not command the impossible. He does
exhort us to ask His help.
This being so, we ought to ask ourselves whether we are
falling behind on our way to God, whether we are willing
50 Luke 10:27.
51 De perfectione justitiae, VIII.
52 Ila Ilae, q. 184, a.3.
52 Cf. St. Thomas, in Epist. ad Hebr., VI, X.
54 Cf. ibid., X, 25 on the words "tanto magis quanto viderilis appropinquantem
diem." See also la Ilae, q.35, a. 6.

GOD’S LOVE FOR US

53

enough to come down from the throne of our self-love and our
pride in order to stoop down, after the example of the saints,
to the abasement of Jesus Christ, which perhaps is more
alive in certain souls we look down upon than in our own.
Are we willing to die to our own judgment and our own will
that we may be united in a perpetual communion of ideas and
of will with Christ Jesus, not only at prayertime but all day
long? Is our soul’s habitual conversation with Him, our
Savior, our best friend, our counselor in all life’s duties and
affairs? Are we sufficiently willing to be devoted, to sacrifice
ourselves when necessary, that we may become each day more
like Him who died for us, that we may be associated in some
small way at least in the work of redemption before receiving
a share in His glorious life for all eternity ?
To reach the perfection of love of God and neighbor, two
methods, it is said, lie before us: one descending, the other
ascending. The first consists in beginning with the considera­
tion of the great mystery of God’s love for us: “Let us there­
fore love God, because God first hath loved us.” This is the
way we have been discussing, the one the saints have followed
in contemplating the sorrowful Passion. The second method
consists in taking ourselves as the starting point, in examining
our conscience, our failings, our predominant fault, in con­
sidering, too, the many virtues to be practiced in this and that
circumstance. Certainly we cannot neglect these practices, but
we should make all such examinations under the higher light
of the great mystery of love; otherwise the multitude of our
own failings and of the virtues to be acquired will confuse
us. Moreover, virtue has no strong attraction for us when not
contemplated in our Lord and in our Lady. It is incumbent
on us, then, to go to the very heart of the interior life, to

54

THE LOVE OF GOD

charity, which ought to inform, animate, and vivify all the
virtues, and, that we may grow in charity, to contemplate how
Christ has loved us. We are full of faults; alone we shall not
succeed in correcting them.65 We must beg the Savior to come
to us and put our house in order with us. For love of Him, let
us allow Him to lead us on the way He has chosen for us. He
is the Good Shepherd who leads His sheep into eternal pas­
tures, calling each by name68 and teaching them, if they will
but listen to Him, all He Himself desires of them on the way
to eternity.
65 la Ilae, q. 109, a.6, c. and ad lum.
6e John 10:3.

CHAPTER II
The Problem of Pure Love

This we know: God’s love for us demands a return. How
pure, how disinterested should our return be? Will it always
be tainted by a certain self-love? How far must we sacrifice
love of self to arrive at a truly pure love of Him who first
loved us?
In the Encyclical Studiorum ducem of June 27, 1923, His
Holiness Pope Pius XI strongly emphasized the following
point of St. Thomas’ doctrine: the commandment to love God
has no limits; the perfection of charity falls under this pre­
cept, of course, not as matter or that which is to be immediately
realized, but as die end toward which every Christian ought
to tend, each according to his condition.1 Whether in religious
life or in the world, all ought to draw ever nearer to God, their
last end. As nature’s law requires a child to grow under
penalty of becoming a dwarf, so the law of our earthly pil­
grimage requires that travelers on the road toward eternity
go ever forward by steps of love, as St. Gregory the Great
says, until we reach our journey’s end. A road is not for rest
or sleep, but for travel. In the way of virtue, according to a
traditional adage, “He who does not go forward slips back”;
for the law demands advancement and even increasing ad­
vancement. The speed of falling bodies increases as they ap­
proach the earth’s surface; so souls ought in principle to go
1 Encyclical Studiorum ducem : "Haec igitur a Deo delapsa seu infusa sapientia."

55

56

THE LOVE OF GOD

more quickly towards God the nearer they come to Him and
are more attracted by Him.2
The doctrine concerning the compass of the commandment
of love has often been misunderstood,3 although it was clearly
formulated by the Fathers of the Church, particularly St.
Augustine.4 In the encyclical of January 26,1923, written for
the third centenary of St. Francis de Sales, His Holiness Pius
XI remarked that the author of the Treatise on the Love of
God was cognizant of this traditional teaching and gave it
clear expression in his works.®
If our love of God ought to keep growing until death,
evidently it should become ever purer, freer from all egotism
and every inordinate love of our own good. This point of doc­
trine leads us to consider fully the problem of love that we
may better understand the relationship of our desire for our
own highest good with pure love of God and of His glory.
First, we shall recall the way this problem has been stated
and the principal solutions it received in the Middle Ages.
One of these appears more as an evident tendency then as an
explicit theory in some of the works of St. Bernard, Richard
of St. Victor, and other medieval mystics. The other, together
with its chief consequences, St. Thomas plainly formulated.
A statement of the first viewpoint and the difficulties it leaves
unsolved will lead us to an examination of the second, a logical
and chronological procedure for, as we shall see, in proposing
2 Cf. Summa, la Ilae, q.35, a. 6.
8 The objections made by Suarez and answered by Passerini have been examined
elsewhere. Cf. Christian Perfection and Contemplation, tr. Doyle, footnotes pp. 179,
187 f.
4 Cf. De perfectione justitiae, c. viii: ”Cur ergo non praeciperetur homini ista
perfectio, quamvis eam in hac vita nemo habeat?” It is commanded as the end
toward which all ought to tend.
8 Cf. St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, Bk. Ill, chap. 1.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

57

his own solution St. Thomas was aware of the insufficiency
of the one already proposed. His has its foundation in Aris­
totle’s views on human nature and the teaching of St. Augus­
tine and Dionysius on the love of God.
We shall draw inspiration from the works of the Domini­
cans of the seventeenth century, Chardon, Piny,® and Massoulié.7 We shall also make use of the thought-provoking
work of Father Pierre Rousselot, S.J.8 However, instead of
turning aside from St. Thomas’ doctrine with him, we shall
keep to it, bringing our study to a close with St. Thomas’
solution of the difficulties raised by the other opinion. The
recent study of Abbé Eugene Kulesza on Richard of St. Vic­
tor 8 contains a criticism of some of Father Rousselot’s con­
clusions and can be read with profit. We may throw open to
question whether these two conceptions are as opposed as the
latter says and ask ourselves whether we can find, within the
metaphors of the first, the rough draft of the second, which
alone achieves an exact terminology.10
* Chardon and Piny appeal to experience and introduce a more personal note
in their writings than Massoulié, who follows the letter of St. Thomas more closely.
In his Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, Vol. VIII, pp. 25 fi., and
91 fi., Bremond gives a just appreciation of these too little known spiritual writers.
7 See Massoulié, Traité de l'amour de Dieu (Brussels ed., 1866), in which
he explains the nature, purity, and perfection of charity according to the principles
of the Fathers and especially of St. Thomas. Cf. also the articles published in the
Revue Thomiste, 1905-1907, “La charité d'après Saint Thomas d’Aquin."
8 L'histoire du problème de l’amour au Moyen-Age, Collection Cl. Baeumker,
Beitrâge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (Miinster, 1908), Vol. VI.
8 La doctrine mystique de Richard de Saint-Victor, University of Fribourg thesis,
pub. by La Vie Spirituelle.
10 This seems to be Massoulié’s opinion. Cf. op. cit., pp. 290-315. Chardon and
Piny must have leaned toward it. Father Rousselot makes several remarks (p. 57)
moderating his own stand. The reasoning of Roland-Gosselin, O.P., in the article
“Le désir du bonheur et l'existence de Dieu,” Revue des Sciences Phil, et Théol.
(April, 1924, p. 165), inclines one to moderate it still further. See also Richard
Egenter, Gottesfreundschajt, “Die Lehre von der Gottesfreundschaft in der Scholastik und Mystik des 12 und 13 Jahrhunderts” (Augsburg: Filser Verlag, 1929).

58

THE LOVE OF GOD

ARTICLE I
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

When reading good works like Massoulié’s on the subject,
we should like to see at the very beginning, before any search
for a solution is instituted, a deep study of the problem itself.
This was St. Thomas’ method. Following Aristotle, he first
examined the difficulties of the question and the frequently
contrary answers already given by earlier authors; after­
ward he revealed the lofty intellectual reaches of those prin­
ciples to which recourse must be had, leading us up to them
little by little as toward a summit from which the light of
the solution emanates.11
This method of procedure has lead St. Thomas, apropos of
the question “Ought man, by charity, to love God more than
himself?” to give an apt statement of the problem of love in
the following difficulty: “One loves a thing in so far as it is
one’s own good. Now the reason for loving a thing is more
loved than the thing itself which is loved for that reason, even
as the principles which are the reason for knowing a thing
are more known. Therefore man loves himself more than any
other good loved by him. Therefore he does not love God
more than himself.” 12 Elsewhere St. Thomas has proposed
11 Massoulii brings out the difficulties of the problem only in the seventh chapter
of the first part of his work, after having explained St. Thomas’ principles, an
approach which fails to reveal their value. St. Thomas had good reasons for show­
ing us the difficulty of a question before proposing the principles that resolve it.
The objections placed at the beginning of his articles are a part of the Summa too
little read.
12 Ila Ilae, q. 26, a.3, 2 ob. In la, q.6o, a. 5, 2 ob., the same difficulty is formu­
lated as follows: "Further, that which is cause of anything having a certain qual­
ity, must possess that quality in a higher degree. But everyone loves another with
natural love for his own personal sake: because he loves it as good for himself.
Therefore the angel does not love God more than self with natural love.”

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

59

the same difficulty in another form. “Nature,” he says, “is al­
ways self-centered in its operation, for we behold every agent
acting naturally for its own preservation. But nature’s opera­
tion would not be self-centered were it to tend toward any­
thing else more than nature itself.” 13
In the light of these texts of St. Thomas, Father Rousselot
writes: “In abstract terms the problem of love could be for­
mulated like this : Is love without egotism possible ? And if it
is possible, what relationship has such pure love of another to
love of self, seemingly the basis of all natural tendencies ? The
problem of love is analogous to the problem of knowledge.
In the latter we ask how a being can have consciousness (or
at least knowledge) of that which is not himself; in the for­
mer, how a being can be drawn by desire toward that which
is not its own good.” 14
This seems to be a good statement of the problem, except
the word “egotism,” which, to my mind, creates an equivoca­
tion, for it generally denotes a disordered love of self, which
cannot be found, as we shall see, in the very essence of the
primary natural inclination.15 Hence it is better to avoid using
the expression and to keep St. Thomas’ terms as quoted.
After asking ourselves how a knowing being can acquire
knowledge not only of its own impressions but of extra13 la, q. 60, a. 5, 3 ob.
14 Op. cit., p. I.
15 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. IX, chap. 8, for the two meanings of
love of self. One is noble and commendable; the other, the opposite kind, we call
egoism. Because the word "egoism” has an essentially derogatory meaning, we
cannot apply it to God and speak of “the transcendental egoism by which He made
all things for His own glory." To do so would be a stupid error, for egoism, un­
like goodness, is not an absolute perfection without any trace of imperfection. The
egoist loves himself more than his family, his country, even the Sovereign Good,
and certainly God cannot love Himself more than the Essential Good which is
Himself, and if He had not made all things to manifest His own glory, He would
not have ordered them all to their supreme good.

6o

THE LOVE OF GOD

mental realities, how our intellect can attain to that which is
true in itself and universally, independently of us, we seek to
discover how we can love another with a love not subordinated
to the desire for our own good. Is pure love of another—above
all, of God—possible? And if it is, what relation has it to our
desire for personal happiness ?

Extreme and evidently erroneous philosophical
solutions
To the two great problems so stated, two radically extreme
and contrary solutions have been given. These are subjectivism
and pantheistic realism. Subjectivism denies or throws open to
doubt the objective value of our intellect and, consequently,
the authority of its object, extra-mental being or the truly
real. Likewise subjectivism does not recognize die rights of
the object of the will, the good, and particularly the right of
the Sovereign Good to be loved above all things. In antiquity
a tendency toward this position marked the Sophists and
Skeptics; today it characterizes the modern subjectivists. It
plainly leads to utilitarianism 18 or, at best, to a certain love of
human dignity that makes a pretense of having no special
obligation toward God, as though He were not the clearly
evident author of every good and Himself the supreme good.17
18 The empirical nominalism of men like John Stuart Mill prevents them from
getting beyond utilitarianism to the correct idea of the true good, which stands
above the delectable and the useful and, because it is beyond the reach of both the
external and internal senses, can be grasped only by reason.
17 Although Kant maintains that morality presupposes disinterestedness and has
nothing to do with the desire for happiness, which he, like Rousseau, connects too
closely with sensual appetency, he fails to reach the notion of love of God for His
own sake, since he does not recognize that we have special duties towards God.
The principle maintained by Rousseau in the social order, that man himself formu­
lates the law which he obeys, was applied by Kant to the moral sphere. To his mind,
it is befitting that we fulfill our duties toward ourselves and our fellow men re-

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

61

The solution radically contrary to this, absolute realism, is
no less erroneous. It confounds being in general, or universal
being, with the divine Being, and good in general or the
universal good, with the divine Good. It leads to pantheism,
reduces all things to God, identifies all things with Him, and
so denies their own proper existence. Parmenides held this
doctrine in antiquity; Spinoza with his pantheistic ontologism
maintains it among the moderns. It implicitly denies personal
beatitude, contenting itself with an impersonal immortality
entirely different from the immortality about which Christian
faith speaks to us.*18
Evidently Catholic theologians could not go so far astray as
these two extremes, although the nominalists of the four­
teenth century came strikingly close to the subjectivist po­
sition 19 and, inversely, Master Eckhart apparently arrived
at the frontiers of pantheism when, after having taught in
mystical language that creatures are nothing, that is, nothing
of themselves, he seems to have asserted that in strict phil­
osophical terms they are absolutely nothing.20 This view
ligiously, as if their obligation for us depended on God, and he concedes that
morality docs imply the postulate of a future life and allow for an accord between
happiness and virtue. For Kant, however, all this serves as a complement to
morality, not as its foundation. Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Methodology, chap. 2,
sect. 2. He thinks that God could not have created us for His own glory but only
for our happiness and personal dignity; humanity is an end in itself, and for God
to have created all things for His own glory would have been egoism. Kant fails
to see that, as the councils express it, God so willed to manifest His sovereign good­
ness and He is neither greater nor happier for having created the universe.
18 In Spinoza’s eyes, intellectual love of self and love of God are one and the
same thing. The love of God is identified with the uncreated love God has for
Himself. It is God Himself who loves Himself in us with a necessary love, ex­
cluding free will. Hence man can neither sin nor merit, properly speaking. Cf.
Ethica, V, p. 36.
10Denzinger, Enchiridion, nos. 553 if.
20 Ibid., nos. 526 f. Eckhart sets off toward the opposite extreme of nominalism
in the direction of absolute realism which confounds, as can be seen in Spinoza,

6a

THE LOVE OF GOD

amounts to a denial of the very effect of the creative act.
But, be these indefensible and quite exceptional paradoxes
as they may, it can be said that Catholic theologians have been
preserved from these extreme errors by faith in the existence
of God, the sovereignly free Creator, really and essentially
distinct from the world and from all created spirits. They
have been saved, too, by the great commandment that domi­
nates the Decalogue in the Old Testament and is the spirit of
die New: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole
heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole strength
and with thy whole mind.” *21
The Scholastics generally have stated the problem of love
in the loftiest and most profound concrete terms possible: Are
men and angels led by their nature to love God more than
themselves or can divine grace alone effect this? Father Rousselot says: “It seems that Scholasticism could not have con­
centrated the question in a happier formula. No other would
have been at once so concrete and so profound.” 22 Are not
free creatures commanded to love virtuously the same God
who is both the author of their natural appetites and their
only last end ? Is He not the sum of all goodness ? If, therefore,
love of our own good and pure love of another can be recon­
ciled, that reconciliation should take place in love of God, an
analysis of which ought to give us principles for judging other
disinterested affections.23
being in general with the divine being, intellect in general with the divine intellect.
This way of thought leads to the statement that all created substances and their
faculties “are only words,” flatus vocis. In this sense pantheistic realism leads to
nominalism, and tile two extremes meet.
21 Deut. 6: 5; Matt. 22:37; Mark 12: 30; Luke 10: 27.
22 Op. àt., p. I.
22 Ibid.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

63

Contrary heresies to be avoided
The problem has not been solved by the fact that all
scholastic theologians recognize God as our last end and the
object of our eternal beatitude. The difficulty reappears as ex­
pressed by St. Thomas : “A man loves God as much as he loves
to enjoy God. But a man loves himself as much as he loves to
enjoy God ; since this is the highest good a man can wish for
himself. Therefore man is not bound, out of charity, to love
God more than himself.” 24 In other words, if we have two
loves, love of personal happiness and love of God more than
self, which is the more fundamental, which is the primordial
love—if not in the concrete order of psychological phe­
nomenon, at least metaphysically, in the very essence of the
first natural inclination of our will ?
It seems that, if love of God is derived from love of our
own good, it lacks purity and can become purified only if
grace in some way destroys nature by demanding the sacrifice
of our desire for personal happiness. To retain that desire
would entail a certain affective subjectivism. If, on the con­
trary, our nature itself inclines us to love God in Himself,
objectively, more than ourselves, grace seems unnecessary to
attain to it and we lean, it will be said, toward a Pelagian or
Semi-Pelagian naturalism reminiscent of the pantheistic con­
fusion of our nature with the nature of God.
In the Middle Ages the question had not yet been stated
with the sharpness Fénelon gave to it later. Nevertheless
theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did have
to explain in their treatises on charity how we are to under­
stand St. Paul’s words: “I have great sadness and continual
24 Ila Ilae, q.a6, a. 3, 3 ob.

64

THE LOVE OF GOD

sorrow in my heart. For I wished myself to be an anathema
from Christ for my brethren ; who are my kinsmen according
to the flesh; who are Israelites.” 25 Moses had said the same
thing in Exodus 32:31-33: “This people hath sinned a heinous
sin, and they have made to themselves gods of gold. Either
forgive them this trespass, or if thou do not, strike me out
of the book that Thou hast written.” And the Lord answered :
“He that hath sinned against Me, him will I strike out of My
book.” St. Thomas has given a sublime and fearless expla­
nation of these words of both St. Paul and Moses.20 We shall
quote it later.
It was inevitable that the problem should be stated thus:
What is primordial in the natural tendency of our will : love
of our own good or love of God for Himself ? If, in a virtuous
life, these two loves converge, they are either coordinated or
subordinated. But every coordination supposes subordination
to a principle of order. As St. Thomas says, many soldiers are
coordinated in view of a common action only if all are sub­
ordinated to their leader.27 Neither natural love of our own
good nor love of God in preference to ourselves can be sub­
ordinated to some more radical principle or higher end.
Necessarily, then, one of these two loves has to be subordinated
to the other. Which of the two is more fundamental ? So the
question becomes clearer and clearer and we can more easily
foresee what errors we are to avoid.
If every created nature, ours, the angels’ too, tends to love
its own good, its own personal happiness first and most, how
can this primordial tendency be reconciled with the certainly
25 Rom. 9: 2-4.
28 In Ep. ad Rom., ix, 3.
27 C£. la Ilac, q. 100, a. 6.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

65

realizable precept to love God more than ourselves and above
all things ? If this natural tendency is truly primordial, will
it not be found even in our love of God? Will not our love
of Him be always more or less mercenary, touched by self­
interest and tainted by egotism, unless grace, by remitting
original sin and gradually healing us of its effects, comes to
correct our very nature, particularly the essential constitution
of our will ? Must not grace in some way destroy nature by
inspiring us to the heroic sacrifice of our desire for personal
happiness ? Fénelon thought so.28 If he is right, then, despite
the loftiness of the words “pure love,” such a grace, being in
some way destructive of nature, is (as Baius later and er­
roneously held) 28 a hard remedy for nature’s defect rather
than a life principle of an infinitely higher order. If, on the
contrary, a primordial tendency impels both men and angels
to love God more than themselves, grace seems necessary only
to make us accomplish more easily what nature can already
do, as the Pelagians say.30 In neither idea is grace a life prin­
ciple of a higher order. The Pelagian views it as the comple­
ment of a fortunate nature, quite close to the divine, whereas
Fénelon and those of his opinion see it as a remedy for a
“natural disorder.” We may ask: if the farthest extremes of
subjectivism and pantheism are avoided, does the mind still
waver between the two less distant extremes: either toward
Pelagian naturalism or toward the pseudo-supernaturalism of
Baius, revived, in a sense, by the Modernists? If here, as in
other cases too, there are masters who well deserve the title
of doctor oscillans, no one can say the same of St. Thomas,
as we are about to see.
28 Cf. Denzingcr, Enchiridion, nos. 1328, 1333, 1336.
20 Cf. ibid., nos. 1021, 1023, 1024, 1034, 1038.
80 Ibid., nos. 105, 178 if.

66

THE LOVE OF GOD

All theologians are plainly in accord on this point: to ar­
rive at a pure love of God we must mortify in ourselves the
concupiscence of the flesh and of the eyes, the pride of life,
and all disordered appetites. And we must do it even to arrive
at that contempt of self spoken of by all Christian authors
when explaining the words of our Lord, “Let him deny him­
self,” and in treating of sin and its effects, of contrition, and
the degrees of humility. But in grievous purifying trials, when
a man’s own misery is so apparent to him that he thinks his sal­
vation is in grave danger, how is perfect abandonment to
God’s good pleasure to be reconciled with desire for personal
happiness ? St. Thomas was aware of this question,31 for the
problem it contains is of interest not only in these extreme
cases but for the orientation of the whole of life, since it con­
cerns the essence of charity and our will’s fundamental
natural inclination. Without doubt original sin wounded and
weakened this faculty’s natural inclination to virtue, and our
personal sins have weakened it still more. None the less it has
kept its intangible essence as a purely spiritual faculty,32 and
the question now under consideration concerns the intimate
relations that actually exist between nature and grace within
the will.
Hence the importance of the question: What primordial
inclination lies within the very essence of our natural will?
Love of our own good ? Or a natural love of God ? Is it, at the
very least, a natural love of a true good transcending the useful
and the pleasurable, a good that is good in itself? For ex­
31 Not only St. Thomas’ Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ix, 3, but
many other passages in his works make this plain to us.
82 la Ilae, q.85, a.i.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

67

ample, do we love truth and justice in themselves and above
ourselves, more than any particular personal perfection they
bring to us ? The true solution of this problem treated by the
great theologians of the Middle Ages, later by Bossuet and
Fénelon and in a lower order by Spinoza, Kant, and the Ger­
man idealists, should contain virtually, if it is satisfactorily
formulated, the whole theology and the whole metaphysics
of love.
To the problem so stated two solutions were given in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For some, they really differ;
for others, one is a rough draft, the other, a finished work
literally rather than metaphorically expressed. The latter, ex­
plicitly formulated by St. Thomas, reached the status of doc­
trine; the former is found implicit in many sermons and
commentaries on the Psalms, the Canticle of Canticles, and
the Epistles of St. Paul, wherever there is a question of the in­
tensity of the love of God in the hearts of the saints. The
works of St. Bernard produced in the latter half of his life
presented it in a mystical form kept within fitting limits.33
Richard of St. Victor emphasized it in his decidedly debatable
theory of the Trinity.34 Abelard gave it a speculative and dia­
lectical form, believing that from it the necessity of creation
had to be deduced (a conclusion incompatible with dogma),
and reaching an idea of pure love approximating Fénelon’s
later view. Abelard died in 1142; St. Bernard, who combatted
his errors and, therefore, his doctrine of the necessity of crea­
tion, lived until 1153; Richard of St. Victor, probably until

1173·
83 Cf. Sermones in Cantica, P.L., CLXXXIII; De gradibus humilitatis, CLXXXII.
84 De Trinitate, Bk. Ill, q.2 (P.L., CXCVI, 916); De quatuor gradibus violentae
caritatis (P.L., CXCVI, 1213 ff.).

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THE LOVE OF GOD

ARTICLE II
THE VIEWS OF ST. BERNARD AND RICHARD OF ST. VICTOR

Using numerous texts that can be supplemented by others,
—we shall cite the most important—Father Rousselot ap­
parently establishes the characteristics of true love as dis­
cussed in the views of St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor.
On examination we find that, according to Father Rous­
selot,38 disinterestedness, based on the distinction of persons it
unites, is true love’s first trait; violence and holy folly distin­
guish it when it becomes intense; and an inherent sufficiency
for uniting us to God marks it from first to last.
The disinterestedness of true love

St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor insist particularly on
the point that the only perfect love worthy of the name is love
of friendship, love of another not for our own but for his sake.
Love of self becomes perfect only when we love self for God
by going out of self, as it were, to come to Him.38 Like some
theologians of the twelfth century who shared their thoughts,
St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor are fond of quoting the
classical text of St. Gregory the Great: “Charity cannot exist
between less than two. Therefore, no one can be said, prop­
erly speaking, to have charity for himself, but love of another
is potential charity.” 37 As charity, like friendship, supposes
at least two persons, St. Bernard and Richard of St. Vic­
tor are led, according to Father Rousselot,38 to form an ec86 Rousselot, op. cit., pp. 58-81.
88 St. Bernard, On the Love of God, chap. 8; Richard of St Victor, De Trinitate,
Bk. Ill, a.
87 In Evang. hom. 17, no. 1; P.L., LXXVI, 1139.
88 Op. cit., pp. 57 ff.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

69

static conception of love founded, he says, much less on the
notion of nature or a natural inclination than on the duality
of persons loving each other. By love of friendship we are
carried outside of self, extra se, toward the beloved : a kind of
ecstasy wherein we no longer love our own personal good but
the good of another. In the case of love for God, we desire His
glory more than anything else and, if need be, even to the
sacrifice of our own good. This being so, the principle of this
idea is not a natural inclination or a nature which has God for
its author, and grace as its elevating principle, but rather the
duality of persons united and drawn out of egotism by love.39
In the thirteenth century Duns Scotus said that even if God
were not our good, our last end, even if He had no relation to
the basic inclination of our nature and will, we still could and
should love Him above all things, even to sacrificing ourselves
for Him, because He is in Himself the sovereign good.40
For Richard of St. Victor, true love is so different from love
of self and supposes so necessarily a distinction of persons that
he thinks he can demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity in
this way: Perfect love certainly exists in God; love’s first re­
quirement demands two and even three persons loving each
other equally; thus to be absolutely pure and disinterested,
free from every trace of self-love, envy, and jealousy, the
highest of all loves, God’s own, demands a distinction of
persons, the Trinity.41
38 Cf. Rousselot, op. cit., p. 56.
40 Cf. Scotus, Oxon., Ill, d.27, q.l, no. 13; IV, d.49, q.2, no. 19. St. Thomas
says that, on the contrary, “if we make the impossible supposition that God were
not man's good, He would not be man's reason for loving.”
41 Cf. De Trinitate, Bk. Ill, a. I. Richard thought it possible to prove by this
reasoning not only that there must be two persons in God but that there must
be three, for it seemed to him that only then could divine love be absolutely pure
and disinterested. St. Thomas disproves this theory by showing the inadequacy

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THE LOVE OF GOD

The same idea is found in another form in Abelard’s con­
demned theory of the necessity of creation. He says, in sub­
stance, that perfect love is manifestly a perfection of God and
that, since love requires the duality of lover and beloved, God
of necessity willed to create us and gave us existence.42
St. Bernard combated this consequence, as he did Abelard’s
other errors.

Love of God in His great servants
True love of another, thus conceived as founded on the dis­
tinction of persons rather than on the notion of nature, seems
in some way independent of our natural inclination; it even
seems contrary to it, in a sense, for it draws us out of ourselves
and, when intense, becomes violent, demanding in holy folly
the sacrifice of all self-love.
In the De diligendo Deo,i3 where St. Bernard formulates
some principles which anticipate St. Thomas’ doctrine, he
shows that man, who begins by loving himself for his own
sake, ought in heaven to come to love himself only for God’s
of concepts derived from creatures to demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity. In
the Summa, la, q.32, a.i, ad zum, he says: “When it is said that joyous possession
of good requires partnership, this holds in the case of one not having perfect
goodness: hence it needs to share some other’s good in order to have the goodness
of complete happiness.” In addition to this error, Richard seems to have confused
the essential love common to the three Persons of the Trinity with the notional
love by which the Father and Son spirate the Holy Ghost.
i2 Theologia Christiana, Bk. V; P.L., CLXXVIII, 1330: "Necessario itaque Deus
mundum esse voluit ac fecit.” In the Summa, la, q.19, a.3, St. Thomas refutes
Abelard’s error, saying: “But we do not necessarily will things without which the
end is attainable, such as a horse for a journey which we can take on foot, for we
can make the journey without one. The same applies to other means. Hence,
since the goodness of God is perfect and can exist without other things inasmuch
as no perfection can accrue to Him from them, it follows that His willing things
apart from Himself is not absolutely necessary.”
43 Chap. 15.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

71

sake.44 In his sermons on the Canticle of Canticles com­
posed later, he speaks more explicitly, according to his own
experience, of the violence of divine love triumphing over
all that is other than itself. Not infrequently he writes, as in
Sermon 79:
O divine love, impetuous, vehement, burning, irresistible love,
which allows no thought but of thee, scorning and despising all
else besides, thou art thy own sufficiency. . . .
How great love is . . . yet it has its degrees. The spouse has
reached love’s summit. The children love, too, but they are mind­
ful of their inheritance and fear to lose it, and are more respectful
and less loving. I am suspicious of that love which needs to be sus­
tained by the hope of acquiring any other good. Love is feeble
when its warmth and strength grow less with the loss of hope’s
support. Love is not pure when desiring anything else. Pure love
is not mercenary, does not draw new strength from hope. The
spouse loves purely; for by love alone is she all that she is; her
every hope, her every good, is love alone.45

Massoulié should be consulted on this text.46
From this point of view more than any other, intense love,
becoming violent, “wounds” him who loves and “makes him
die to self” by making him live for another, by leading him
to “go out of himself” and give himself generously to the
beloved.47 Intense love is, therefore, not without a certain
44 In this passage St. Bernard is speaking of the first manifestations of our
natural tendency in the concrete rather than, as St. Thomas considers it, that
natural tendency in its very essence. From the concrete point of view, St. Thomas
agrees that hope disposes us for charity. Cf. la Ilae, q.62, a.4; q.27, a.3.
45 Sermo LXXXIll in Cantica, nos. 4, 5; P.L., CLXXXin, 1183. See also Sermo
Vlll, no. 8.
46 Cf. Traité de l'amour de Dieu, Part Π, chap. 14. We can accept it as certain
that for St. Bernard perfect love implied a desire for union with God and in this
sense sufficed; it made no sacrifice of eternal life, as we shall see later.
4T Rousselot thinks that any author who holds the ecstatic conception of love is

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THE LOVE OF GOD

destruction of the lover, not without that interior immolation
represented by exterior sacrifice and spoken of by the Scrip­
tures. It implies a martyrdom of heart known to all the saints
and a mystical death symbolized in the Gospel by the death
of the grain of wheat that becomes the seed of new life. Hap­
pily, love causes this death, destroying all that is contrary to it.
According to the words of The Canticle, “love is strong as
death, jealousy as hard as hell.”*48
We are familiar with the enumeration of the ten degrees
of charity, attributed to St. Bernard, commented on later in
an opusculum published under St. Thomas’ name,49 and ex­
plained by St. John of the Cross in The Darl{ Night of the
Soul: “Wise is the love of God, for it makes us dull to all else
besides; it drives us to seek Him always and in all things,
constrains us to work without rest and to endure without
fatigue,50 to desire Him eagerly, seek Him swiftly, dare for
Him courageously, cleave to Him inseparably, and burn with
loving for Him until, in heaven, He assimilates us wholly to
Himself.” 51
In a treatise on charity compiled of texts from St. Bernard,
Pierre de Blois, and Richard of St. Victor, we read: “Love
takes no account of the impossible and in this reason praises
and restrains not its eagerness. . . . Love’s hunger is in­
blameworthy in proportion to his concern to sever all the bonds uniting love of
another with our natural inclination toward our own proper good. Cf. op. cit., p. 3.
Father Roussclot elsewhere gives recognition to the fact that St. Bernard also
held another, and corrective, tendency of thought, later developed by St. Thomas.
48 Opusc. 61.
49 Cf. Opera S. Thomae (Parm. ed., 1864), XVII, 254. Opusc. de dilectione Dei
et proximi, chap. 38.
50 St. John of the Cross thinks this expression relates to the dark night of the
soul, and the words "languere utiliter" to the dark night of the senses.
51 The Dark. Night of the Soul, Bk. II, chaps. 18-20. On this subject sec Sermon
LXXXV in Cantica; P.L., CLXXXIII, 1157.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

73

satiable. . . . Love itself is its own merit and its own reward.
. . . In this world none of us can perfectly fulfill the precept
to love God, but all of us should desire its perfect fulfill­
ment.” 62
Richard of St. Victor develops these ideas in his celebrated
opusculum De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis:
In the first degree, the soul is unable to resist its desire; in the
second, it is continually preoccupied by it; in the third, it can take
pleasure in nought else besides; in the fourth and last, it can no
longer find any satisfaction for its desire. In other words, in the
first degree love is invincible; in the second, possessive; in the
third, exclusive; in the fourth, insatiable. . . . These four degrees
of love differ according to whether it is a question of sentiment
towards God or affection for men. In spiritual desires, the stronger
the love, the better it is. In sensual desires, love degenerates as it
grows and, because nothing can satiate mutual passion,53 at last
becomes hate, a changeling that matches its former ardor by its
present implacability, burning with desire while hating and never
ceasing to hate even while loving.54
In human affections, only the first degree of love can be good;
even the second is undoubtedly evil. But if, in human desires, the
fourth degree of love is the worst of all, it is otherwise with our
sentiment for God, since the last and greatest degree of love for
Him is the best of all.55

Richard points out these four degrees of intense love of
God in the Canticle of Canticles, the Psalms, and the Epistles
52 Cf. P.L., CLXXXIV, 583 if.; CLXXXV, 1923 ff.; CXCV1, 1196.
68 When we make any creature our ultimate end we demand that it give us what
God alone can give, and the transformation of love into hate that follows, St. Thomas
would say, is evidence that our will has, as it were, an infinite capacity which God
alone can fully satisfy and forever attract. Cf. la Hae, q. 10, a.2; q.5, a.4, 8.
54 Farther on Richard remarks that this reaction is an "image of damnation”
when the soul hates God but is drawn to Him by its natural desire for happiness.
88 Cf. P.L., CXCVI, 1213-15.

THE LOVE OF GOD

74

of St. Paul: “Even in the first degree, ‘Many waters cannot
quench charity, neither can the floods drown it’56 for it is
invincible. In the second degree, the soul puts its beloved ‘as
a seal upon its heart,’57 for no longer can it cease thinking
of him. In the third degree, ‘If a man should give all the sub­
stance of his house for love, he shall despise it as nothing,’ 58
for he no longer finds any enjoyment elsewhere. Finally, in
the fourth degree, ‘Love is strong as death; jealousy as hard as
hell,’59 for all that love does or endures for its God is as
nothing.”
Likewise in the Psalms, “In the first degree, love is in­
vincible: Ί will love thee, O Lord, my strength.’60 In the
second, it is inseparable: ‘Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if
I do not remember thee.’ 61 In the third, it is exclusive: ‘My
soul refused to be comforted: I remembered God and was
delighted.’62 In the fourth, love is insatiable: ‘What shall I
render to the Lord for all the diings that He hath rendered
tome?’ ” 63
Again in St. Paul, “In the first degree, love is invincible:
‘Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation ? or distress ? or famine ? or nakedness ? or danger ?
or persecution ? or tire sword ?’64 In the second degree, tire
lover never loses sight of his love, no separation can part them :
whence it is said, ‘My soul hadi stuck close to Thee,’65 for
88 Cant 8: 7.
57 Ibid., v. 6.
68 Ibid., v. 7.
89 Ibid., v. 6.
80 Ps. 17: 2.
61 Ibid., 136:6.
82 Ibid., 76: 3-4.
83 Ibid., 115: 12.
84 Rom. 8:35.
85 Ps. 62: 9.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

75

nothing can tear it away. In the third degree, the soul counts
all things as dung that it may gain Christ.68 In the fourth,
Christ is its life, and death for Him is gain,67 for the lover of
Christ desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ.” 68
In the four degrees of ardent charity thus enumerated by
Richard we get a foreshadowing of St. Teresa’s four inner
mansions.69 For these authors of the twelfth century, the
vehemence and violence they hold characteristic of intense
love exists even in uncreated love. They speak of God as being
“overcome” by His love for us when He created us, and, still
more, when He sent us His only Son and delivered Him up
for our salvation.70 Although writing with occasional bril­
liance on this subject, they do not seem to have made any real
distinction between the metaphorical and the literal; they well
knew, however, that God cannot properly be said to be “over­
come” by anything whatever, even by His own love, since
there can be no passivity in Him.
When they speak of “the spiritual wound of love,” of “the
destruction” worked in us by love of God, we encounter more
difficulty in distinguishing between the metaphorical and the
proper sense of their expressions. Their absolute manner of
speaking about death to self, of mystical death, they shared
in common with most theologians of their period. The latter
had not yet distinguished explicitly enough between human
nature considered in itself, in its essence, and fallen nature
««Phil. 3:8.
«7 Ibid., 1:21.
08 Ibid., i : 23.
00 Cf. Kulesza, op. at., pp. 74-96. He is of the opinion that Richard’s first degree
of love (amor insuperabilis) corresponds to the prayer of quiet, his second degree
(amor inseparabilis) to simple union, his third degree (amor singularis, exclusions)
to ecstatic union, and his fourth (amor insatiabilis) to transforming union.
70 Cf. St. Bernard, Cant. 64, 10; P.L., CI.XXXIII, 1088. Richard of St. Victor,
Tractatus de gradibus caritatis, c. 1; P.L., CXCVI, 1196.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

corrupted by original sin and still wounded after baptism.
They considered man as he is concretely and practically. Like
the author of The Imitation 71 and unlike St. Thomas, they
failed to study, in an abstract and speculative fashion, what
essentially constitutes human nature, independently of the
consequences of original and personal sin.
As a result, they came to assert more or less explicitly that
the primordial tendency of our nature is a love tainted with
egoism, love of our own good.72 The testimony of our first
concrete psychological experiences, even as manifested in the
baptized, evidently led them to think that, metaphysically
speaking, the primordial inclination of the will’s nature is
toward self. For some of them, the will was, if not perverse, at
least feeble, feebler than our intellect, since the intellect suf­
fices to show us we ought to love God as the author of our
nature more than ourselves.
Among these theologians are those who, like William of
Auxerre and Alexander of Hales, attributed this weakness
even to the natural will of the unfallen Adam and to the
angelic wills as well, although in both these cases there clearly
could be no question of original sin. They dared not say we
are naturally inclined to love God more than ourselves, fear­
ing to lean toward Pelagianism, which holds that grace
71 The Imitation of Christ, Bk. ΙΠ, chap. 54. It would be difficult to find a
better account of the condition in which we actually find ourselves, but we need
to know as well the true state of our nature in its very essence as a work of God.
72 For a proof of this we have only to quote the text from St. Bernard referred
to earlier: "Love is a natural affection, one of four. ... It would therefore be
just that what is natural should serve its own Author before all others. . . . But
since nature is rather weak and feeble, it is impelled at the bidding of necessity to
serve itself first. And there is carnal love by which before all other things man
loves himself for his own sake. . . . And it is not imposed by a command but
implanted in nature” On the Love of God, chap. 8, tr. Connolly (New York:
Spiritual Book Associates, 1937), p. 37.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

77

is necessary only to accomplish more easily what nature can
do by itself.
They like to cite the classical texts of St. Augustine on the
radical opposition between cupidity and charity, their favorite
being: “Two loves have built two cities; the earthly city has
for its principle love of self even unto contempt of God ; and
the heavenly city, love of God even unto contempt of self.
One glories in itself; the other is glorified in the Lord.” 73
We err, however, if we think that these theologians of the
twelfth century prepared the way for the doctrine of Baius.74
For there is an immense difference between: (i) not dis­
tinguishing explicitly enough between nature and grace;
and (2) formally denying, as Baius did,75 this essential distinc­
tion after it has been expressly formulated by great theo­
logians.
Some theologians of the twelfth century certainly conceived
of intense love of God as violent and even, one might say, as
essentially violent or contrary to our natural appetite for our
own good.7® We can understand then why, in treating of the
order of charity, some maintained that, although we ought to
help our parents more than we help others who are equally
pleasing to God, we ought not to love them more.77 Intense
73 The City of God, Bk. XIV, chap. 28.
74 Cf. also St. Augustine, Sermo 31, "De amore Dei et de amore saeculi."
75 The theologians spoken of here certainly did not quote St. Augustine’s texts
as meaning what Baius took them to mean when he said: "Omnis amor creaturae
rationalis aut vitiosa est cupiditas, qua mundus diligitur, quae a foanne prohibetur,
aut laudabilis illa caritas qua per Spiritum Sanctum in corde diffusa Deus amatur."
Dcnzinger, nos. 1038, 1034. However, they had not arrived at St. Thomas' exactness
in this matter. Cf. la, q.6o, a.5, ad sum; la Ilae, q.84, a.t; la Ilae, q.109, a.3.
78 Cf. Dcnzingcr, no. 1034.
77 Cf. Guigo Carthusiensis, Epistola ad Fratres de Monte Dei; P.L., CLXXXIV,
360. St. Thomas is of the opposite opinion: “The inclination of grace which is the
effect of charity must needs be proportionate to those actions which have to be
performed outwardly, so that, to wit, the affection of our charity be more intense

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THE LOVE OF GOD

love of God becomes like a purifying and wholly consuming
fire, insatiable, alleviated only by a certain destruction of the
lover by his absorption into the beloved, by mystical death, die
blessed effect of love. Some beautiful scriptural texts are to
be understood in this sense: “Love is strong as death.” *
78 “He
that shall lose his life for Me, shall find it.” 79 “Gladly there­
fore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ
may dwell in me.” 80 “Now if we be dead with Christ, we
believe that we shall live also together with Christ.” 81 “For
you are dead; and your life is hid widi Christ in God.”82
Abelard strained the point and so erred in the direction
Fénelon took later; but for St. Bernard and Richard of St.
Victor this blessed death most surely led to life.83 They saw
intense love as a holy folly surpassing reason, the folly of the
Cross, the only efficacious remedy of that other folly called
sin.84 St. Paul’s words must have deeply impressed these great
contemplatives: “For the word of the cross to them indeed
that perish is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is,
to us, it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the
wisdom of the wise; and the prudence of the prudent I will
reject.’ . . . For, seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world,
by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness
of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both Jews
require signs; and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we
toward those to whom we ought to behave with greater kindness. ... In matters
pertaining to nature we should love our kindred most ... on the battlefield, our
fellow soldiers."
78 Cant. 8: 6.
70 Matt, io: 39.
80 Π Cor. 12: 9.
81 Rom. 6: 8.
82 Col. 3:3.
88 Expositio in Ep. Pauli ad Rom., ΠΙ, 7; P.L., CLXXVHI, 891 fl.
84 Cf. St. Bernard, Sermo 29 de diversis, no. 3; P.L., CLXXXIII, 621.

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79

preach Christ crucified: unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that
are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God
and die wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser
than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
. . . We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ.
. . . We are reviled; and we bless. ... We are blasphemed;
and we entreat. We are made as the refuse of this world, the
offscouring of all, even until now.” 88
Prompted by St. Paul’s words, St. Bernard and Richard love
to speak of the holy folly of love “which knows no measure,
overcomes all distances, ignores every necessity, and triumphs
over the opportune and the reasonable.” 86

Love alone the bond of union

These two twelfth-century masters of mysticism do not go
so far as to require the sacrifice of our natural desire for per­
sonal beatitude; but they do insist on this, that in itself tire
perfect love of charity is all-sufficient, even in the greatest
aridity, for it unites us to God. “True love is its own happi­
ness.” 87 “O chaste and holy love! . . . O pure intention of the
will! becoming more and more pure as it loses every ad­
mixture of self-interest, growing sweeter as it comes to ex­
perience only the divine. To love like this is to be made like
to God.” 88
“Love itself is enough. ... It is its own merit, its own re­
ward; it needs no other motive, no other profit; is content to
be and to grow. I love because I love, I love that I may love.
851 Cor. 1: 18-25; 4:10-13.
88 Cf. St. Bernard, Serm. in Cant., LXXIX, i; P.L., CLXXXIII, 1163.
87 St. Bernard, On the Love of God, chap. 7, no. 17; P.L., CLXXXII, 984.
88 Ibid., chap. 10, no. 28.

8o

THE LOVE OF GOD

. . . God Himself when He loves asks nothing but love in
return . . . knowing that love is a lover’s only happiness.”86
Scripture contains some readily available support for this
thought. According to the words of the Gospel, he who loves
the Lord ardently is happy even in persecution: “Blessed are
those who suffer persecution for justice’ sake, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.”90 Eternal life has begun in their hearts,
for “he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in
him.” 91 “Charity ... is the bond of perfection.” 92 “Charity
never falleth away” 93 ... it is “the fulfilling of the law.”94
“Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can the floods
drown it.” 95 As St. Augustine says, “Love God and do what
you will”;96 for what you do will be good, if you love
in truth. Before Pascal, St. Bernard wrote, “No one can seek
Thee, Lord, without already having found Thee.” 97
Certainly love, even in the midst of persecution, and, in a
sense, especially then, unites us to God and formally consti­
tutes, as St. Thomas puts it, an “affective union” with God by
making us desire the “real union” of the beatific vision.98 St.
Bernard, while not making this explicit distinction, never
wearies of writing about affective union with God. After
speaking of the love of God in the servants of His household,
then in His children, he says of the spouse’s love: “Her heart
aB Serm. LXXXIH in Cant. 4; PJL, CLXXXIII, 1183.
80 Matt. 51 to.
811 John 4: 16.
82 Col. 3: 14.
83 I Cor. 13: 8.
84 Rom. 13: 10; Matt 22: 40.
85 Cant. 8: 7.
83 In I Ep. Ioann., 4, 8; P.L., XXXV, 2033.
87 Actual grace leads the sinner to seek God and then, when he has charity, God
is in him.
88 la Ilae, q.28, a.i.

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81

having been entirely purified, the spouse reaches a degree of
love in which she desires and seeks God alone, asking nothing
of God save God Himself, ... no longer desiring anything
out of self-love," either her own happiness or glory, being
drawn only towards God ... to cleave to Him and to enjoy
Him.” 100
Quietists have made this quotation their own. Massoulié,101
to reconcile the first part of it with the last and with other say­
ings of St. Bernard, makes this apt commentary: “Love must
will to be united with the beloved. True, a soul in the trans­
ports and ardors of love does not actually think of the posses­
sion of this good under the aspect of its own good; but by
simply following love’s inclination it tends toward the be­
loved. However, this disposition cannot constitute a perma­
nent state ; it is composed only of particular acts which do not
equal the full compass of the habit of charity; for, if we
consider this virtue in its permanent state, the desire for the
possession of God as the Sovereign Good belongs inseparably
to it.” 102
St. Bernard was by no means speaking of the sacrifice of
future beatitude. So little does he separate possession of God
from love of God that for him, at least in this world and for
such time as we lack the beatific vision, we possess God and
are united to Him chiefly by love. Love is union, and both
as union and as love it wills to endure and increase until death
and to last on through all eternity, as St. Bernard would
99 This proposition can be reconciled with that which follows it only by insisting
on the importance of this term.
190 Cf. Sermo VIII, De diversis affectionibus animae, 9; P.L., CLXXXIII, 565.
101 Traité de l’amour de Dieu, Part II, chap. 14.
192 A supereminent act of charity that would be above hope lacks the fullness
of the virtue of charity, which has as its secondary act love of self and desire of our
own beatitude for God's sake, to glorify Him eternally.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

never deny. In the texts quoted he simply made evident his
recognition of the superiority of charity, as pure love of God,
over hope.
Richard of St. Victor speaks in the same vein: “There is
nothing better, nothing lovelier than charity. This, nature it­
self teaches us and experience daily testifies to us.” 103 “God
requires of us only our love. Charity is the fulfillment of the
law; it contains the law and the prophets; because all that
divine law commands or forbids can be reduced to love. If we
pay Him the tribute of love, God is satisfied.” 104 “O good
God, to love You is to be fed by You . . . and the more You
give us, the more our hunger grows ... for the more they
are heaped upon us, the less do the good things of love satisfy
our hearts. . . . Implevit bonis. . . . What are these good
things of love? Things eye has not seen, ear has not heard,
things that have not entered into the heart of man to con­
ceive: the things God has prepared for those who love Him
. . . the delights of eternity.” 105
Forgetting, it would seem, what St. Augustine had written
on the intellectual generation of the Word in God, Richard
chose to consider the Blessed Trinity solely, as it were, from
the point of view of love and thus he wandered from the path
of tradition and encountered grave difficulties. During the
thirteenth century, Scotus, too, manifested a tendency to place
charity even above the beatific vision and adopted the position
that, even in God, charity enjoys primacy. For Scotus, the
happiness of heaven or the “possession of God” consists essen103 "Nihil cantate melius, nihil caritate jucundius. Hoc nos docet ipsa natura,
idem ipsum multiplex experientia." De Trinitate, ΠΙ, 2; P.L., CXCVI, 916. It is
open to question here whether Richard puts charity not only above faith and hope
but even above the beatific vision.
104 De gradibus caritatis, chap. 3; loc. cit., 1202.
105 Ibid., chap. 2; loc. cit., 1200.

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tially and formally not in the beatific vision but in the “love
of God seen face to face.” 108
St. Bernard is silent on this point but, for the rest, the
qualities Father Rousselot describes as characteristic of his
conception of love seem properly ascribed to him: love draws
us, not without violence, outside ourselves ; it has its holy fol­
lies; and, in this world, it suffices to unite us to God. This
being true, should we acknowledge that the views of St.
Bernard and St. Thomas are as different as Father Rousselot
thinks ? Massoulié seems to have admitted that a search into
St. Bernard’s metaphors reveals, even if only obscurely, the
principles clearly formulated later by the Angelic Doctor.
We are inclined to agree with him, especially since Father
Rousselot has forgotten to bring out a key point of St. Thomas’
doctrine: that love, far from drawing what we love toward
us, draws us toward what1 we love.107
100 Cf. Scotus, In IV Sent., d.49, q.4. “(Dicendum) beatitudinem essentialiter et
formaliter consistere in actu voluntatis, quo simpliciter et solum attingitur bonum
optimum aiius fruitione est natura beatificalibus perfecte beata." St. Thomas thinks
that he recognizes the truth in this position when he says (la Ilae, q.28, a. 2) that
mutual indwelling is an effect of love. For him, however, beatitude, or the possession
of God, consists essentially in the immediate vision of God. Without this, love would
constitute not real but only affective union, such as that existing between separated
friends. For St. Thomas the blessed in heaven are united to God by an immediate
apprehension of Him, a sort of intussusception that unites two into a oneness closer
than food is assimilated into flesh, for it is the union of the knower with the known
which—especially if the known is apprehended in an absolutely immediate way
without any idea serving as an intermediary—is more intimate than the union of
matter and form. Matter does not become form, but the knower becomes in one
way (intentionaliter) the known and thus possesses it. Love in the form of desire
precedes possession by immediate vision, while in the form of joy (fruitio) it comes
after, flowing from it necessarily, like a property from an essence. Cf. la Ilae, q.3,
a.4; q.28, a.I.
107 la, q. 16, a. I. Father Roland-Gosselin’s remark that Rousselot has completely
neglected the realism of love in St. Thomas’ theory seems fully justified. Cf. his
excellent article. “Le désir du bonheur et l'existence de Dieu," Revue des Sciences
philosophiques et théologiques (April, 1924), p. 165. See too C. V. Heris, O.P.,
"L’amour naturel de Dieu," Mélanges Thomistes (Belgium: Bibliothèque Thomiste,
I923)> PP· 289-310.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

St. Thomas frequently states this principle, which is
founded on the fact that the good, unlike to the true, is for­
mally not in the mind but in the thing, as Aristotle aptly ob­
served. By this principle St. Thomas establishes108 that,
although the intellect is superior to the will, which it directs,
love of God is, in this world, better than knowledge of God,
“melior est amor Dei, quam cognitio!’ By the same principle,
St. Thomas also explains100 how love, especially the love of
friendship, produces ecstasy, taking us out of self by drawing
us toward the one we love, the more and more perfectly so
when we love one not our equal but our superior. “We ought
to love God,” says St. Thomas, “in such a way that there is
nothing in us not ordered to Him.” 110 The case differs en­
tirely when we love an inferior or an equal with the love of
friendship. St. Thomas, following Dionysius, says that St.
Paul was drawn out of himself by no longer living his own
life but the life of Christ for the sake of Christ: “I live, now
not I, but Christ liveth in me.” 111
All this is closely akin to St. Bernard’s way of thinking. His
idea, however, remains obscure on one important point. Al­
though it certainly brings out the generosity and purity of
love in God’s great servants, it achieves far less success in show­
ing the relationship between disinterested love and love of
self, a seemingly indestructible inclination of our nature. So
the second part of the problem of love, intimately bound up
with the first, apparently remains unsolved and, to solve it, we
must make a deeper study of the problem and the basic ideas
it implies.
108 la, q. 82, a. 3.
108 Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, chap. 4, lect. 10.
110 Ibid., Ila Hac, q. 17, a. 6, ad 3um.
111 Gal. 2: 20.

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85

ARTICLE III
st. thomas’ view

St. Thomas was familiar with St. Bernard’s ideas and with
Richard’s. We know this from what he has to say about the
duality of persons required for the friendship of charity,112
and the relationship of this infused virtue to the natural funda­
mental inclination of our will.113 He gives evidence of this
familiarity, too, when he touches on the question of the vio­
lence of love,114 and of the foolishness of that preaching by
which God has been pleased to save believers;115 and, again,
when he distinguishes between “affective union” formally
constituted by love, even of persons separated by distance, and
“real union,” \yhich love desires but does not constitute.116
Whoever meditates on this part of St. Thomas’ doctrine can
testify how profound are the metaphysics and theology of love
to be found there.

Difficulties of the preceding view
The Angelic Doctor does not deny any of the character­
istics of love mentioned in St. Bernard’s works. He recog­
nizes that love for God, especially when intense, draws us out
of ourselves, not without violence; that it has its holy follies;
and that, in this world, it, more than any other act, unites us
112 De potentia, q.8, a. 9. See the answer to the second objection for a refutation
of Richard’s theory of the Trinity. Ibid., 5 ob.; q. 10, a.4, ad 8um; q. 10, a.5, sed
contra 3, 4, 8, and corp. art. and ad turn. Also Ila Ilae, q.25, a.4; la Ilae, q.28, a.3.
113 la Ilae, q.26, a.3; la, q.6o, a.5; la Dae, q. 109, a.3.
114 la Ilae, q.28, a. 4 et 5.
115 Commentum in I Cor., I, 21 ff.; Ila Ilae, q.46, a. I, ad 2um.
113 la Ilae, q.28, a. 1, 2.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

to God.117 But how, he asks, can union with God bring us
repose if love of Him has an essentially, and not merely ac­
cidentally, violent character? How can charity give joy and
peace if it is not in conformity or in harmony with our deep­
est natural inclinations and aspirations? 118 This chief dif­
ficulty contains virtually all others relative to each of the
characteristics of love remarked by St. Bernard and Richard
of St. Victor.
Love of friendship as such certainly makes us will good to
another and brings us to love him for himself. St. Gregory
certainly said that charity can exist only betwen distinct per­
sons. Yet should we not love ourselves supernaturally ? Should
we not, in charity, will life eternal for ourselves? It is said:
“Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself.” 119 After God, the
author of all natural and supernatural good, we apparently
should then love ourselves. Apparently, too, we must desire
our own participation in the divine good before we can desire
to share that good in common with our neighbor. My unity,
my identity, with myself is surely a closer bond than my union
with anyone else. The subordination of each of us to the prin­
ciple of order is prior to the coordination of all so subordi­
nated. True love of another, even the most generous love of
friendship, seems founded on natural likeness even more than
on the distinction of persons. Every living creature loves its
own kind, finding itself in some way in its counterparts. Why
117 Father Rousselot himself recognizes that “St. Thomas’ theory is not a reaction
against the medieval conception but an attempt to unify and clarify it.” Op. cit.,
PP· 43, 5° if- Compare St. Bernard’s letter to the monks of Mont-Dieu (W~,
CLXXXIV) with the Summa, la Ilae, q. 63, a. i, 2, 5; Ila Ilae, q.45.
118 Cf. la Ilae, q.28, a. 2, 5; Ila Ilae, q.28, 29.
118 Matt. 22: 39.

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87

should there not be a natural love of self that is legitimate ?
There is no apparent reason why such a love cannot rightly
belong to the primordial inclination of our nature, if it is
subordinated to a natural love of God as the author and pre­
server of our existence. St. Bernard and Richard failed to
examine this point sufficiently, but St. Thomas probed it to
its depths.120 Undoubtedly, intense love of God is at times
violent; sin, because it offends God and condemns souls to
hell, inflicts keen suffering upon it. St. Thomas recognizes
that our Lord, because of His profound knowledge of men’s
sins and their quasi-infinite gravity and, most of all, because
of His great charity, suffered more during His passion than
all contrite hearts put together.121 The Angelic Doctor gives
an excellent explanation of St. Paul’s words about the folly
of the Çross and the text, “love is strong as death, jealousy as
harcf as hell,” 122 from the Canticle of Canticles. Our crucifiedTLord has loved us with a love stronger than death,
stronger than hell. The infinite value which His love drew
from the person of the Word gave Him victory over sin, over
Satan, and over death.
The holy violence of the Cross restored love’s higher order
and gave to mankind a wonderful remedy against those viola­
tions of the divine law which, if not forgiven in this world, in­
cur the terrible punishment of eternal privation of God. But
it need not follow that intense love possesses a character es­
sentially violent or contrary to our nature. Certainly any
disordered love of an apparent good runs counter to nature;
but, just as surely, intense love of the truly good, and especially
120 Ila Ilae, q. 25, a. 4.
121 Cf. Illa, q.46, a. 6, ad 411m. ■
222 Cant. 8: 6.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

of God, follows nature’s law. Intense love can, indeed, have
reverberations on the human body that wear it out; but, no
matter what its intensity, it seems to conform to our deepest
natural inclinations and aspirations and to possess an essen­
tial connaturality. God created our nature. He gave it certain
inclinations. Into these He, the source of all good, could inject
no essential disorder. Anyone who fails to grasp this truth
should seek light from St. Thomas.188 Can we say with
absolute truth that in this world love suffices to unite us with
God and really constitutes our union with Him? Of course,
it formally constitutes an affective union with Him, the kind
of union existing between separated lovers. It certainly pro­
vides joy and peace, even in the midst of trials. But the ques­
tion still remains: Does love formally constitute real union
with God ; or does it not rather drive us to desire that real and
perfect union formally constituted by the immediate vision
of the divine essence? 124
In relation to this matter, St. Thomas introduces some nice
and necessary distinctions. Most of the truth contained in the
views about love’s violence just discussed applies not only to
the distinction of persons united by love but also, and par­
ticularly, to the consequences of original and personal sin, to
egotism properly so called, and to the disorder it implies.
We are to understand the holy folly of love in contrast to the
wisdom of the world, a consequence of sin. And, if we com­
pare it with right reason, we do so only to learn how far it
surpasses, not how much it contradicts, reason. The idea so
dear to St. Bernard and Richard fails signally to bring out
the good in the very essence of our will’s primordial inclina123 la Ilae, q.28, a. 5.
124 Ibid., a. 1 ; ibid., q. 3, a. 4.

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89

tion, an inclination charity ought not to contradict but ele­
vate.

The principle of St. Thomas’ solution
These difficulties made St. Thomas formulate precisely
certain views of Aristotle, pseudo-Dionysius, and St. Augus­
tine on the fundamental inclination of our nature. They also
led him to show the relationship between this inclination and
grace, which should elevate it, not destroy it. In this way he
came to discover some things but dimly glimpsed by theo­
logians of the twelfth century.
St. Thomas differs from St. Bernard and from Richard, as
well as from the author of The Imitation, in method rather
than in doctrine. St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor keep
to the concrete. And we must admit that, in the concrete, and
even among the baptized, a disordered love of self or egotism
properly so called is usually the prime psychological mani­
festation.125 But truth demands a deeper study of human
nature and requires us to consider the very essence of our
nature’s primordial inclination, taking our nature as it is in
itself, abstractly, from the metaphysical point of view, as God
conceived it from all eternity. Nominalists would pronounce
such a study futile. We hold it of utmost importance, if men
and angels really have determinate natures and if grace also
has its essence, really distinct from all things in the merely
natural order.
Aristotle observed that everything in nature is attracted
to God, pure act, the immovable mover, the last end of the
universe.128 Certain writings circulated under die name of
125 la Ilae, q. 109, a.3.
128 Sec Metaphysics, Bk. XII, chap. 7, and St. Thomas’ commentary, lect. 7.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Dionysius127 expressed the same thing in a variety of ways.
St. Augustine, in his book De natura bom, clearly asserted in
opposition to the Manichaeans that all nature as such, since
God created it, is good ; in some texts quoted by St. Bonaven­
ture he even stated that all created nature, in a more or less
confused way, tends toward the Supreme Good.128 In his book
De diligendo Deo, St. Bernard himself frequently alludes to
this principle. Richard implicitly affirms it also.129 And Holy
Scripture expresses the same truth clearly in its own manner,
were it only in the Canticle of the Three Children: “All ye
works of the Lord, bless the Lord ; praise and exalt Him above
all forever.”
St. Thomas, whose thought on the subject is notably in ad­
vance of St. Albert the Great’s,130 gave clear and definite for­
mulation to these views by establishing, without leaning in
the slightest way toward pantheism, that every created nature,
especially when endowed with intellect and will, naturally
tends to love God its author more than itself: just as in an
organism each part naturally loves the whole more than it­
self.131 No less clearly has die Angelic Doctor shown what an
infinite distance lies between the natural love of God as the
127 De divinis nominibus, chap. 4, nos. 4, 10; chap, io, nos. 1, 10, 14, 16.
St. Thomas frequently quotes from the fourth chapter the following sentence:
"Deus convertit omnia ad amorem sui ipsius," Cf. Ia llae, q. 109, a.3.
128 St. Augustine often says that man naturally desires happiness and that true
happiness is found only in God: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our
heart is restless until it rests in Thee.” Confessions, I, 1. “Whoever learns to love
himself, loves God.” De Trinitate, 14, 14; P.L., XL, 1051. Also In foannem, cxxiv,
21; P.L., XXXV, 1968.
123 Cf. On the Love of God, chaps. 2, 5, 7, 15.
180 In his Summa theologica, St. Albert the Great follows William of Auxerre
in not daring to attribute to men and angels the natural capacity to love God more
than themselves. Cf. II, q. 14, m.4, a. 2. In his Summa de creaturis he recognizes
this power in them. Cf. I, tr.4, q.25.
131 la, q.6o, a.5; Ila llae, q.26, a.3.

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91

author of nature and the supernatural love of God considered
in His inner life and as the author of grace.132 St. Thomas’
clear teaching on this important point raises him above both
Pelagian naturalism or Semi-pelagianism and what will later
be called the pseudo-naturalism of Baius.133
The principle of St. Thomas’ doctrine of love rests not
merely on th^distinction of persons loving one another or the
necessity of overcoming egotism’s disorders but on our very
nature itself, as fashioned by its Author. Therefore in regard
to the order of charity, St. Thomas never neglects to consider
our natural inclinations but shows how charity perfects them
by elevating them to a higher order. The problem whether
pure love ought to sacrifice the desire for personal beatitude
does not really exist; for this desire, as it exists in the very
essence of our nature’s primordial inclination, is not dis­
ordered but, on the contrary, is initially subordinated to love
of God.134 Man possesses a natural inclination to virtue,
weakened, indeed, by original and personal sin 135 but not
132la, q.i2, a.4, 5; q.62, a.2; Ila llae, q.5, a.5; q.62, a.i; q.109 per totam.
183 Thomists generally teach that, whereas in the state of perfect nature man
would have needed only his natural endowments to be able to love God as the
author of nature above all things, in the state of fallen nature he needs the help
of grace (gratia sanans) to do so.
184 Although St. Bernard follows Aristotle less closely and shows less concern
about the metaphysical aspect of the question, he and St. Thomas fully agree on
this important point. He says of the soul created and preserved by God, particu­
larly when raised to the order of grace, "Melius est Deus ei quam ipsa sibi."
Ill Sent, d.29, q.2, c et ad 6um. Scotus disagrees with St. Thomas’ statement in
the Summa (Ila llae, q. 26, a. 13, ad 3um), that if, by an impossible supposition,
God were not man's good, He would not be man’s reason for loving. Scotus, Oxon.,
Ill, d.27, q.i, no. 13; IV, d.49, q.2, no. 19, takes the opposite view that even
if God were not our good, our final end, we could still love Him with a love
which would have as its object neither our final end nor the means ordered to
that end—an impossibility, in Thomistic opinion. Scotus’ abstract theory fails to
take into consideration the relationship between the good in itself, the loving subject,
and his affective faculty. Cajetan refutes Scotus in lam q. 82, a.2, no. v ff. and in lam
llae, q.i, a.6. Sec too the Summa, la, q.6o, a.5, ad 2um.
130 la llae, q.85, a.i; q.109, a.3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

I destroyed. Mortification and the Cross should remove every
stain from this inclination, together with our natural desire
for happiness. Purification, however, differs from destruction.
Infused hope,136 and charity even more, elevate our nature
to a higher level, and we come to love our eternal happiness
for God’s sake, wishing to glorify Him eternally. The desire
for happiness belongs essentially both to our nature and to
the virtue of charity, which unites us to God and which, for
the sake of God Himself, desires to continue united with
Him forever.137
A closer study of St. Thomas’ works reveals to us the nature
of our initial love for our Creator, the character of our inclina­
tion to love Him more than self. St. Thomas’ thought un­
folds gradually, chronologically, and brings us step by step
to a complete and satisfying solution of the questions raised
by others.
In the second book of his Commentary on the Sentences,138
he gives an excellent statement of the problem of love in the
difficulties presented at the beginning. Every being seems in­
clined, he says, to seek what is good for itself {bonum sibï),
or its own particular good, before everything else; for nature
refers everything to self ; only supernatural charity can make
us love God more than self. Were the inclination to love
God first and most mature’s own, then wherever we find na­
is» \vc want bread, awning below us—mihi et propter me—subordinating it to
ourselves; but by hope we desire God and the possession of God for ourselves yet
for His own sake, as infinitely above us—mihi sed non Jormaliter propter me.
Cf. Ha Ilae, q. 17, a. 5, and Cajetan, ibid.
13T St. Bonaventure teaches the same thing, saying (III, disc 27, q. 2) that the
desire expressed by St. Paul to be dissolved and to be with Christ is a true act of
charity and that {III Sent., d.29, q.3 ad 6um), when he wishes to be ariathema,
it is only for a time, conditionally, "si optabile esset."
128 Commentary on the Sentences, Bk. II, disc 3, q.3.

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93

ture we should also find this tendency, even in the worst sin­
ners, even in Satan.
In answer to this, St. Thomas first gives the opinion of Wil­
liam of Auxerre without, however, naming him. This thought
is summarized elsewhere even more clearly as follows : “There
have been some who maintained that an angel loves God more
than himself with natural love, both as to the love of concu­
piscence, through his seeking the divine good for himself
rather than his own good; and in a fashion with regard to
the love of friendship, so far as he naturally desires a greater
good for God than for himself; because he naturally wishes
God to be God, while, as for himself, he wills to have his own
nature. But absolutely speaking, out of natural love he loves
himself more than he does God, because he naturally loves
himself before God, and with greater intensity.” 139
Even in his early works, St. Thomas judged William of
Auxerre’s opinion as improbable for the general reason that
an angel’s nature, as well as man’s, is good in itself, fashioned
to the image of God and, as a result, unmarked by any per­
verse inclination, such as love of self above love of God, the
author of angelic life.140
A little later, when writing his Commentary on Boo\ III
of the Sentences^ he rejected William of Auxerre’s opinion
for a more exact reason, and his rejection contains the prin­
ciple that now interests us, the genesis of which we are study189 la, q.6o, a. 5. Fear of falling into the Pelagian heresy more than any other
reason led William of Auxerre to take the stand he did. He had not learned to
distinguish between God as the author of nature and God considered in His
intimate life and as the author of grace.
140 Cf. U Sent., d.3, q.3.
141 III Sent., d.29, q. 1, a.3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

ing. It is expressed, however, with complex cleverness and has
an air of effort about it quite foreign to the lofty simplicity
of the Summa theologica. Although labored and extremely
involved, the article can be resolved into two lines of reason­
ing: both men and angels prefer the good most suitable to
them, the good most conformed to their appetites or desires,
and they desire to preserve this good, especially where it exists
perfectly and principally. But our good exists more perfectly
in God than in ourselves, for it is in Him as in the first, uni­
versal, creative, and conserving cause of every good ; in much
the same way as the good of the part is more in the whole
than in itself, for, as we know, a hand by itself, separated
from the body, loses its life. So it follows that we all naturally
delight in the good in God more than the good in ourselves.
For example, we delight more in the existence, life, intellect,
and goodness of the Author of our nature than in our own
individual life, just as in tire body the hand’s natural bent
is to love the body more than itself, even, when necessary,
to the point of sacrificing itself for the body.1'12 Besides, as it
is said in the same passage, the end ought to be loved more than
the means ; and God, even in the natural order, is tire end of
all things, as He is, by His preservative act, more intimate to
all than each is to itself.
In contradiction of William of Auxerre, St. Thomas fur­
ther remarks: The natural love under consideration is not only
a love of concupiscence but a love of benevolence as well, for
we all naturally delight in the goodness in God our Creator,
more than the goodness we find in ourselves,143 naturally
choosing the source of light and heat in preference to any of
«2 ibid,
ibid.

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95

its rays. The love referred to here falls far short of infused
charity, of course, yet it remains the normal consequence of
the good bent God has given our very nature.
In the Summa theologica,1™ written at least ten years after
the Commentary on the Third Book, of the Sentences, St.
Thomas achieves a simpler and more perfect expression of the
same principle and definitely discards the opinion of William
of Auxerre as false. As we learn from his manuscripts, the
Angelic Doctor usually perfected his line of reasoning not
by amplification but by condensation. His progressive con­
ciseness shows that his thought advances more by penetration
than by extension. As is fitting in a contemplative, his thought
rises toward the highest, simplest, and most universal prin­
ciples and offers a human parallel to the hierarchy of angelic
intellects. The higher angels grasp by a few ideas, in a single
glance, and reduced to a sort of supra-sensible panorama or
metaphysical view, a multitude of intelligible realities which
the lower angels can achieve only by means of many less
universal ideas.145 So St. Thomas’ thought progressed from
the more complex development of his Commentary to the
simplified exposition of the Summa,™* wherein he rises above
the sensible order and attains to a principle that throws light
on the full compass of the problem of love.
A part of this text has been quoted elsewhere. The preced­
ing discussion will now enable us to grasp more fully and
deeply the meaning and implication of the whole.
The natural tendency of things devoid of reason shows the na­
ture of the natural inclination residing in the will of an intellectual
144 la, q.6o, a. 5.
145 Ibid., q.55, a. 3.
146 Ibid., q. 60, a. 5.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

nature. Now, in the natural order of things, everything which of
its nature belongs to another, is principally and more strongly in­
clined to that other to which it belongs, than toward itself. Such a
natural tendency is evidenced from things which are moved to
act according to nature: because whatever is moved of its nature
to act in a certain manner, has the inborn aptitude for such action,
as the Philosopher says {Phys., ii). For we observe that the part
naturally exposes itself to safeguard the whole; as, for instance, the
hand is without deliberation exposed to the blow for the whole
body’s safety. And since reason copies nature, we find the same in­
clination among the social virtues; for it behooves the virtuous
citizen to expose himself to the danger of death for the public weal
of the state; and if man were a natural part of the city, then such
inclination would be natural to him.
Consequently, since God is the universal good, and under this
good both man and angel and every creature is comprised, because
every creature in regard to its entire being naturally belongs to
God; it follows that from natural love angel and man alike love
God before themselves and with a greater love. Otherwise, if
either of them loved self more than God, it would follow that nat­
ural love would be perverse, and that it would not be perfected
but destroyed by charity.

In this beautiful text St. Thomas emphasizes the inner
structure of his reasoning—major, minor, and conclusion—
and takes up the consideration of God not only as the first
efficient, creative, and conserving cause of our nature and
existence but also as our last end and supreme good.
The order of agents corresponds to the order of ends: a prin­
ciple properly and profitably invoked in relation to any being
and therefore to any creature on any level. Even the lowliest
beings, by tending toward their natural perfection, tend
toward a certain likeness of the divine perfection, and toward

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the good of the whole universe even more than their own.147
This is true of the stone that tends toward the earth’s center,
of the earth that turns round the sun, of the sun that is drawn
by a still greater force. It is true of plant and of animal: they
naturally tend more toward the conservation of their species
than to self-preservation. As our Lord said, “the hen doth
gather her chickens under her wings” and will expose her own
life, as St. Thomas remarks, to defend them from the hawk.148
So all creation moves toward the good of the universe and
toward God its author, a truth called to our minds by Aristotle
and Dionysius and triumphantly proclaimed by the Old
Testament: “All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord; praise
and exalt Him above all forever.” 140
In commenting on this canticle, St. Bernard, Richard of St.
Victor, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas all join in saying:
“All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord . . . angels of the
Lord . . . , heavens . . . , waters that are above the heavens
. . . , stars of heaven . . , shower and dew . . . , ice and
snow . . . , light and darkness . . . , bless the Lord ; moun­
tains and hills . . . , seas and rivers . . . , birds of the air,
bless the Lord; sons of men . . . , priests, servants of God
. . . , spirits and souls of the just . . . , the holy and humble
of heart, bless the Lord: praise and exalt Him above all for­
ever . . . because He is good: because His mercy endureth
forever and ever.”
Chanted by the Church at daybreak, this lovely canticle of
Lauds expresses with a magnificence full of praise, contempla­
tion, and love the same principle St. Thomas cast into a meta­
147 Contra Gentes, Bk. ΠΙ, chap. 24, no. 3; Summa, la Ilae, q. 109, a.3.
148 St. Thomas In Matth., 23: 37.
140 Dan. 3: 57.

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physical formula in his Summa: “In its own way everything
loves God more than itself.” 150
Elsewhere in his works St. Thomas has expressed the same
great truth in approximately the same terms.151 In the Summa
he makes more explicit the distinction between natural love
of God and supernatural charity: “The good we receive from
God is twofold, the good of nature and the good of grace. But
the fellowship of natural goods bestowed on us by God is
the foundation of natural love, in virtue of which not only
man, so long as his nature remains unimpaired, loves God
above all things and more than himself, but also every
creature, each in its own way (that is, by an intellectual or
rational or animal or at least natural love, as stones do, for in­
stance, and other things bereft of knowledge), because each
part naturally loves the common good of the whole more than
its own particular good. This is evidenced by its operation,
since the principal inclination of each part is toward common
action conducive to the good of the whole. It may be seen
also in civic virtues whereby sometimes the citizens suffer
damage even to their own property and persons for the sake
of the common good. Therefore much more is this realized
with regard to the friendship of charity which is based on the
fellowship of the gifts of grace.
“Therefore man ought, out of charity, to love God, who is
the common good of all, more than himself: since happiness is
in God as in the universal and fountain principle of all who
are able to have a share of that happiness.” 182
Duns Scotus has made the objection: “Even conceding that
150 la, q.6o, a. 5.
151 Commentary on De nom. div., chap. 4, lect. 9, 10; Quodlibet, I, q.4, a.3; la
Ilae, q. 109, a. 3.
152 Ila Ilae, q. 26, a. 3.

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99

the part does expose itself for the whole, it acts thus only
because of its identity with the whole and to save itself, for
it can exist only in the whole. Besides, no creature is a part
of God.” 153 Is St. Thomas’ doctrine, then, in danger of falling
into pantheism ?
Cajetan has answered this objection as follows:
The reason why the part exposes itself for the whole is not be­
cause of its identity with it. The proof of which lies in this: that
it will expose itself, if necessary, to the point of losing its identity
that it may save the whole (as a hand will sacrifice itself for the
body). The reason for this natural inclination is that given by St.
Thomas: by its nature and very being the part is first and essen­
tially for the whole and from the whole. This is fittingly applied
to every creature in relation to God. Each is, according to its na­
ture, a natural part of the universe and, as a result, naturally loves
the universe more than itself. With far greater reason it naturally
prefers to self the universal or essential good which as eminent or
first cause contains the good of the whole universe.154

No pantheism lurks in this doctrine; for it maintains an
infinite distance between God and the highest of creatures:
God alone is existent by essence; He is Being itself; no
creature is its own existence; every created essence is really
distinct from its existence; God alone is essential goodness;
every creature, no matter how great, is good only by par­
ticipation.
Without at all approaching pantheism, we can say that God
possesses goodness in its entirety, as the eminent cause in
which every good is virtually contained. Angels and men do
not love themselves as their last end. They love themselves as
153 III Sent., dist. 27, q. i, a. 3.
154 In lam, q.6o, a. 5.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

creatures subordinated to a last end, God. They naturally
love themselves for God, and so love God more than them­
selves.158

Solution of the problem
The principle that “every created nature tends to love
its Author more than itself” has innumerable consequences.
Only the principal ones will be noted. The first marks a
certain hierarchy: the higher a nature is, the more perfect it
is, and the stronger is its natural inclination to love God. The
gravitating stone, the growing, seed-bearing plant, the living,
breeding animal, the loving, thinking man, the matter-free
and flesh-unfettered angel, all move in an ascending order of
perfection toward the good of the universe. Thinking upon
this, St. Thomas reached the conclusion that, at the moment
of their creation, God gave to His angels grace in propor­
tion to their natural capacity and the natural energy of their
will.156
The principle now under discussion has another and no less
remarkable consequence. The natural motion resulting from
this inclination of all creatures becomes more and more rapid
as it nears its fitting term, the natural end toward which they
move and in which they come to rest. As any child knows who
throws a ball into the air, movement that is violent or contrary
to nature slows down progressively until it stops, whereas
movement in conformity with nature, following her law of
gravity, increases steadily in speed. So spirits gravitating
toward God naturally (and connaturally by infused charity)
advance toward Him more and more quickly as they come
155 Cf. Salmanticenses, In lam, q.6o, a. 5. Also Gonct, ibid.
158 Cf. la, q.62, a. 6.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

IOI

closer to Him and are more drawn by Him, until they see
Him face to face.157 The law here at work, to be seen later
as manifest in the progress of the saints, is more general and
therefore higher than Newton’s law of gravity, which comes
within its wider compass.
A third consequence of this principle results from its ap­
plication to a Sphere above matter, the spiritual order, and con­
tains the solution to the problem of love. True spiritual goods
coincide widi what is good in itself. By rightly desiring its own
perfection, by loving itself as it ought, the created spirit loves
its Creator still more; further, by ceasing to love its own per­
fection, it ceases to love God. Here, in plain opposition to
quietism, St. Thomas proposes his solution to the problem
of love, making no demand, under pretext of purifying our
love for God, that we sacrifice our desire for perfection, virtue,
sanctity, and salvation.158 Having made his expert deduc­
tions, he turns to the spiritual realm to find them verified in
the natural and supernatural life of those pure spirits, the
angels, and, in due proportion, in man’s as well.
In the natural order conflict arises between two individuals
of the same species because they desire the same material
good, whetlier useful or pleasurable; for example, the same
field, the same house, the same profits, things which cannot
properly belong to them both at the same time. Between sev­
eral spirits desiring the same spiritual good (for example, the
same light of truth, the same virtue, the same beatitude) con­
flict is impossible. Why? St. Thomas gives the answer by
putting into exact terms the profound thought of St. Augus­
tine that includes a virtual solution of the social question.
15T Cf. St. Thomas, In Epistolam ad Hebraeos, X, 25; also la Ilae, q.35, a. 6.
158 Cf. Denzinger, no. 1232.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Matter, by individualizing, divides. Material goods, because
individualized and limited, cannot belong to all at the same
time. On the contrary, spirit universalizes and can acquire
immaterial goods which, because of their universality, can
belong to all at the same time. These immaterial goods, far
from dividing, unite us, if pride does not go seeking apparent
goods and falsifying all things.150 The true good of created
spirits is identical with good in itself, with real good. Right
reason’s evaluation of a true good is independent of any in­
dividual pleasure or particular utility resulting from its pos­
session. It recognizes, for example, that to tell the truth and
refrain from lying is good even though it should cost life
itself. There can be no question of sacrificing a spiritual
good, because by efficaciously loving it and ourselves through
it we love God our Sovereign Good more than self. By ceasing
to love it, we turn from God.160
St. Thomas has examined this consequence with particular
thoroughness in his treatise on the angels. His thought may be
summarized as follows: Even in the order of animal life, when
“the hen gathers her chickens under her wings” to defend
them from the hawk, she naturally loves the good of her
species, and her motherhood more than her individual life,
more than her own good, which she will sacrifice if need be.
No parallel obtains in regard to any goods proper to the
soul, such as virtue or spiritual perfection. And because no
such parallel exists, the propositions of Molinos and Fénelon
159 Summa, Illa, q.23, a.i, ad 311m; la Ilac, q.28, a.5, ad 2um; Tabula aurca
S. Thomae: Bonum, no. 227.
ie° a virtuous man loves the good of virtue more because it is good in itself
than because it perfects him and is good for him; in fact, the formal reason for
this good becoming a perfection for him is that it is good in itself and lovable as
an end having intrinsic value. See St. Thomas’ Commentary on Aristotle't Ethics,
Bk. IX, chap. 8, lect. 9; also la, q.6o, a.5, ad 2um; Ha Ilac, q.26, a.3, ad 2um.

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103

declaring that the truly interior soul should not desire its
own perfection, have been condemned.161
St. Thomas points out the profound reason why the quietist view is wrong when he shows how the proper perfection
of created spirits coincides with what is good in itself and
ultimately with the Sovereign Good. He remarks it again
when he reasons that the angels could not have sinned di­
rectly against the natural law, which was absolutely evident
to them, but must have done so indirectly by turning away
from the supernatural law known to them only in the ob­
scurity of faith.
If the multiplicity of individuals of the same species actually
proceeds from matter which receives the same specific form
many times—as wax receives the imprint of a seal over and
over again—and if, in consequence, each pure spirit, being
without matter, is the only one of his species,162 then no spirit
could suffer inner conflict because of opposition between the
good of his species and his individual good. Furthermore, as
each pure spirit always intuitively sees his own essence and
the natural law imprinted therein, he cannot be deceived in
regard to the law, nor can he cease to consider the law. The
voluntary disorder of sin always presupposes some error of
practical judgment or at least a certain failure to consider
the law when it could and should be considered. It follows,
according to St. Thomas, that the angels could never sin
directly against the natural law, which is absolutely evident
to them. As has been remarked, the nature of each draws him
to love God more than himself and, as a result, to observe
181 Cf. Denzinger, no. 1232, for Molinos’ proposition, the same error later re­
peated by Fénelon in a less exaggerated form. Cf. Denzinger, nos. 1344, 1345.
182 Cf. la, q.50, a. 4.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

the whole natural law as seen written in his own essence.
So he sees intuitively that his own true good as a pure spirit
coincides with that which is good in itself; and by loving it
he loves yet more the Sovereign Source of all good. Although
one of the greatest corollaries of the principle formulated
above, this truth has not always been understood by modern
theologians despite St. Thomas’ full and satisfying explanation
of it. The fact is that not only could the angels sin indirectly
against the natural law, but many of them actually did. How ?
Before receiving the immediate vision of the divine essence,
they knew the supernatural law only in the obscurity of faith;
so they could sin against it, particularly through pride. As a
result they could also sin indirectly against the natural law,
which obliges them to obey God in whatever He commands
eidier in the natural or in the supernatural order.163
By sinning, the devil stopped loving God directly as author
of grace; consequently he stopped loving God indirectly as
the author of the natural moral law. He no longer loves him­
self rightly, no longer loves his own true good, pride making
him seek it where it is not to be found. While hating his just
Judge and the punishment inflicted by Him, he keeps on
loving life itself and, in a wholly natural, physical, and in no
way moral or supernatural sense, and in despite of everything,
he keeps on loving the Author of nature and of life.104
The consequence of the principle appealed to above does
not apply to man exactly in the same way. However, so far as
man is a spirit, the good proper to his higher part coincides
with the good in itself as willed by God; and, by loving him­
self according to the higher part of his nature, man loves his
103 Cf. St. Thomas, De malo, q.16, a.3; Summa. la, q.63, a.i, ad 311m.
164 la, q.6o, a. 5, ad sum.

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105

Creator still more. Not to so love himself would be to turn
from God.
In this respect man differs from the angels because his in­
tellect is the last and least of intellects, and its proper object
is the lowest of intelligibles and lies in the shadow of sensible
things; yet in the mirror of material things he can know
purely spiritual realities. His intellect cannot see the very es­
sence of his own soul intuitively or the natural law written
there. Moreover, through his imagination, which does not
always follow reason, sensible things exert an attraction upon
him and provoke his emotions to disorder. These in turn in­
fluence his judgment and lead him into error, especially in
practical matters. Consequently they lead to sin, even to sins
directly opposed to the natural law. Besides, since no man
comprises the whole of his species but each is only one among
many, conflict can exist between the good of the species and
the sensible good of the individual; and only too often man
sins by preferring his personal good, whether useful or pleas­
urable, and sometimes comes at last to sin even against nature
itself.168
However, in man too, spiritual good and essential good are
at one, according to the words of Psalm 10: “He that loveth
iniquity hateth his own soul.” From the lips of Christ Him­
self we hear: “He that shall lose his life for Me shall find
·(. ’> 166

Aristotle presented the same truth from a philosophical
point of view in his Ethics:
The question is also debated, whether a man should love himself
most, or someone else. People criticize those who love themselves
185 Cf. Ila Ilae, q. 154, a. 12.
168 Matt, to: 39.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

most, and call them self-lovers, using this as an epithet of disgrace.
. . . But the facts clash with these arguments, and this is not sur­
prising. For men say that one ought to love best one’s best friend,
and a man’s best friend is one who wishes well to the object of his
wish for his sake, even if no one is to know of it; and these attri­
butes are found most of all in a man’s attitude toward himself. . . .
Perhaps we ought to mark off such arguments from each other
and determine how far and in what respects each view is right.
Now if we grasp the sense in which each school uses the phrase
“lover of self,” the truth may become evident. Those who use the
term as one of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to
themselves the greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleas­
ures; for these are what most people desire. ... So those who are
grasping with regard to these things gratify their appetites and in
general their feelings and the irrational element of the soul; and
most men are of this nature (which is the reason why the epithet
has come to be used as it is—it takes its meaning from the prevail­
ing type of self-love, which is a bad one) ; it is j ust, therefore, that
men who are lovers of self in this way are reproached for being so.
That it is those who give themselves the preference in regard to
objects of this sort that most people usually call lovers of self is
plain; for if a man were always anxious that he himself, above all
things, should act justly, temperately, or in accordance with any
other of the virtues, and in general were always to try to secure
for himself the honourable course, no one will call such a man a
lover of self or blame him.
But such a man would seem more than the other a lover of self;
at all events he assigns to himself the things that are noblest and
best, and gratifies the most authoritative element in himself and in
all things obeys this; and just as a city or any other systematic
whole is most properly identified with the most authoritative ele­
ment in it, so is a man; and therefore the man who loves this and
gratifies it is most of all a lover of self. . . . Whence it follows that
he is most truly a lover of self, of another type than that which is a

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

107

matter of reproach, and as different from that as living according
to a rational principle is from living as passion dictates, and desir­
ing what is noble from desiring what seems advantageous. . . .
For he will throw away both wealth and honours and in general
the goods that are objects of competition, gaining for himself no­
bility; since he would prefer a short period of intense pleasure to a
long one of mild enjoyment, a twelve-month of noble life to many
years of humdrum existence, and one great and noble action to
many trivial ones. Now those who die for others doubtless attain
this result; it is therefore a great prize that they choose for them­
selves. They will throw away wealth too on condition that their
friends will gain more; for while a man’s friend gains wealth he
himself achieves nobility; he is therefore assigning the greater good
to himself. The same too is true of honour and office; all these
things he will sacrifice to his friend; for this is noble and laudable
for himself. Rightly then is he thought to be good, since he chooses
nobility before all else. But he may even give up actions to his
friend; it may be nobler to become the cause of his friend’s acting
than to act himself. ... In this sense, then, as has been said, a
man should be a lover of self; but in the sense in which most men
are so, he ought not.167

Both when treating of magnanimity or greatness of soul168
and when inquiring whether sinners truly love themselves,169
St. Thomas carefully examines Aristotle’s noble thought in
the light of the Gospel, remarking:
For it is common to all for each one to love what he thinks him­
self to be. . . . In this way too, all men, both good and wicked,
love themselves, in so far as they love their own preservation.
107 Probably in Bk. IX, chap. 8, of his Ethics, Aristotle set out to refute Plato’s
error on the same subject in his Laws, Bk. V., thinking that a distinction based
on the exact observation of nature was necessary to offset his teacher’s absolute
condemnation of all love of self.
les Ila Ilae, q. 129, a. 1, 2, etc.
169 Ibid., q.25, a. 7.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Secondly, a man is said to be something in respect of some pre­
dominance, as the sovereign of a state is spoken of as being the
state, and so, what the sovereign does, the state is said to do. In
this way, all do not think themselves to be what they are. For the
reasoning mind is the predominant part of man, while the sensi­
tive and corporeal nature takes the second place, the former of
which the Apostle calls the inward man, and the latter, the out­
ward man (II Cor. 4:16). Now the good look upon their rational
nature or the inward man as being the chief thing in them, where­
fore in this way they think themselves to be what they are. On the
other hand, the wicked reckon their sensitive and corporeal na­
ture, or the outward man, to hold the first place. Wherefore, since
they know not themselves aright, they do not love themselves
aright, but love what they think themselves to be. But the good
know themselves truly, and therefore truly love themselves. . . .
In this way the good love themselves, as to the inward man, be­
cause they wish the preservation thereof in its integrity, they de­
sire good things for him, namely spiritual goods, indeed they do
their best to obtain them, and they take pleasure in entering into
their own hearts, because they find there good thoughts in the
present, the memory of past good, and the hope of future good, all
of which are sources of pleasure. Likewise they experience no
clashing of wills, since their whole soul tends to one thing.
On the other hand, the wicked have no wish to be preserved in
the integrity of the inward man, nor do they desire spiritual goods
for him, nor do they work for that end, nor do they take pleasure
in their own company by entering into their own hearts, because
whatever they find there, present, past and future, is evil and hor­
rible; nor do they agree with themselves, on account of the gnaw­
ings of conscience. . . .
In the same manner it may be shown that the wicked love them­
selves, as regards the corruption of the outward man, whereas the
good do not love themselves thus.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

109

The love of self which is the principle of sin is that which is
proper to the wicked, and reaches to the contempt of God, . . .
because the wicked so desire external goods as to despise spiritual
goods.
The wicked have some share of self-love, in so far as they think
themselves good. Yet such love of self is not true but apparent:
and even this is not possible in those who are very wicked.” 170

The damned, in fact, hate themselves and, in a sense, will
their own annihilation that they may escape suffering.
Everything we have been considering drives home to us
the fact that spiritual creatures love God by perfectly loving
themselves and turn from God by failing to love themselves
as they should; for, though men can love money, sensual
pleasures, and honors too much, no one can, contrary to
quietist teaching, love virtue too much.171 To love virtue is
to love our best self, and to love our best self is to love the best
of all goods, God Himself.
Truths found in St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and Richard,
but emphasized and synthesized by St. Thomas, have formed
this simple solution of a great problem.172 Father Rousselot
may have forgotten to note that love, contrary to knowledge,
draws us toward reality instead of bringing reality to us,
but he has thoroughly grasped St. Thomas’ solution. He
writes: “St. Thomas thus reconciles two apparently contra­
dictory statements: (1) that disinterested love is possible and
even profoundly natural (since man’s nature leads him to love
God more than self): (2) that purely ‘ecstatic’ love, a love of
170 Cf. la Ilae, q.29, a.5, et Suppl., q.98, a.3.
171 Quaest. disp. de caritate, Λ.7, ad 1311m; De perfectione vitae spiritualis, c. 15.
172 Cf. St. Augustine, De Trinitate, Bk. XIV, 14 (P.L., XLII, 1050); in Tract,
in Joan., CXXIV, 21 (P.L., XXXV, 1968); St. Bernard, De diligendo Deo, 2 (P.L.,
CLXXXII, 978) ; Richard of St. Victor, De gradibus earitatis, 4 (P.L., CXCVI, 1206).

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THE LOVE OF GOD

‘pure duality,’ is impossible.” 173 As a matter of fact, a love
that would take us entirely out of ourselves, so to speak, would
not at all conform to our nature’s basic inclination toward
good, and especially our own good as properly subordinated
to the supreme and incomparable Good.
Putting this problem into words, we ask ourselves : Can man
love God with a really pure and truly disinterested love ? And,
if he can, how reconcile this love with self-love, commonly
and correctly recognized as fundamental to his nature? Ap­
parently man can love God only as his own particular good ;
for him to love God in any other way would conflict with his
nature and is, therefore, impossible.
St. Thomas’ answer is to distinguish between the end and
the subject of love. Regarding the end, he declares that our
nature leads us to love God not for ourselves, as subordinating
Him to us, but for Himself and more than ourselves, as our
first cause and last end. At the same time, concerning the
nature of our love for God, he admits that none of us could
love Him were we not dependent on that good which is Him­
self.174 In other words, if our faculty for loving had no re­
lation to God, we surely could not love Him; but such a
relationship exists, is absolutely fundamental, and pertains to
our first cause and last end.
Man’s existence, personal unity, and goodness depend en­
tirely upon God, his creator and conserver. In this single fact
the following two truths find reconciliation: (i) a man really
loves himself only when he loves God still more and, there­
fore, with a pure and disinterested love; and (2) no man
173 Rousselot, op. cit., p. 14.
174la, q.6o, a.5, ad aum; Ila Ilae, q.26, a. 13, ad 3um. As remarked earlier,
Scotus is far from agreement with St. Thomas on this point. Cf. also III Sent., d. 29,
q. I, a.3, ad 211m.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

III

can love God without loving himself in God, as the Canticle
of Canticles expresses it, “My beloved to me, and I to Him.” 175
The disciple speaks to the Master, saying: “I abandon my­
self and lose myself that I may find Thee; yet I know that
nothing is lost to him who finds the treasure of Thy heart,
where love is disinterested and faithful and makes us hunger
to reproduce it in our own hearts.” 176
“He that shall lose his life for Me shall find it.” When St.
Bernard and Richard of St. Victor make use of this passage
for the purpose of exhorting the faithful, they emphasize the
first part of our Savior’s words; but obviously, like St. Thomas,
they accept the second. The same cannot be said of the quietists.
Much more clearly than either St. Bernard or Richard, the
Angelic Doctor has perceived that by loving God and neigh­
bor disinterestedly man’s free will does not play the rebel
against nature, as though his nature could not rise above the
selfish love of concupiscence. Admittedly, original sin has
weakened his natural inclination to virtue,177 but, together
with every creature, he still holds to his original bent to love
God more than his particular good and even to love himself
for God. Grace perfects and uplifts this inclination without
destroying it, without demanding the sacrifice of his desire
for perfection and happiness, a desire initially good and one
essentially subordinated to love of God and therefore never
to be sacrificed.
A further consequence of St. Thomas’ principle relates to
love of neighbor and can be stated thus: According to his
spiritual nature, man ought to love himself less than God and
176 Cant. 2: 16.
176 Prayer of consecration to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
177 la Ilae, q. 109, a.3.

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more than his neighbor; to do so is neither egoism nor in­
ordinate love of self—even should his neighbor be better than
he.
St. Thomas gives the reason for this when he says: “A man
is not a friend to himself, but something more than a friend,
since friendship implies union, for . . . love is a unitive force,
whereas a man is one with himself, which is more than being
united to another. Hence, just as unity is the principle of
union, so the love with which a man loves himself is the form
and root of friendship.” 178 A friend is another self, and so
Holy Scripture admonishes us, “Thou shalt love thy friend
as thyself,” 179 bidding us, in other words, to will for our
friend the same good things we will for ourselves. Love of
neighbor rises no higher than the level of concupiscence if
founded on mutual pleasure-seeking; it becomes true friend­
ship only when based on the common quest for goodness,
when friend wants for friend what he himself most desires.180
To this, St. Thomas adds: “Just as unity surpasses union, the
fact that man himself has a share of the divine good is a more
potent reason for loving than that another should be a part­
ner with him in that share. Therefore man, out of charity,
ought to love himself more than his neighbor,” 181 at least ac­
cording to his higher part.
The objection may be made that, as the poet expresses it,
“we needs must love the highest when we see it,” and my
neighbor is often a better man than I. To this St. Thomas 182
replies that we must love those who are better than ourselves
178 Ila llae, q. 25, a. 4.
178 Lev. 19: 18.
180 Cf. St. Thomas In Ethicam, Bk. VIII, chap. 2, lect. 3.
181 Ila llae, q.26, a. 4.
182 Ibid., ad turn.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

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by desiring for them their merited and greater reward ; on the
other hand, no other human being is so close to us as we are
to ourselves; God, and God alone, is more intimately present.
Every just man, then, prizes the charity uniting him to God
more than the charity of any other just man. A child loves its
own poor and far from faultless mother much more than
some one else’s who may be rich and virtuous; and would
rather wear, as St. Augustine observes, its own clothes than
some one else’s richer and finer garments.
Undoubtedly saints have laid down their lives for others;
yet, even in dying they love themselves more, according to the
higher part of their souls, than those for whom they die,
St. Thomas says,183 for never may they sacrifice their own
spiritual good to free another from sin. The good of our
country can indeed demand the sacrifice of a man’s life, but
not of his spiritual good ; it cannot require him to sin or lose
his virtue. If, considered in this matter (the principle of in­
dividualization), an individual is subordinate to the state,
the latter is subordinate to the human person as having a
spiritual and immortal soul in immediate relation with
God.184
183 Ibid., ad 2um.
184 Individuality and personality must not be confused. Individuation, even in
our Savior’s humanity, proceeds from matter; personality makes us capable of
existing in ourselves, of acting for ourselves, of being sui juris. In Christ, His per­
sonality is the uncreated personality of die Word.
For the subordination of the individual to social authority, sec la llae, q. 96, a. 4.
St. Thomas tells us that just human laws bind in conscience. For the superiority
of the person over human laws, see ibid., where St. Thomas continues by saying
that unjust laws do not bind in conscience and, if they are contrary to religion
and, for example, induce us to practice idolatry, they must be disobeyed, even if
such disobedience leads to martyrdom. Cf. also Ila llae, q.104, a.5, ad aum; men
are not obliged to obey their superiors in all things; for in certain things they
are directly subject to God, who instructs them by the natural law or the written
law.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

After this enumeration of the chief consequences of the
principle that every creature’s natural bent is to love God the
Creator first and most, an examination of the difficulties that
may be raised concerning the principle itself will give us a
deeper understanding of it and reveal to us, by the way, other
conclusions flowing from the same principle and sounding
the fully harmony of nature and grace as realized in the
unitive life on earth and the life of glory in heaven.
Confirmation of the Thomistic solution of the problem
of love

As stated in the Summa (la, q. 60, a. 5; Ila Ilae, q. 26, a. 3),
these difficulties have reference to the end of our primordial
natural inclination and to its relations, on one hand, with
infused charity and, on the other, with sin and reparation.
One objection contends that natural love is founded on
natural union ; and that our nature, being separated by its own
inferiority from the divine, can have no natural attraction
drawing it to love God more than itself. St. Thomas answers
by agreeing that natural love is based on natural union, point­
ing this out as the reason why a man loves himself more than
his neighbor with whom he can have, at most, union, whereas
with himself he enjoys true unity. The Angelic Doctor goes
on to drive home the truth that this unity of a man with
himself necessarily depends, in turn, upon God, the creator
and conserver of man’s nature, the whole reason or total cause
of his existence and participated goodness. To Him man’s
affection naturally first turns. In any species, the individual
loves the good of the species more than its own individual
good, as observation of the way mothers defend their young
will teach us. God is not merely the good of the human species,

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115

He is the absolutely universal and essential good. Our love
turns towards him first. The proximate cause of this natural
inclination is our own nature; its ultimate cause is God.186

The end of our primordial natural inclination
At this point, let us return to the difficulty expressed in the
statement of the problems : All that we love we love as our own
good; now we love whatever is the reason for love more than
the object of love, just as we know principles better than con­
clusions; man, therefore, loves himself more than any odier
good whatever, even the Supreme Good.
Now the meaning and implication of St. Thomas’ distinc­
tion between the end of love and the loving subject, whose
good it is to love God more than self, becomes clearer to us.
“When it is said that God is loved by an angel in so far as
He is good to the angel, if the expression in so far denotes
an end, then it is false; for he does not naturally love God for
his own good, but for God’s own sake. If it denotes the nature
of love on the part of the one loving, then it is true; for it
would not be in the nature of anyone to love God, except from
this, that everything is dependent on that good which is
God.” 186
Does not a man wish his friend well even when it will mean
no personal advantage for himself? With how much greater
reason ought he not to love God in the same way ?18T “The
part does indeed love the good of the whole, as becomes a
part, not however so as to refer the good of the whole to itself,
but rather itself to the good of the whole.” 188
188 Cf. la, q.6o, a.5, ad mm; Ila Ilae, q.a6, a.3, ad mm.
180 la, q.6o, a.5, ad aum; Ila Ilae, q.a6, a. 13, ad 311m.
187 St. Thomas, III Sent., d.29, q. 1, a.3, ad aum.
188 Ila Ilae, q.a6, a.3, ad aum.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

To love is to will good to another. If we will good to our­
selves, this good can be either inferior or superior to us. If,
like our daily food, it is inferior to us, we will it to ourselves
and for ourselves, subordinating it to us as to an end. If it is
superior to us, we should will it to ourselves but not for our­
selves; far from subordinating it to us, we should subordinate
ourselves to it, as is done in that higher love of concupis­
cence called hope, especially when this virtue is united to
charity. By charity we will to God His glory and to ourselves
our own salvation that we may glorify God eternally. These
two forms of supernatural love of God, far from being con­
trary to our nature, are perfectly conformed to it, His handi­
work.189
The following division of love into its various kinds is
based on St. Thomas’ note: “To love is to wish good to some­
one. Hence the movement of love has a twofold tendency:
toward the good which a man wishes to someone (to himself
or to another) and toward that to which he wishes some good.
Accordingly man has love of concupiscence toward the good
that he wishes to another, and love of friendship toward him
to whom he wishes good.”190
In the natural order, every creature is naturally inclined
to love its own good for the common good of the universe
and, in a more or less obscure fashion, to manifest die good­
ness of the Creator whose might is the source and support of
the universe.191
The two preceding difficulties about the basis and end of
nature’s primordial inclination can be combined into one:
Nature’s acts are all fundamentally self-centered: the way
188 la Ilae, q.26, a. 4.
180 Ibid. For the divisions of love, see Ha Hae, q. 17, a. 5, 8, and Cajetan’s com­
mentary; also q.23, a.i; q.25, a.4; q.27, a.2, 3.
181 Ia Hae, q.109, a.3; Contra Gentes, Bk. Ill, chap. 24.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

117

I will the glory of God, the
In the order of grace: author of grace.
charity
I will my own salvation
that I may glorify God
eternally.

ο
<u

I will the glory of God, the
author of my nature, in
In tine order of nature
which He manifests His
goodness.

Q

Hope enlivened by char­
ity; I efficaciously desire
that God be loved more
than myself.

In the order of grace Hope without charity: I
inefficaciously desire that
God be loved more than
myself.

Love'

Of
God'
a

o

I desire God by subordi­
nating myself to Him, as
to that which is good for
In the order of nature.
me, but which I desire
ultimately, for His own
sake, not for mine.

o

Of inferior things

I desire food as a good to
be obtained for myself,
subordinating it to my life,
.as to an end.

ιι8

THE LOVE OF GOD

creatures act for their own self-preservation reveals this to us.
Nature, then, inclines no creature to love God more than
itself.102 St. Thomas concedes this to be true of fallen nature
which, because of original sin and its consequences, certainly
does tend toward egoism.193 He denies it to be true of nature
as it came from the hand of God. “Nature’s operation is self­
centered not merely with regard to certain particular details,
but much more with regard to what is common; for every­
thing is inclined to preserve not merely its individuality, but
likewise its species. And much more has everything a nat­
ural inclination toward what is the absolutely universal
good.” 194
When this objection persists, maintaing that love of God
is really a desire to enjoy Him and therefore remains nothing
but self-love whereby we desire good for ourselves, St. Thomas
replies: “That a man wishes to enjoy God pertains to that love
of God which is love of concupiscence. But we love God with
the love of friendship more than with the love of concupis­
cence, because the divine good is greater in itself than our
share of good in enjoying Him.” 195 Another observation of
his bearing on this subject really composes a theological com­
mentary on the expression of the Canticle of Canticles, “My
beloved to me, and I to him.” “Hope makes us tend to God,
as to a good to be obtained finally, and as to a helper strong
to assist: whereas charity, properly speaking, makes us tend
to God, by uniting our affections to Him, so that we live, not
192 la, q. 6o, a. 5, 3 ob.
193 la Ilae, q.109, a.3; ibid., q.85, a.i. Cf. the index to St. Bernard’s works
for the word curvitas to find those passages where the saint speaks of our downbent
souls that God created upright. The author of The Imitation has the same thing
to say, Bk. ΠΙ, chap. 54.
194 la, q. 60, a. 5, ad 3um; II Sent., d.3, q.3, ad 2um; Quodlibet, I, a. 8, ad sum.
195Ila Ilae, q.26, a.3, ad 3um; a.4, ad 3um.

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119

for ourselves, but for God.” 106 This supernatural inclination
of charity, far from being contrary to our natural desire for
happiness, is conformed to it; charity’s pure love could not,
as a result, require us to sacrifice this desire but raises it to a
new height in us by making us will our salvation chiefly that
we may glorify God eternally.
Nature and charity
William of Auxerre held that anyone maintaining that an
angel can, without grace, love God more than himself, prac­
tically asserts that he can, without grace, live a just and holy
life; but to maintain this view is to fall into the Pelagian
heresy.197 In fact, he continues, quoting St. Augustine 198 as
his authority, the words of St. Paul, “The charity of God is
poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost who is given
to us,” apply to angels as well as to men.
St. Thomas does not subtract anything from St. Augustine’s
meaning; rather he gives it greater clarity by replying: “God,
in so far as He is the universal good, on whom every natural
good depends, is loved by everything with natural love. So far
as He is the good which of its very nature, beatifies all with
supernatural beatitude, He is loved with the love of char­
ity.” 199 This is the distinction between God, the author of
nature (regarded as outside God), and God in His intimate
life (that is, as the author of grace). This distinction was al­
ways taught by the Church and explicitly formulated in the
condemnation of Baius.200 Grace and charity belong to the
186 Ha Ilae, q. 17, a. 6, ad 311m.
187 Summa, Bk. II, tr. I, chap. 4.
788 The City of God, Bk. XII, chap. 9.
188 la, q.6o, a.5, ad 411m; la, q.12, a.4; III Sent., d.29, q.i.
800 Denzingcr, no. 1034.

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same order as the beatific vision ; they are indeed the seed of
the state of glory. Neither man nor angel can, solely by natural
intellectual power, see God directly; they can apprehend Him
naturally only through the reflection of His perfections—man
in the mirror of sensible things, angels in the mirror of His
,
201
own
essence.
Without stating it as clearly as St. Thomas does, St. Augus­
tine had formulated this distinction, not only in regard to
men but also in regard to the angels, for he says:
Who gave them good will, if not He who created them with
good will and a chaste love whereby to cleave to Him, who pro­
duced their natures and gave them grace by one and the same act?
We believe that the good angels never were without good will or
love of God. As to the bad angels, they were created good but be­
came bad by their own will, itself made evil not by its own good
nature but by its defection from the good; for evil springs not from
goodness but from defection from goodness. The angels who fell
either received less of the grace of divine love than those who per­
severed or, all having been created in equal goodness, they fell by
their own evil will while the others were more strongly aided to a
fullness of happiness which, when they had attained, they could
never lose. ... We must therefore give due glory to our Creator,
because of angels as well as of men it can be said that the charity of
God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who has been
given to us.202

This text contains a clear distinction between nature and
grace and, inasmuch as it concerns the angels, there can be
no question of St. Augustine’s purpose. He intended to dif­
ferentiate not only between fallen nature and healing grace
201 la, q. 12, a. 4.
202 The City of God, Bk. XII, chap. 9.

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121

but also between the most perfect and unspoiled angelic na­
ture and the grace that raises that nature to a higher order, the
divine, where it lives and acts in the realm of God by par­
ticipating in His intimate life and, in heaven, enjoys the im­
mediate vision which He has of Himself.
Nature and sin

The mystery of iniquity contained in all sin raises a special
difficulty formulated by St. Thomas thus: “Natural love lasts
while nature endures. But the love of God more than self does
not remain in the angel or man who sins. . . . Therefore it is
not natural to love God more than self.”
The substance of St. Thomas’ replies amounts to this : The
sinner and die devil certainly do not love God as the author
of the moral law and their own just judge; they turn away
from Him in this guise. Nevertheless their natures still incline
them to love God as the author of existence and life and
to love Him even more dian themselves, for, in spite of every­
thing, they continue to love the existence and life God con­
serves in them and, as a result, to love its source still more,
not willing the good of God as an object distinct from dieir
own, but as identified with it.
Because of this primordial inclination, sin is not possible
for those who see God face to face and recognize His sover­
eign goodness. On the contrary, sin is possible for all those
who still know the Creator only through His effects and His
precepts, some of which gall them. So they can turn from
God as the author of the moral law while continuing to love
physical and intellectual life and, in a confused way, its
supreme source. By loving existence, the sinner, without re­
flecting or heeding, loves what conserves existence, just as in

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an organism a sick part still clings to the life coming to it
from the whole body.203
But how, it will be asked, can such a difference exist be­
tween the very essence of our will’s primordial inclination and
those concrete psychological manifestations which, even in
the baptized, generally appear at the very beginning of moral
life and testify to our inordinate love of self, our real egoism ?
How does it happen that only in the unitive way does a man
come to conform his individual life to the first and funda­
mental inclination of the nature of man? If man’s nature
is as upright as has just been claimed, why are mortification
and the cross so necessary? How can St. Thomas’ doctrine
be reconciled with what The Imitation 204 says about the
different motions of nature and grace ?
St. Thomas has not left this difficulty unanswered. He shows
that the natural inclination to virtue is weakened by sin,
which, especially when repeated, gives rise to a contrary
habit.205 Nature remains the same, but any natural inclination
ordered to a good action is weakened by an evil act, and this
weakness remains after the act as an obstacle to good. Original
sin itself has four resultant wounds: (i) the will, turned
from God, its natural and supernatural last end, becomes
weak in well doing; (2) the intellect tends to err, especially
in the guidance of life; and the sensible appetite is inclined
(3) to impatience and cowardice, and (4) to sensuality.20®
After baptism, faithfulness heals these wounds; personal
sins magnify them until they serve as the source for concu­
piscence of the flesh, and of the eyes, the pride of life, and the
203 la, q. 60, a. 5, ad 511m; Ila Ilae, q.34, a. 1.
204 Bk. HI, chap. 54.
205 la Ilae, q.85, a. I.
™lbid., a. 3.

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seven capital sins, principles of so many others.207 If we read
the nineteen long questions St. Thomas devoted to these sub­
jects, we shall see that, although his method differs from that
of The Imitation because he keeps to the speculative and ab­
stract rather than the practical and concrete, he stresses quite
as strongly the necessity of mortification.
Evidence of this accord stands out in what St. Thomas tells
us about love of self: “Now self-love may stand in a threefold
relationship to charity. In one way it is contrary to charity,
when a man places his end in the love of his own good. In
another way it is included in charity, when a man loves him­
self for the sake of God in God. In a third way, it is indeed
distinct from charity, but is not contrary thereto, as when a
man loves himself from the point of view of his own good
yet not so as to place his end in this his own good.” 208 Hope
of divine benefits disposes us to love our Benefactor Himself
for Himself.200
The Angelic Doctor’s teaching provides us with a satisfac­
tory explanation of the sinner’s weak natural love of God and
inclination to virtue. Passion and vice have attenuated them.
Mortification and the cross, on the contrary, bring man’s in­
dividual life into harmony with the very essence of his na­
ture’s ultimate inclination.
There is a last difficulty relative to suffering in reparation
for others. How can St. Paul say, “For I wished myself to be
an anathema from Christ, for my brethren”? 210 Instead of
harmonizing with man’s natural inclination, this act of su­
preme charity seems contrary to it. The same can be said
207 Ibid., q. 71-89.
208 Ila Ilae, q. 19, a. 6.
209 Ibid., q.27, a.3.
210 Rom. 9: 3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

of St. John of die Cross who, when asked by our Lord what
he desired, answered : “Lord, to suffer and to be despised for
Your sake”; and of St. Teresa, whose reply was: “To suffer
or to die.”
Apropos of St. Paul’s words, “For I wished myself to be
an anathema from Christ, for my brethren,” all that St.
Thomas concedes is that a saint transported by love for
Christ’s honor and the salvation of his brethren, can desire,
should Christ’s honor and the salvation of souls require it, to
be deprived of the joy of divine union—though not of that
union itself, which can be lost only through mortal sin.211
Besides, as Massoulié remarked,212 such a desire belongs to
the transports of love, is an intense act of charity and not a
permanent state.213
Moreover, St. Paul’s words, far from being contrary to our
nature, conform to its deepest inclination since fundamentally
we love God the author of our nature more than ourselves and
are ready to sacrifice ourselves for His sake, if need be, even
as the hand endangers itself to save the head. St. Paul makes
not an absolute but a conditional sacrifice of his personal
beatitude—if necessary for the honor of Christ and the sal­
vation of his brethren.214 His act includes rather than ex211 Cf. Commentarium in Epist. ad Romanos, IX, 3, concerning the words,
“For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren." Sec also
Ila Ilae, q. 182, a.2; q.27, a.8, ad turn.
212 Traité de l'amour de Dieu, Part Π, chap. 14, pp. 303 if.
213 As stated earlier, should God reveal to a man his future damnation (a thing
God would never do), the man would still be bound to love God, the Sovereign
Good, above all things, just as the apostle Peter was obliged, even after Christ had
foretold his triple denial, to tell the truth and to be loyal to his Lord. To desire
eternal life is not the first and highest act of charity; this act is rather to love God
for Himself and for His sake alone. Cf. Ila Ilae, q.26, a.3; q.27, a.3.
214 In her Life, chap. 35, St. Teresa explains this kind of sacrifice and the joy it
brings: “Our Lord had already told me that I was going to carry a heavy cross,—
though I never thought it would be so heavy as I afterwards found it to be—and

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eludes hope, because he bids us to hope like Abraham who,
when God asked of him the sacrifice of his only son Isaac,
“accounting that God is able to raise up even from the
dead,” 215 hoped on heroically, hoped on against all hope.216
So St. Thomas’ principle applies, as we see, to the high­
est interior states and, at the same time, serves to help us
avoid the extreme and contrary errors of naturalism and
pseudo-supernaturalism. Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian natural­
ism unconsciously supposes a certain pantheistic confusion
of human nature with the divine. Contrarily, the pseudosupernaturalism of Baius, following a subjectivist tendency,
blindly assumes an original disorder in our nature itself,
which absolutely requires the remedy of grace.217 In the lat­
ter view, the original disorder so unthinkingly accepted is
seen as tainting our every affection and evidently can be de­
stroyed only at the sacrifice of personal beatitude.
St. Thomas’ doctrine rises above these two contrary errors
and brings out effectively the harmony of nature and grace
without detracting in the least from the gratuitousness and
yet I went forth rejoicing. I was distressed because I had not already begun the
fight, since it was our Lord's will that I should be in it. Thus His Majesty gave
me strength, and established it in my weakness.
"As 1 have just said, I could not understand how this could be. I thought of
this illustration: if I were possessed of a jewel, or any other thing which gave me
great pleasure, and it came to my knowledge that a person whom I love more
than myself, and whose satisfaction I preferred to my own, wished to have it, it
would give me great pleasure to deprive myself of it, because I would give all I
possessed to please that person."
The same joy in sacrifice is expressed by St. Paul in II Cor. 12:9: “Gladly
therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in
persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful."
216 Heb. 11:18.
218 Abraham's heroic hope, so much praised by St. Paul, is at opposite poles
from the absolute sacrifice required by the quietists. Cf. Denzinger, nos. 1331, I333>
1335. 1336 ff.
217 Cf. Denzinger, nos. 1021, 1034, 1038.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

sublimity of grace. According to him, man’s first natural love
is for God. Original and personal sin weaken this tendency
and leave traces in the soul of man that require purification
and even, it may be, violent purification. But after his soul is
purified, the initial harmony of his God-given nature shines
forth transfigured in his supernatural love of God, the author
of grace. Nature suffers no loss at the hands of grace, which
destroys sin and its consequences only that it may raise nature
to an infinitely higher order where, in the immediate and
eternal vision of a loving and beloved God, every human aspi­
ration finds satisfaction beyond the scope of any man’s desire.

ARTICLE IV
ST. THOMAS AND NEWTON

Newton, noticing the accelerating fall of an apple, saw the
law of gravity; St. Thomas watched it and beheld a figure of
the natural or connatural218 movement of all spiritual crea­
tures toward God.
Reflection and further observation led Newton to conclude
that all bodies fall toward the earth with increasing speed
and that their speed is affected by their mass and the distance
of their fall. He went further in his generalization and con­
cluded that all bodies in the universe mutually attract one
another in direct ratio to their mass and in inverse ratio to the
square of their distance. He had discovered the law of uni­
versal gravity, which rules not only the solar system but the
entire physical universe, the whole concourse of heavenly
218 Acts of the infused virtues such as hope and charity, although essentially
supernatural, are called connatural because they conform to our nature and proceed
from the virtues, a sort of second nature.

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127

bodies, those forming, those dying, fixed stars, suns, planets,
satellites, comets, and meteorites.
All men had seen fruit fall from trees; few had asked them­
selves with that admiring wonder which is the beginning of
science and the quest for causes, “Why do bodies fall ?” And
so far no one had seen in this commonplace fact the law of
universal gravity. The word “intellect” comes from intelligere or intus legere, to read in a sensible fact the intelligible
law written there by the Creator. Wisdom, the greatest sci­
ence, should consist in connecting an intelligible law so dis­
covered with the most general laws of real being and, in die
last analysis, with the Supreme Intelligible, the First Being.
Being a mathematician and astronomer more than any­
thing else, Newton did not go that far but stopped at grasping
a particular instance of a more general law. And experience
verified that all bodies falling freely through space move with
uniform acceleration. At the end of the eighteenth century,
the English physician Atwood invented a means of demon­
strating experimentally the laws governing the fall of bodies,
and it was observed that, if in the first second of its fall the
speed of a body is 20, then in the next second it is 40, in the
third 60, in the fourth 80, and in the fifth 100. And thus a law
was established: falling bodies move with uniformly acceler­
ated speed. Why? Modern physics makes no inquiries into
final causes and goes only a short distance in the search for
efficient causes. Being first and foremost phenomenal, quanti­
tative, and practical, it is limited to studying and measuring
phenomena, to establishing their unvarying relations or laws
with a view to reproducing them, contenting itself with prov­
ing, for example, that the speed of falling bodies increases
proportionately with the duration of their fall and that the

ιζ8

THE LOVE OF GOD

contrary takes place when a stone is thrown vertically into the
air, for then its speed decreases proportionately until the mov­
ing object no longer rises but falls back in virtue of its own
weight—the intimate nature of which eludes us.
Innumerable consequences of these physical and verifiable
principles are being realized every moment in the universe,
whether on our earth or in the most remote nebulae. The law
of acceleration is one of the most beautiful things in the whole
order of inanimate bodies. At bottom it contains a mystery
which thinkers have dwelt on too little in wonder, admira­
tion, and meditation, a mystery which becomes a contradic­
tion if we refuse to admit the existence of a first unmoved
Mover who is at once the first cause and last end of all motion
in the universe, attracting all things to Himself and being
drawn by nothing whatever. The ship rests upon the sea, the
sea leans upon the bosom of the earth, the earth is upheld by
the long-reaching sun, the sun turns for support to some
mightier sphere; but a series of actually subordinate causes
cannot go on to infinity. In the last analysis we shall reach a
first Mover without need of premotion, who will be his own
act, very act, and, since action presupposes being, very being
eternally subsistent, Pure Act, as Aristotle called him, without
admixture of imperfection or limit: God.219
Men of antiquity did not demonstrate the laws governing
falling bodies, but they observed that the speed of bodies fall­
ing toward the earth increases both with their weight and
with the distance they fall. In Aristotle’s De Coelo 220 we read
that bodies with weight fall ever more quickly as they come
closer to the center of the earth. In St. Thomas’ commentary
219 Metaphysics, Bk. XII, chap. 7.
220 Bk. I, chap. 8, no. 13.

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on this work,221 the same law is formulated in his statement
that the speed of falling bodies with mass increases in propor­
tion to the height from which they fall. Of old, men searched
for the “why” of this fact. Natural philosophy as they con­
ceived it, was not, like modern physics, concerned only with
the phenomenal, quantitative, and practical; it sought to
know being, the substance of things, their qualities, their
properties, studying their movements in relation to their na­
ture, determining which are natural, which unnatural, striv­
ing to make things intelligible dirough their four causes, and
coming finally, by simply following the exigencies of the
laws of thought and reality, to the First Mover and Last End.
Thus the natural philosophy of the ancients was not only
quantitative and practical but qualitative and speculative,
seeking to make things and their movements intelligible by
connecting them with the first principles of reason and ulti­
mately with the supreme Intellect, God, the first being and
ordainer of all things.
To the question, “Why do bodies fall faster and faster ?” St.
Thomas answered, following Aristotle, that they do so be­
cause such movement is natural to bodies and because, in fall­
ing, they draw ever nearer the place naturally fitting for
them. He adds that, on the contrary, a stone thrown vertically
into the air moves more and more slowly because this move­
ment, far from being natural to it, is violent or contrary to its
natural attraction toward the center of the earth.
Unlike the natural philosophy of other and earlier days,
modern physics makes little reference to the distinction be­
tween natural and unnatural movement because, in a way, it
abstracts from the intimate nature of bodies and the finality of
221 Lectio 17.

r3o

THE LOVE OF GOD

their movements. However, it would not dare to deny this
distinction absolutely and, in more than one instance, admits
it at least implicitly, particularly when treating of the state
toward which the universe is tending.
Having classified the movement of falling bodies as natural
in contradistinction to unnatural movement, the early phi­
losophers of nature went on to enunciate a law relative to all
movement properly called natural, not only in the order of
bodies but in the order of spirits as well since these, too, have
their natures and natural properties. St. Thomas expressed
their further and more general conclusion when he wrote:
“For every natural movement is more intense in the end,
when a thing approaches the term that is suitable to its na­
ture, than at the beginning, when it leaves the term that is
unsuitable to its nature: as though nature were more eager in
tending to what is suitable to it than in shunning what is un­
suitable. Therefore the inclination of the appetitive power is,
of itself, more eager in tending to pleasure than in shunning
sorrow. y> 222
St. Thomas purposely wrote the omnis, “every natural
movement,” with which this text begins, for he was formulat­
ing a universal law applying with equal truth to the move­
ment of all things—stones, plants, animals, men, and an­
gels.223 Of old, men sought to symbolize this law in a poetic
fancy, the swan song; and, resultantly, fell into the habit of
giving that title to the last work of any great poet whenever
they considered it the culminating point of his genius.
Newton, seeing an apple drop from a tree, reasoned that the
222 la Ilae, q.35, a. 6.
223 If a man happens to shun sorrow more than he seeks joy, St. Thomas says,
this is only accidentally, for example, if the sorrow he experiences robs him not
of one but of every joy. Ibid.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

i3i

law of its accelerating fall applied to all bodies in the uni­
verse; St. Thomas glimpsed in it the tiny mirroring of an in­
comparably greater law applying to the movement of all
creatures, especially the natural or connatural movement of
created spirits gravitating toward God in response to the at­
traction of His sovereign goodness.224
As we have seen, St. Thomas also remarks that the part
loves more than itself the whole to which it naturally belongs
because it exists for the whole, the hand naturally endanger­
ing and even sacrificing itself to preserve the body. It follows
that every creature has a natural inclination to love the good
of the universe and God, its author and end, more than itself.
As a matter of fact, every creature aspires to a more or less
224 t;)c objection will be made that the sun moves at an apparently uniform
speed, that animals slow down from fatigue, that vivid sensations grow dim, and
that ordinary things which we once found striking no longer attract us.
St. Thomas knew these objections and set himself to meet them. He says that
the motion of the heavenly bodies is circular and that it is neither more natural
for the sun to approach our western sky nor for it to move on past it beyond our
sight. The planets move in such wonderful harmony because they are directed
by higher and free intellects, themselves subject to God. Their movements are not,
therefore, natural in the sense of being actively their own but only as due to a
certain natural capacity for being moved. (la, q.70, a. 3, ad 4um; q.32, a. 1, ad 2um.)
Further, the heavenly bodies are moved at the same time in two ways, each
sharing a motion common to all, and having another motion individual to itself
(la, q.67, a.4, ad 3um; q.68, a.2, ad 3um; q.104, a.2).
Finally, the uniform circular motion of the heavenly bodies represents a tendency
which has already reached its term and has no further perfection to seek (fa, q.55,
a.2; De coelo, II, 8).
St. Thomas recognized, too, that fatigue slows down the motion of animals to
their goals, but this motion is not properly speaking natural or determined by
nature itself but only by certain things necessary for the animal's subsistence;
even so, the tired horse picks up speed as it nears home.
In regard to vivid sensations becoming dull, this happens because sensation,
being caused by something external to us, is, in a sense, violent, and not properly
speaking a natural movement; like all violent movements its intensity lessens. And
if ordinary things no longer arrest us, this is true in regard to knowledge only
since our desire for the things necessary for life (air, water, food) never falls away.
Formally considered, any natural movement to a natural end can be said to con­
form to the principle, "Omnis motus naturalis intensior est in fine.”

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THE LOVE OF GOD

dim likeness of the divine perfection, a likeness that manifests
the goodness of the Author of creation.225
Natural love of God, unconscious in a being unendowed
with reason, becomes more and more conscious and ever and
ever stronger in proportion as it rises in the hierarchy of intel­
lectual natures until it reaches the level of the highest angel.
“The angel is not,” St. Thomas says, “a compound of differ­
ent natures, so that the inclination of the one thwarts or re­
tards the tendency of the other; as happens in man, in whom
the motion of his intellective part is either hindered or
thwarted by tire inclination of his sensitive part. But when
there is nothing to retard or thwart it, nature is moved with
its whole energy. Hence it is reasonable to suppose that the
angels, who had a higher nature, were turned to God more
mightily and efficaciously.” 228
Infused charity, essentially supernatural in men and angels
alike, does not destroy this fundamentally natural inclination,
but perfects and elevates it.22T The nearer a Christian draws
to his God the more quickly he ought to advance towards
Him, according to St. Paul’s words, “And let us consider one
another, to provoke unto charity and to good works; . . .
and so much the more as you see the day approaching.” 228
In his commentary on this epistle, St. Thomas writes that, in
perfecting us, grace inclines us to what is good for our nature
which, in this case, is increasing progress toward our natural
end. Hence the charity of those in the state of grace ought to
increase as tliey draw nearer and nearer their last end, because,
as we read in the Scriptures, “The night is passed and the day
225 la, q. 6, a. I ; q. 60, a. 5.
226 la, q. 62, a. 6.
227 la, q.6o, a. 5; Ha Hac, q.26, a. 3.
228 Heb. 10: 24 f.

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is at hand” 229 and “the path of the just, as a shining light,
goeth forward and increaseth even to perfect day.” 230 St.
Thomas’ comment is clear. The curve of the saints’ lives rises
to a zenith from which it never falls away. They know no
spiritual twilight; only their bodily powers grow dim with
age.
Our Lord expressed the law of universal attraction as it op­
erates in the spiritual order when He said: “And I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself.” 231
And again, “No one can come to Me except the Father, who
hath sent Me, draw him” 232 and unless My Father draw him
through the universal mediator and savior of humanity.
The higher the scale of being the more closely efficient and
final causes draw together: our Savior draws us to Himself
that He may bring us to the Father, the principle and end of
all things, the sovereign and increasingly attractive good. In
the lives of the saints, their progress in love quickens with the
passing of the years. In spite of the heaviness of age and a cer­
tain attendant dulling of the senses, their steps of strong love
move on towards God at an ever-increasing pace. Grace, and
charity particularly, never cease to grow in their souls. The
Blessed Virgin’s love for God began under the impulse of a
great grace and, meeting no obstacle in her who was without
sin, made such eminent progress that nature can give us, in
the phenomena of gravity, only a faint, far image of her in­
creasing attraction towards God.
Something analogous to this should take place in us, par­
ticularly if we receive Communion daily. Substantially each
229 Rom. 13:12.
230 prov. 4:18.
221 John 12: 32.
222 Ibid., 6: 44-

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Communion ought to be more fervent than the preceding,
since each should not merely preserve but increase our char­
ity and so dispose us to receive more and more perfectly the
Author of grace. The readiness of our will to reach out to
Him constitutes substantial devotion and ought in principle
to wax stronger and stronger when not bound down with a
growing attachment to venial sin.
The consideration of these facts reveals that St. Thomas
grasped the universal validity of a law which Newton saw at
work in one particular class of things. Newton’s conclusions
were limited to the order of bodies. St. Thomas was par­
ticularly interested in applying to the spiritual realm a law
which he held as universal and which he used as a principle
from which to reason concerning the hierarchy of angelic
natures, grace, and increasing charity, the constant growth
of the Mother of God in holiness, and the instantaneous and
absolute fullness of grace granted to the soul of Christ.233
Every soul journeying to God is a world gravitating toward
its cosmic center: this is the law of gravity glorified. As St.
Augustine has put it in his own case, Amor meus pondus
meum, “Love is the weight that draws me.” The modern
world sees the law of universal attraction only in its material
and inferior aspect in the order of inanimate bodies; we dare
look at its full beauty. To the modern philosopher the material
world may be only a condition for the development of con­
sciousness; for St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and for us, it
is a mirror truly though imperfectly reflecting the perfections
of the spiritual order. Angels see material things from above,
through spiritual things; men see spiritual things from beÎS3 Dia, q.7, a.9, 12.

THE PROBLEM OF PURE LOVE

135

low, through material things.231 We must not halt at the
reflection but go on to grasp the reality it reveals to us, above
all, that supreme reality which is at once the efficient and final
cause, tire attraction center, for die material and spiritual
universe. As the Psalmist says, the heavens declare the glory
of the Lord, making manifest to us a supreme cause moving,
ordering, and attracting all things, especially those spiritual
worlds, our souls, which should move faster and ever faster
toward dieir center of gravity the closer they come to Him.

Rerum tenax vigor
Immotus in te permanens,
Lucis diurnae tempora
Successibus determinans.
134 Ia, q-57, a.i; q.87, 88.

CHAPTER III
Love

of

God and the Indwelling of the
Blessed Trinity

Those who would know what it means to love God should
seek to learn it from the Christian doctrine expressed in St.
John’s words: “God is charity; and he that abideth in love
abideth in God, and God in him.” 1 Reflection on how and
why charity makes the soul a living temple of the Trinity gives
some appreciation of the grandeur of the love of God in souls
possessing His grace, for the special presence of God within
us is the foundation of our interior life. With it our interior
life begins, generally without any consciousness of it on our
part; and with it our interior life comes to full flower when,
freed from all stain by mortification and the cross, the soul
consciously and truly enters into its heart of hearts and finds
the Blessed Trinity at home there.2
ARTICLE I
THE SPECIAL PRESENCE OF THE BLESSED TRINITY
IN THE JUST

Faith first teaches us that God is present in all His creatures
by the general presence of immensity. Knowing this, the
Psalmist exclaimed: “Whither shall I go from Thy spirit?
11 John 4:16.
* St. Teresa, Interior Castle, Seventh Mansion.
136

INDWELLING OF THE TRINITY

137

or whither shall I flee from Thy face ? If I ascend into heaven,
Thou art there; if I descend into hell, Thou art present.”3
Realization of the same truth prompted St. Paul’s preaching
in the Areopagus : “God, who made the world and all things
therein, He being Lord of heaven and earth ... is not far
from every one of us. For in Him we live and move and are.” 4
St. Thomas5 gives an excellent explanation of this general
presence of God by saying that God is present to all things:
first, by His infinite vision from which nothing is hidden,
even the secrets of men’s hearts; secondly, by His power, the
causality of which extends to all that exists in such a way that
we cannot act even in the natural order without His con­
currence; thirdly, by His essence, which is one with His
creative and conserving power and maintains all spiritual
and material creation in existence. He is in deep, hidden, and
immediate contact with all beings, with what is innermost in
each ; and if His divine conserving action, the continuation of
His creative act, were to cease, all creatures would be at once
annihilated, returning to the nothingness from which they
came, as light fails when the sun goes down.
Faith teaches us that God is wholly and really present in
all created things—plants, men, angels, and devils. He is
present to all as a cause is in the effect it produces and con­
serves, since the being of every creature is the proper effect
of God, as illumination is the proper effect of light. God is
whole and entire in heaven and whole and entire in the
world in such a way that He embraces all things and is not
limited by any. He is the burning hearth from which the life
8 Ps. 138: 7 f.
4 Acts 17: 24-28.
6 la, q.8, a.3.

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138

of creation flames up, the center of gravity drawing all things
to Himself, as the liturgy proclaims.
Rerum Deus tenax vigor,
Immotus in te permanens.

God’s special presence as revealed in Scripture

Holy Scripture speaks to us of something beyond God’s uni­
versal presence in all things; it tells us of His special presence
in the just, warning us, in the Book of Wisdom, that “wisdom
will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body sub­
ject to sins.” 6 Lest we think only created grace or the created
gift of wisdom comes to dwell in the just, our Lord’s own
words show us that the three divine Persons themselves come
to dwell in us. “If anyone love Me,” He says, “he will keep
My word. And My Father will love him; and We will come
to him and will make Our abode with him.”7 Every word
of this statement is worth noting. “We will come.” Who or
what? Created effects? Supernatural gifts? No. Those who
love and those who come are the same, the divine Persons,
Father, Son, and inseparable Spirit promised to us by our
Lord and sent visibly to His Church on Pentecost. “We will
come,” not merely for a little while but to make Our abode
with him who receives Us and keeps Us through grace.
The apostles were aware of this marvel and mystery. St.
John tells us: “God is charity; and he that abideth in love
abideth in God, and God in him.” 8 He who loves God, bears
God; him whom God loves, God bears, upholding him in
natural and supernatural life.
e Wisd. 1:4.
7 John 14: 23.
81 John 4:16.

INDWELLING OF THE TRINITY

139

Wherefore St. Paul warningly asks us: “Know you not that
you are the temple of God and that die Spirit of God dwelleth
in you?”9 “Or know you not that your members are the
temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have
from God ; that you are not your own ? For you are bought
with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body.” 10
And, together with our Lord and St. John, he tells us that
with charity we receive the Giver of charity Himself: “The
charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost who is given to us.” 11
St. Ignatius of Antioch, too, taught that all true Christians
bear God within them and calls them theophoroi (God­
bearers). So well known was this doctrine in the primitive
Church diat the martyrs proclaimed it openly before their
judges. We hear St. Lucy answer her judge Paschasius with
the claim, “Those who are bearers of the Holy Ghost cannot
lack for words.” And to this inquiring taunt, “So the Holy
Ghost is in you?” she calmly maintains, “Yes. All who lead a
chaste and holy life are temples of the Holy Ghost,” expressing
a doctrine the Church herself has many times proclaimed.12
The words of St. John’s Gospel already quoted make it
clear that the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity truly come
to dwell in us, for Christ says “We,” 13 having already alluded
to Himself and the Father. Therefore, if this special presence
is attributed to the Holy Ghost, it is only because He has His
°I Cor. 3: 16.
10 Ibid., 6: 19 f.
11 Rom. 5: 5.
12 Symbolum Epiphanii, Dcnz., no. 13; Cone. Trid., Denz., no. 799.
13 Petavius' opinion that the divine indwelling is a presence proper to the Holy
Ghost plainly contradicts this text. Cf. Froget, The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit
in the Souls of the fust, tr. Racmers (New York: Paulist Press, 1921), pp. 29,
104-13.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

special mission as the One sent by the other two Persons from
whom He proceeds and because charity likens us to the Holy
Ghost just as the intellectual gifts liken us to the Word—
although only in heaven will He make us perfect likenesses of
Himself, assimilating us to the Father, whose splendor He
is.14
Theological views on God’s special presence

For those seeking a theological explanation of the special
presence of the Blessed Trinity in the just, Father Gardeil’s
work, La structure de l’âme et l’expérience mystique, gives a
new and profound study of the subject, based on St. Thomas’
explanation of the mystery, and abounding with excellent,
original, and suggestive thoughts.
Using the same method as John of St. Thomas, Father
Gardeil15 gives an account of three theological opinions on
the special presence of the Blessed Trinity in the just, present­
ing the views of Vasquez, then of Suarez and others who
share his way of thinking, and, lastly, what he considers
the real thought of St. Thomas.
Commenting on the passage in the Summa theologica16
where St. Thomas defines the special mode whereby God
dwells in rational creatures by grace as being “as the known in
the knower and the object of desire in him who desires,”
Vasquez makes this statement at the start:
About the mode of presence no actual controversy is found
among doctors of the Church; it is of such a nature as to be in­
sufficient to render God present to things by His essence if He
were not already present to them by His immensity. As a matter
14 Cf. Leo ΧΙΠ, Encycl. Divinum illud munus.
15 Op. vit., Π, 12 fi.
18 Ia, q.8, a.3.

INDWELLING OF THE TRINITY

141

of fact, this mode of presence unites man to God only by knowl­
edge and affection, according as these are actual or habitual. . . .
The true explanation is that God, being already in us on another
account, deigns to make Himself evident by another effect, grace.
And, as the gift of grace is attributed to the Holy Ghost, it is said
that He Himself is given and sent to us and that with Him comes
the whole and entire Trinity. . . . These gifts of grace unite us
by affection to God as our rule or measure, whence the name of
“just”; they unite us to God as our friend, whence the name of
“beloved” and, ultimately, of “saints,” the unspotted. All these ef­
fects, since they are related to affection, can evidently exist between
beings substantially at a distance from one another.17

In other words, Vasquez reduces any real presence of God
in us to the presence of immensity whereby He maintains all
things in existence. This amounts to saying that God is not
really present in the just as an object known and loved but
only as absent loved ones are represented in minds and hearts
that hold them dear. Vasquez’ conception seems to rob the
Gospel and Pauline texts relative to the indwelling Trinity
of much of their wealth. St. Paul does not say that only
charity is given to us at the moment of justification, but that
“the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost who is given to us.” 18 He does not assert merely that the
Holy Ghost is known and loved by us but that He dwells in
us.19 Indeed, were the three divine Persons present to the just
only in the same mode in which they are said to be in all things,
the general presence of immensity, how could our Lord say :
17 Cf. Vasquez, Comm, in lam P. D. Thomae, q. 8, disp. 30, c. 3. Vasquez held
that the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the souls of the just implied no real
presence distinct from the general presence of immensity, but simply an extension
of it.
18 Rom. 5: 5.
191 Cor. 3: 16.

i42

the love of god

“If anyone love Me, he will keep My word. And My Father
will love him; and We will come to him and will make Our
abode with him”?20 These words plainly mean, “We will
really come to him.” And the words “I will ask the Father:
and He shall give you another Paraclete,” 21 promise a real
sending, a real coming.
To avoid subtracting anything from the obvious meaning
of such scriptural texts, we apparently must accept St.
Thomas’ explanation of the special presence of the Blessed
Trinity in the just: in those who possess grace the three
divine Persons are present as an object known in the knower,
as an object loved in the lover; no distance divides Them
from Their host who really possesses Them and enjoys a
quasi-experience of Their presence. St. Thomas was not afraid
to label as error the opinion that we receive the gifts of the
Holy Ghost but not the Giver Himself.22 If Vasquez’ theory
were true, it would be difficult to see why God does not dwell
in those belonging to His Church who are in mortal sin, for,
after all, they have God present in them through His im­
mensity, they know him supernaturally by an act of infused
faith, they hope in Him, and even, if may be, love Him,
though with a wholly inefficacious love. God is really present
to all sinners as their conserving cause; as the object of their
faith He is present to none, for they know Him only as one
far from them and possess no quasi-experience of His near­
ness. That the just possess God in a deeper and fuller way
than this, the Scriptures attest.
20 John 14: 23.
21 Ibid., 14:15.
22 Cf. la, q.43, a. 3. ad turn, and Froget, op. di., pp. 60 £f. “No other perfection
except grace, added to substance, renders God present in anything as the object
known and loved; therefore only grace constitutes a special mode of God’s existence
in things." la, q. 8, a. 3, ad 4um.

INDWELLING OF THE TRINITY

143

Contrary to Vasquez, Suarez holds that, when sanctifying
grace and charity are conferred on us, the person of the Holy
Ghost is really given to us and comes to us together with the
entire Trinity in such a way that, if God were not already
present in all things by the presence of His immensity be­
cause of His universal operation and as to His substance, He
would become really and substantially present in us by reason
of the grace and charity uniting us to Him. “By charity,” says
Suarez, “God and man contract a perfect friendship. Now
friendship demands union between friends, not mere oneness
through affection but inseparable companionship so far as
that is possible. The perfect spiritual friendship between God
and man demands by divine right the intimate presence of
God in the sanctified soul.” 23
As Father Gardeil remarks, the big difficulty with this sec­
ond opinion comes from the fact that in this life the super­
natural love of charity formally constitutes not a real but an
affective union between God and us. After all, separated
friends are bound together with ties of affection, yet distance
lies between them just the same; for friendship as such makes
us desire the real presence of the one we love, but it cannot
bring him to us.
Many facts confirm this truth. A deep supernatural love
for our Savior’s sacred humanity fails to make it substantially
present to us. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin does not succeed
in effecting her real presence within the compass of our
hearts. St. Thomas justly says: “The union of lover and
beloved is twofold. The first is real union; for instance, when
the beloved is present with the lover. The second is union of
23 Suarez, De Trinitate, Bk. ΧΠ, “De missione divinarum personarum,’’ chap. 5,
nos. 10, 12, Ι3·

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THE LOVE OF GOD

affection: and this union must be considered in relation to
the preceding apprehension. . . . The first of these unions is
caused effectively by love; because love moves man to desire
and seek the presence of the beloved, as of one who fittingly
belongs to the lover. The second union is caused formally
by love; because love itself is this union or bond.” 24
The same reason is the basis for St. Thomas’ teaching that
perfect beatitude, or possession of God, consists not in love
essentially but in the beatific vision, love preceding possession
in the form of desire and following upon it in the form of
joy·25
It follows, as John of St. Thomas says, that the union of love
is merely affective, not real. Granted that perfect love ar­
dently desires and seeks the presence of the beloved and that,
therefore, a tendency toward real and effective presence arises
out of affective union, nevertheless this real presence does not
flow from love itself acting as a formal cause nor does love
serve as a disposing medium for effecting the real presence of
the beloved, as the light of glory unites the intellect of men to
the divine essence.26 Suarez and the theologians who follow
him27 have never really answered this objection. Father
Gardeil makes this fact quite plain in his satisfying com­
pletion, and slight correction, of Father Froget’s excellent
work.

St. Thomas’ view
The extreme opinions of Vasquez and Suarez evidently fail
to convey to us an exact idea of the mystery of the Blessed
24 la Hac, q.i8, a. I.
25 Ibid., q.3, a. 4.
26 John of St. Thomas, In lam, q.43, a-3, disp. xvii, a.3, no. 9.
27 Frogct, op. cit., pp. 69 ff.

INDWELLING OF THE TRINITY

145

Trinity’s real and special presence in the just. From his place
among the best Dominican Thomists, John of St. Thomas,
whom Father Gardeil follows step by step in this matter,
proposes a third solution, which he offers as St. Thomas’
own thought.
“This union and special presence of God in the [just] soul,”
he says, “is in addition to the presence of immensity, is distinct
from it but necessarily presupposes it.” By these last words he
puts himself in opposition to Suarez, but for all that, he by
no means adopts Vasquez’ opinion because he immediately
adds: “By sanctifying grace, God becomes present in a new
way, so that the soul can know Him experimentally and de­
light in His presence.”28
The baptized who are in mortal sin have no such possession
of God ; although He continues in them as the first conserving
cause of their being, they know Him only as someone ab­
sent from them. The just know Him as the object of quasiexperimental knowledge really and especially present in them.
Vasquez says that the special presence of the Blessed Trin­
ity in die just is not of itself real but only ideal and affective.
Suarez says that of itself it is so real that it is separable from
the general presence of immensity. John of St. Thomas, claim­
ing to follow his master with complete faithfulness, teaches
that it is distinct from the general presence of immensity but
not separable from it, just as in all creatures essence and ex­
istence are really distinct aldiough inseparable.29
From the start, St. Thomas noted diat other modes of pres­
ence—presence by grace, by glory, by hypostatic union—all
presuppose the general presence of immensity. In fact, he says
28 John of St. Thomas, loc. cit., nos. 8, 10.
28 Gardeil, op. cit., Bk. II, p. 33, note 2.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

in The Commentary on the Sentences: “These three modes
[by power, presence, and essence, whereby God in His im­
mensity is present to all things He conserves in being] origi­
nate not in the diversity of creatures but on the part of God
Himself operating in things; and therefore in every creature
they are demanded and presupposed by other modes of pres­
ence. So, in whomever God is present by union, He is present
by grace, and in whomever God is present by grace, He is
present by power, presence, and essence.”30
If a man would learn the meaning of God’s indwelling in
those who are making their pilgrimage toward heaven, he
should contemplate it in those whom grace has brought to
full development, the blessed ; for grace is the seed of glory,
and no one knows the acorn until he has seen the oak. God is
substantially present in the glorified soul of the blessed by His
immensity inasmuch as He preserves its natural and super­
natural being; furthermore, He is there not merely by rep­
resentation but also in reality, seen and possessed without
intermediary in virtue of the light of glory.31
If grace is the seed of glory, then at bottom the life of grace
and the life of glory are essentially the same supernatural
life, the means of apprehending God the author of grace in
His intimate life and of loving Him above all things. How­
ever, these two states have their differences: in this life we
do not see God, but believe in Him and, in the obscurity of
faith, we can have a quasi-experimental knowledge of Him
such as the Scriptures frequently describe, and sometimes, by
a gift of His good pleasure, we may experience Him in us
through the gift of wisdom. In heaven the possession of God
80 Commentary on
I of the Sentences, dist. 37, q. 1, a. 2, ad 311m.
81 Cf. Gardeil, op. cit., II, 72.

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is absolutely certain and inamissible, whereas in this life the
just cannot, without a special revelation, have absolute cer­
tainty of being temples of God and they can at any time lose
the life of grace by mortal sin. Apart from these differences,
the life of grace continues as the life of glory and remains,
in essentials, the same supernatural life.
In the state of grace, therefore, God is substantially present
in the just by His immensity inasmuch as He preserves its
natural and supernatural being; furthermore, He is there by
a special presence that is again real and not merely ideal,
representative, and affective; He is there as an object really
present and knowable in a quasi-experimental manner, an
object possible for us to possess imperfectly and in some way
to enjoy. So Thomas puts this truth into plain words, saying:
The divine Person is fittingly sent in the sense that He exists
newly in anyone; and He is given as possessed by anyone; and
neither of these is otherwise than by sanctifying grace.
For God is in all things by His essence, power, and presence, ac­
cording to His one common mode, as the cause existing in the
effects which participate in His goodness. Above and beyond this
common mode, however, there is one special mode belonging to
the rational nature wherein God is said to be present as the object
known is in the knower, and the beloved in the lover. And since
the rational creature by its own operation of knowledge and love
attains to God Himself, according to this special mode, God is said
not only to exist in the rational creature, but also to dwell therein
as in His own temple. So no other effect can be put down as the
reason why the divine Person is in the rational creature in a new
mode, except sanctifying grace. Hence, the divine Person is sent,
and proceeds temporally only according to sanctifying grace?2
82 la, q-43, a.3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

God dwells in no man without sanctifying grace and char­
ity. Natural knowledge of Him, even the supernatural knowl­
edge of infused faith united to hope, fails to make Him ours.
We must know Him by living faith and the gifts of the Holy
Ghost united to charity; then we shall hold Him not as a dis­
tant being apprehended by some mere representation but as
a real person here and now with us, ours to possess and enjoy.
Vasquez missed seeing this beautiful truth, his nominalist
tendency preventing him from grasping the divine reality
hidden in the words of Holy Scripture and tradition. St.
Thomas, however, has driven home the point very clearly
in the rest of the article just transcribed: “Again, we are said
to possess only what we can freely use or enjoy: but to have
the power of enjoying the divine Person can only be accord­
ing to sanctifying grace. Moreover, the Holy Ghost is possessed
by man, and dwells within him, in the very gift itself of sanc­
tifying grace. Hence the Holy Ghost is given and sent.” 38
His Commentary on the Sentences^ also contains an im­
portant text stating that, for the Holy Ghost to be sent, for
Him to take up His abode in man in an entirely new way,
any kind of knowledge of God will not suffice but only a
quasi-experimental knowledge proceeding from a gift of God
that unites us to Him according to the proper mode of this
divine Person, that is, by love. Joined to charity, this gift,
called wisdom, judges divine things connaturally, with a
loving understanding grounded on charity.36
St. Thomas38 gives an even more exact statement of his
33 Ibid., ad lutn et 2um; la, q. 8, a.3, c. et ad 411m.
34 Bk. I, dist. 14, q.2, a.2, ad 311m.
33 Ila Hae, q.45, a.2.
33 Ibid., ad 2utn.

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149

thought in the same place in his Commentary on the Sen­
tences, saying:
In the procession of the Spirit, as we are here discussing it, in
the sense that it includes the giving of the Holy Spirit, it does not
suffice that there be a new relation, of any kind whatsoever, of the
creature to God; but there must be reference to Him as to some­
thing possessed; because what is given to anyone is possessed by
him in some manner. A divine Person cannot be possessed by us
except as a perfect delight, and in this way is had through the gift
of glory; or as an imperfect delight, and in this way is had through
the gift of gratia gratum faciens or rather as that through which
we are joined to the delectable in so far as the divine Persons, by a
kind of impression of themselves, leave in our souls certain gifts
which we formally enjoy, namely, love and wisdom; wherefore
the Holy Spirit is called the pledge of our inheritance.

According to this passage the quasi-experimental knowl­
edge of God spoken of in the preceding text, is rooted ex­
pressly in the gift of wisdom united to charity. St. Thomas
preserves exactly the same doctrine in a shorter form in the
Summa theologica: “Since the rational creature by its own
operation of knowledge and love attains to God Himself, ac­
cording to this special mode [through sanctifying grace]
God is said not only to exist in the rational creature, but also to
dwell therein as in His own temple. ... By the gift of sancti­
fying grace the rational creature is perfected so that it can
freely use not only the created gift itself, but enjoy also the
divine Person Himself.” 37
For it to be said that the Blessed Trinity dwells in us, we
must have the proximate power for knowing God by quasi37 la, q.43, a.3, c. et ad turn.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

experimental knowledge. St. Thomas asserts this not only as
a result of theological deduction but because of the express
statement of Holy Scripture. We read in die Epistle to the
Romans: “For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they
are the sons of God. . . . You have received the spirit of
adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father). For the
Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the
sons of God.” 38 In his commentary on this epistle St. Thomas
says that the Holy Spirit gives testimony to our spirit by the
filial love He produces in us.
St. John has a like message: “And as for you, let the unction,
which you have received from Him, abide in you. . . . His
unction teacheth you of all things, and is truth and is no lie.” 39
His anointing, therefore, teaches experimentally by the ef­
fect of filial love produced in us, giving us both illumination
for the intellect and inspiration for the will.
And our Lord Himself says to us: “The Spirit of truth,
whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not nor
knoweth Him. But you shall know Him; because He shall
abide with you and shall be in you.” 40 “But the Paraclete, the
Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will
teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, what­
soever I shall have said to you.”41 When die apostles must
preach truly, when the Church must define infallibly, when
the faithful must endure bravely, then shall this Advocate of
Christ bring to minds in need the teaching of their Master.
“But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or
what to speak ; for it shall be given you in that hour what to
88 Rom. 8: 14-16.
80 I John 2: 27.
40 John 14:17.
41 Ibid., v. 26.

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151

speak. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your
Father that speaketh in you.”42
With the same thought in mind St. Paul writes: “But the
sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit
of God. For it is foolishness to him: and he cannot under­
stand, because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual
man judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no
man.” 43 As St. Thomas explains in his commentary on this
epistle, the spiritual man judges with an enlightened intellect
and an inspired will.
To make the idea of a quasi-experimental knowledge of
God comprehensible to us, St. Thomas was fond of using the
quotation from the Apocalypse that reads: “To him that overcometh I will give the hidden manna and will give him a
white counter; and in the counter a new name written, which
no one knoweth but he that receiveth it.”44 So the just man,
says St. Thomas, can have a certain knowledge of the ex­
istence of sanctifying grace within himself, “because whoever
receives it knows by experiencing a certain sweetness, which
he who does not receive it, does not experience.” 45
St. John speaks of the same quasi-experimental knowledge
when saying: “He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for
God is charity.” 46 Evidently there can be no question here of
either philosophical knowledge of God or that knowledge
of Him by faith possible to a baptized person in mortal sin.
The whole doctrine of St. Thomas, founded immediately on
Scripture, can be expressed in a synthesis written by John of
42 Matt. 10: 19 f.
43 I Cor. 2: 14 f.
44 Apoc. 2: 17.
45 la Ilae, q.112, a. 5.
4«I John 4: 8.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

St. Thomas47 and incorporated by Father Gardeil48 into his
own work.
God in His immensity reaches out to all the effects of His power
and, having given them being, continues to act as the root of all
creatures, pouring being into them as the vine pours sap into its
branches. To none is He an informing form, as man’s soul to his
body; to all, He is sufficient cause, the universal root and principle
from which their being proceeds. Holy Scripture describes Him to
us as “upholding all things by the word of His power,”49 . . . re­
calling to the mind of man, “thou bearest not the root; but the root
thee.” 50 For “He is before all; and by Him all things consist.” 81
“He is not far from every one of us. For in Him we live and move
and are.”82
God exists in all things as their hidden root, their principle of
being, nearer their being’s very core than their form to their matter
or their substance to their accidents, entirely and intimately filling
each with His presence by giving all that they are to all.
Despite the wonder of this presence, through it God is with us
not as friend to friend but as the root of all creatures and the uni­
versal principle intimately united to His effects. How differently
He manifests Himself through grace, showing Himself to us as
an object of our created intellect, not as any other object we know
but as uniquely and entirely penetrating it in a way possible only
to the root of our being. His introduction of Himself, the holy
familiarity and intercourse that follow, necessarily require a new
presence of God in the soul altogether other than that which it
shares with all creation. Through grace God offers Himself to the
47 Ctirsus thcol., in lam, q.43, disp. xvii, a.3.
48 Op. cit., II, 74.
40 Heb. 1:3.
50 Rom. ii: 18.
61 Col. 1:17.
62 Acts 17: 27 f.

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153

soul as an object of knowledge and love, coming to it in a new and
real (not merely an ideal and affective) way. Intimately ours as the
cause and reason of our being, He is present in us in an entirely
different manner from any other object of knowledge, making us
know and love Him through experiencing His blessed familiarity,
giving us the kind of knowledge of Him that an angel has of its
own substance, which is manifest and united to his intellect as in­
timately and really present and experimentally known.53

No Thomists reject this synthesis of John of St. Thomas.
If, in studying the mystery of God’s indwelling, some, like
the Carmelites of Salamanca, seem inclined to follow Suarez’
manner of speaking, apparently this is only because they failed
to go deeply enough into the subject. They seem to have
meant only that if, by an impossible assumption, God were
not really present in the just man as the conserving cause of
his natural being, He would become really present in him as
the cause of grace and charity and as an object quasiexperimentally known and loved above all things.54
We owe Father Gardeil our gratitude for having brought
this fundamental point back to light. Since the publication of
Father Froget’s work no one else has written so profound a
study of the mystery which serves as the basis for Christian
spirituality. At the moment of justification, without any con­
sciousness of our own, our spiritual life begins with God’s in­
dwelling; and in that inner sanctuary to which St. Teresa
88 Vallgornera, Theol. mystica D. Thomae (Turin cd., 1891), nos. 886-92, de­
serves credit for having recognized the worth of this quotation from John of
St. Thomas which he reproduced word for word in his work published in 1662.
It is not the only thing he has borrowed and for which he should have paid his
debt of acknowledgment to the author.
64 This represents the view of the Carmelites of Salamanca especially. Cf. Salmanticcnscs, Cursus theol. in lam, q.43, a.3, disp. xix, dub. v, nos. 96, 99.

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refers in her Seventh Mansion it reaches its culmination by
and with the same divine presence.68
ARTICLE II
THE NATURE OF MAN’S QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

First of all, as is evident, the just man’s knowledge of the
indwelling Godhead is not discursive, not inferred. St.
Thomas gives abundant proof for this truth in a number of
texts; for example, when showing that the gift of wisdom,
from which experimental knowledge of God proceeds, judges
not by reasoning but by a certain connaturality or conformity
to divine things founded on charity and given to it by a special
illumination of the Holy Ghost.66
This quasi-experimental knowledge of God excludes rea­
soning, for it does not make use of the effect of filial love
as an objective term from which to conclude to His presence.
The just man can experience within himself the effect of filial
love as making known to him the vivifying presence of God,
the author of salvation; somewhat as the soul, through its acts
of intellect and will, knows its own existence experimentally
55 Father Galtier, S.J., challenges the interpretation of St. Thomas* view given
by both John of St. Thomas and Gardcil, saying that their interpretation makes
the quasi-experimental knowledge of God in the souls of the just actual whereas
in most cases, especially in children, who have no such actual knowledge, it is only
habitual. Properly to interpret St. Thomas’ passage, la, q.43, a. 3, we have only
to recognize what it implies and what John of St. Thomas and Gardcil both take
for granted, that the three divine Persons are knowable as the object of quasiexperimental knowledge before they are actually knou,n' and that this very know­
ableness demands the special presence of which St. Thomas speaks. To put it in
another way, in the words of Galtier himself: “The divine Persons already sub­
stantially present offer themselves [to the just] to be known and enjoyed.” Cf.
L'habitation en nous des trois Personnes (Bcauchesne, 1928), pp. 183 fi., 262.
68 Ha Ilae, q.45, a.2; De veritate, q.26, a.3, ad i8um; in Ep. ad Rom. viii, 14.

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and without reasoning, perceiving not thought in general but
its own act of thinking and, by it, its substantial subject. In
this way its act is at once that which is known by experience
and that which makes known to the soul its own substance.67
As much must be said of the effect of filial love in relation
to the vivifying presence of God ; for, by the special inspira­
tion of the gift of wisdom, God makes Himself in some way
felt as the radical principle of our whole life, more intimate
to us than we are to ourselves.
To produce this quasi-experimental and non-discursive
knowledge in us, the Holy Ghost, by His illumination and in­
spiration, uses a means prepared by charity, the soul’s connaturality or conformity to divine things. In itself, a deep
attachment to chastity makes us sound judges of what is in
conformity with chastity, even if we are ignorant of moral
theology; for, from the very fact of this attachment a re­
lation of proportion exists between the subject so disposed
and those things in harmony with the virtue, which appear
to him as entirely fitting and in line with his own aspirations.68
Likewise, as our love for God grows, so does our apprehension
of His truth and supreme goodness, even when we have to see
Him in those decrees of His will that remain obscure and
disconcerting to us. The good hidden in this divine obscurity
lies out of the reach of our understanding, but supernatural
love makes us taste and see that it is good. By His special
illumination, the Holy Ghost uses our interior disposition of
love for the divine Persons, which He Himself has aroused,
57Q. 10, a.8; Summa, Ia, q.87, a.i; De veritate, q. 14, a.8, ad 411m; Cajetan,
in Ilam llae, q.i, a.i, II.
68In his commentary on la llae, q.58, a.5, no. 8, Cajetan gives a profound
explanation of Aristotle’s principle, “Such as a man is, such does the end seem to
him" {Ethics, Bk. ΠΙ). Cf. also la Hae, q.68, a.i, 2, 3, 4 and Ila llae, q.68, de
donis, disp. 18, a.4, no. 11.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

to make Their presence manifest to us. In the De veritate,59
St. Thomas says that from affection for divine things arises
a manifestation of them, and he interprets in this sense St.
John’s words: “He that loveth Me shall be loved of My
Father; and I will love him and will manifest Myself to
him.” 60 Surely St. Paul’s words have the same meaning:
“You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we
cry, Abba (Father). For the Spirit Himself giveth testimony
to our spirit that we are the sons of God.” 01 Mother and child
have no need of reasoning to reveal their hearts to each other,
but know each other deeply through their mutual love. The
same is true of God and those who are born of God.62
At this point it may be easy to grant that the just man’s
knowledge of God is evidently not discursive and yet wonder
why St. Thomas calls it quasi experimentalis instead of proprie
experimentalist There are two reasons why he adopts this
terminology. First, in this life, we do not, properly speaking,
experience God immediately but only through the effect of
filial love, which He produces in us.e4 If the divine essence
were presented to our intellects immediately, without any
created effect or idea acting as a medium of knowledge, then
either we should have the vision of God because of the light
of glory uplifting our intellects to apprehend God 05 or we
should not have any such knowledge, however obscure, for
50 De veritate, q.26, a. 3, ad i8um.
60 John 14: 21.
81 Rom. 8:15.
82 John 1: 13.
83 Commentary on the Sentences, I, dist. 14, q.2, a.2, ad 311m.
84 St. Thomas, in Ep. ad Rom., viii, 16; Ila Ilae, q.97, a.2, ad 2um; De veritate,
q.26, a.3, ad i8um.
85 la, q. 12, a. 5.

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157

lack of that light.80 The intellect07 either attains to God im­
mediately or it does not; it immediately apprehends the divine
essence as it is in itself or does not. If it does, then it enjoys
the beatific vision at least in some degree; if it does not, then
it has no immediate knowledge of God. The beatific vision is
the only absolutely immediate knowledge or experience of
God. It alone attains not only to God Himself, as faith too
apprehends Him, but also to God as He is in Himself, in His
inner life, a reality impossible for any created effect to rep­
resent.88 In this fact lies rooted one of the reasons why, in this
life, the just man cannot have absolute certitude of being in
the state of grace, of being the temple of God, unless God
reveals it to him. “But the principle of grace and its object is
God, who by reason of His very excellence is unknown to us,
according to Job 26: 26. ‘Behold God is great, exceeding our
knowledge.’ And hence His presence in us and His absence
cannot be known with certainty, according to Job 9:11: ‘If He
come to me, I shall not see Him; if He depart, I shall not
understand.’ ” 89
Secondly, the just man’s knowledge of God is called quasiexperimental and not simply experimental because he cannot
differentiate with absolute certitude between the supernatural
effect of filial love and a certain natural lifting up of the
heart which resembles it. Even when not in the state of grace,
a poet may so delight in the beauty and perfection of God that
he translates both for himself and for us as to mistake a
08 We maintain that this immediate experience could not be in the intellect
but must be in the will, which attains God immediately by charity. In this sense
it can be called an immediate affective experience.
07 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. IX, chap. to.
88 la, q. 12, a.2.
88 la Uae, q. 112, a. 5.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

natural mood for a supernatural state, complacence for char­
ity. In this life, then, the just man enjoys no absolute certitude
of being in the state of grace but only a reasonable certainty
to which he concludes from certain signs, such as his joy in
divine things, contempt for the things of the world, and peace
of conscience. God’s assurance in the Apocalypse has its ap­
plication here: “To him who overcometh, I will give the
hidden manna . . . which no man knoweth but he that
receiveth it”;70 he shall know a certain sweetness unshared by
those who have not grace.71
Because he maintains that Holy Scripture implies no abso­
lute or literal certitude in this quotation, St. Thomas cites
other passages that demonstrate the truth of his opinion, such
as St. Paul’s words, “I am not conscious to myself of anything.
Yet am I not hereby justified; but He that judgeth me is the
Lord.”72 And the petition of the Psalmist, “From my secret
ones [sins] cleanse me, O Lord,” 73 from sins indirectly volun­
tary, sins of negligence in not considering or accomplishing
what could and should be considered and accomplished.74
As the soul’s purification progresses and it continues to
grow in charity and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, its quasiexperimental knowledge of God becomes more and more
perfect. St. John of the Cross thinks that the soul is never
joined to God in transforming union without being confirmed
in grace.75* And some writers78 consider that a state so
70 Apoc. 2:17.
71 la Ilae, q. H2, a. 5.
72 I Cor. 4: 4.
73 Ps. 18: 13.
74 la Ilae, q.6, a.3.
75 Spiritual Canticle, st. 22.
70 Philip of the Blessed Trinity (Theol. myst., Proem., a.8), Scaramelli, and
others.

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159

sublime requires that God make known to the soul, His
spouse, the indissoluble friendship existing between them. In
other words, they hold that God does accord the soul that
special revelation which the Council of Trent declares is
necessary for anyone to know with absolute certitude that he
is in the state of grace. Before the passive purifications of the
soul,77 its quasi-experimental knowledge of God lacks much
in depth and penetration, and St. Thomas has done well to
give us an insight into its character by purposely using the
term “quasi.”

The role of quasi-experimental knowledge
in the spiritual life
With Father Gardeil, we would insist that to St. Thomas’
mind the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity is inconveivable
without some quasi-experimental knowledge of God’s pres­
ence, a truth that strongly confirms a doctrine we regard as
traditional and have held for many years: namely, that in­
fused contemplation of the mysteries of faith belongs to the
normal progress of sanctity. Father Gardeil has devoted his
best efforts to showing that mystical experience comes to the
Christian life of grace as its highest, though entirely normal,
development, its full and final flowering. As a matter of fact,
the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity is explicable only so far
as God can be known and loved as the object of quasiexperimental knowledge. And, since this knowledge proceeds
from faith enlightened by understanding and wisdom and
since these gifts are united to charity, it follows that, as char7T Gardeil, op. cit., II, 207 H. The passive night of the senses is considered one
of the preludes to mystic experience; it comes, however, only in the sixth mansion
of St Teresa after the prayer of union described in the fifth mansion and before
transforming union as described in the seventh.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

ity increases, the quasi-experimental knowledge of God
grows too,78*manifesting itself either in a clearly contempla­
tive form or in one more directly orientated to action. Quasiexperimental knowledge attains to its full perfection in
contemplation, which, according to St. John of the Cross, be­
gins in die illuminative way and develops during the unitive.78
When the Holy Ghost comes to dwell in the just He brings
His seven gifts,80 two of which play a special part in the soul’s
purification. The gift of knowledge is particularly active dur­
ing the night of the senses, when it keeps before the mind the
emptiness of all created things;81 the gift of understanding,
during the night of the spirit, when it leads the soul to pene­
trate more and more deeply into the spirit of the mysteries
of faidi and to abandon all too human conceptions of divine
things.82 The quasi-experimental knowledge of God needs
these two purifications to clear away the obstacles put in its
way by unconscious egoism and self-love. At life’s beginning,
thought of self so dominates man that he unconsciously seeks
to relate everything to self; after the purifications of the senses
and the spirit, he gives first place to the thought of God and
His glory and the salvation of souls.
Experimental knowledge of God’s infinite goodness and
that of our own nothingness and misery keep pace with each
other, and the soul learns, as St. Catherine was taught by her
divine Spouse, “I am He who is; thou art she who is not.”
This knowledge St. Catherine describes to us as having two
78 la Ilae, q.66, a.2; q.68, a.5.
70 The Dark. Night, Bk. 1, chap. 14.
80 Cone. Trid., sess. VI, cap. 7; Dcnzinger, no. 799. Cf. also Denzinger, no. 83.
81 Ila Ilae, q.9, a. 4.
82 Ila Ilae, q.8, a. 7.

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complementary aspects which share and share alike in mutual
development, like two opposite points in an ever-growing
circle. The more a man realizes his own misery, the more
he realizes by contrast the infinite goodness of God, and his
fear of sin increases with his love for God until he reaches
the hour of perfect knowledge when, in the home of his
Father, he receives the immediate vision of the divine es­
sence. That we may reach this end, our souls must undergo
purification, we must place ourselves wholeheartedly in the
school of Jesus Christ and there learn by experience the deep
affinity existing between the cross of Christ and the love of
God.
The invisible missions of the divine Persons
and the mystical life
The mystical life serves as the normal completion and
crowning of the life of grace because of the indwelling of the
Blessed Trinity. During the latter half of the seventeenth
century, Louis Chardon, one of the Thomistic theologians to
see this truth most clearly, wrote a book entitled La croix de
Jésus which treats of this subject in some profound and little
known chapters on the invisible missions of the Word and
the Holy Ghost.83
Chardon first shows 84 that the divine Persons are not only
the object of knowledge and supernatural love but also the
principles of supernatural operation. He says: “We naturally
conclude that, since grace is communicated with a view to
operation, it does not render the uncreated Persons present
in us in the manner of a mere idle habit, as though God
85 III, chap. 2-6.
84 Ibid., chap. 4.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

were to come to us as a man asleep. . . . They are no longer
present to us simply as objects powerfully attracting our oper­
ations but as actualizing, effecting, applying, and directing
our operations for, as Christ says, ‘My Father worketh until
now; and I work.’ ”
A little before this he expresses his thought with even
greater precision: “That it may attain to God Himself and
possess Him, the soul needs the help of those supernatural
gifts that are inseparable from the divine Persons. These gifts
of Theirs make us like to Them by assimilating and conform­
ing us to Their likeness, so that the divine Persons Themselves
become the lovable object of our operations, and, by Their
gifts, their all-powerful principle, support, and end.” By the
production of the intellectual gifts in us, the Son, the Eternal
Wisdom, is said to be invisibly sent by the Father; and, by
the inpouring of charity, the Holy Ghost, who is Love, is also
said to be invisibly sent by the Father and the Son.85 The
invisible missions of the divine Persons conform to die visible
missions of the Incarnation and Pentecost.
Concerning the relation of the temporal missions of the
divine Persons to the eternal processions, Chardon follows the
teaching of St. Thomas when he writes : “The temporal mis­
sion of a divine Person is only an extension of the eternal
procession in God. . . . The condition of time adds nothing
new to the immutable and fully perfect God. Change occurs
only in the creature, who begins to participate in what God
is from all eternity. Thus the Word, begotten by the Father
from all eternity, and with Him the Holy Ghost, are invisibly
sent to the just at the moment of conversion.” 80 The Father,
85 la, q. 43, a. 2-8.
“ Ibid.

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163

since He does not proceed from any person, cannot be sent
but dwells in us together with the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Asking the question, “How are the divine Persons the prin­
ciple of mystical operations in souls progressing in grace?”
Chardon answers it by saying:
God ordinarily communicates Himself to His creatures accord­
ing to the measure of their dispositions. As a man’s purification
advances, the divine Persons become more intimately present to
him through their missions. They are more deeply united to him
and more completely possessed by him as the object and principle
of his soul’s higher operations. . . .
Charity may at times act with such efficacious strength that it re­
duces souls to a passive state in regard to divine things; they are
no longer conscious of their cooperation and concurrence in super­
natural and Godlike acts. They do not so much live the life of
God as the life of God lives in them; they are more loved than
loving; and even when they love, they receive rather than give.87

Beginners are rightly cautioned against being held back
by sensible graces, for man must give as well as receive, and
the gifts he offers God must include himself. Yet in the passive
states which Chardon refers to here, God accomplishes in us
and for us a much more perfect and complete giving of our­
selves that we could ever achieve by our own efforts with
ordinary actual grace.
Chardon concludes:
What joy is ours to have God make His home in us! He fills our
hearts’ deepest recesses, pours Himself out over the soul’s entire
compass, overflows into its powers and faculties, and penetrates all
and destroys nothing, making us participants of His divine society
87 Chardon, op. at., chap. 6.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

and sharers, by imitation, in His own natural life that we may be
caught up and embraced by the fullness of Divinity.
Through the invisible missions of the divine Persons, since they
conform to the visible missions of the Incarnation and Pentecost,
God is in us and we are in God. More than that, since They are
principles of operations in us, They necessarily make us change
and advance continually along the way of perfection, even if we
have reached its eminences.”

Chardon could have found no better way of saying that the
purgative way normally leads to the mystical life and that,
when die soul has entered there, it begins by degrees to ad­
vance along the way of illumination and of union. He im­
mediately tells us, too, the reason for spiritual progress, saying:
As principles of supernatural operation, these wonderful mis­
sions cannot allow grace to remain idle but force it to advance,
sometimes so much that the soul is said to change its state and
experiences a newness of grace that lifts it to a height incompa­
rably above its first sanctification. In the measure that it advances
in grace and charity, the divine Persons are present anew within
it (or better, are sent to it in a new way, as St. Thomas says) 88
and the soul possesses Them with rights and privileges it had not
formerly.
Because it keeps the soul solicitous for its progress and ready for
the most difficult and fervent acts of virtue, the truth of the divine
missions is one of the strongest incentives for spiritual advance­
ment, stimulating beginners, encouraging the proficient, and con­
firming the perfect. It makes the soul eager to grow in grace that
God may abide in it more fully, more deeply, more personally, by
a union growing more and more sublime as it becomes purer,
stronger, and more intimate.89
88 la, q.43, 4.6.
88 La croix de Jésus, ist ed., p. 457. We owe Father Bremond our gratitude for
having called attention to the profound and beautiful pages of the original edition.

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165

Louis Chardon’s words were written before the time of
Bossuet and Fénelon. In his work he emphasizes another
truth even more than the relation of the divine missions to
supernatural life; that truth, as we shall see, is the affinity
existing between grace and the cross. He points out in the
Gospels and Epistles the summits toward which converge
theological speculation like St. Thomas’ and the mysticism of
men like Tauler and St. John of the Cross. And he leads us
to appreciate more and more fully how the theology of the
great masters, because it is derived by faith from divine revela­
tion, disposes us to desire infused contemplation that we may,
by an act of living faith enlightened by the gifts, enter into
and enjoy the mysteries revealed to us by God. So Chardon, in
a really vital way, brings us back to the very source of theology,
the truths of Scripture and tradition.
NOTES
EXPERIENCE OR QUASI-EXPERIENCE?

In opposition to the theologians for whom “that which is
immediately perceived is not God here present but His effects
in the soul,” 90 Father Gardeil is inclined to admit an “imme­
diate experience” of God. He finds that these authors react
with good reason “against fantastic opinions which ascribe
to the soul, particularly in the prayer of union, a sight or
intuition of God through species miraculously superadded
to the ideas of faith.” He adds:
But, in my opinion, these authors fall into exaggerations in their
reaction against such opinions. They regard God’s impressions on
the soul, the divine touches it experiences, as effects received and
80 Gardeil, op. cit., I, xv ff.; II, 238 ft.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

remaining in the soul and claim that the soul perceives these ef­
fects and only these effects, that its regard rests on them as on an
objective term from which it concludes to the presence of God. If
this be true, then mystical contemplation in its apogee, the experi­
ence of God, consists essentially in an inference and necessitates
reasoning. I do not think that this mode of attaining to the pres­
ence of God is the mode of experimental and, consequently, of im­
mediate knowledge of God, who gives of His fullness in the prayer
of union.91

In the first of these two opinions criticized by Father Gar­
deil, we can recognize the thought of Bishop Farges, the
intuition of God by infused ideas; in the second, the entirely
contrary view of Father Saudreau, the knowledge of God’s
presence through His effects. Saudreau would probably an­
swer this criticism by saying that he does not hold that quasiexperimental knowledge of God through the effect of filial
love is inferential but that it is supra-discursive, an act of the
gift of wisdom transcending reason. This position we too
maintain.92 In his work, Western Mysticism, Dom Butler sets
down Father Gardeil’s manner of expression as being in
opposition to the common interpretation of St. Thomas’ doc­
trine, but Father Gardeil has since explained his position
on this point.93 In substance we are in agreement with him.
We feel certain, and have said so already,94 that some forms
of experimental knowledge are by no means discursive and
yet are not absolutely immediate either. As soon as my sight
perceives the color of an object, my intellect, without reason81 Ibid., 245.
82 Christian Perfection and Contemplation, pp. 270 ft.
83 Cf. Butler, Western Mysticism (New York: Dutton, 1922), pp. Ixv ff.; and
Gardeil, “Examen de conscience,” Revue Thomiste, January, 1929, pp. 70-85. Cf.
also the July, 1929, number.
84 Christian Perfection and Contemplation, Fr. ed., II, 115.

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167

ing, apprehends the substance of that colored object; the sub­
stance itself, unlike its color, is not sensible but is called
sensible per accidens because it is grasped immediately by the
intellect with the first presentation of the sensible object.95
Here we have an instance of intellectual experimental knowl­
edge without reasoning, which is, however, mediate in the
sense that it presupposes sensation and its object as an inter­
mediary. As Aristotle says, by seeing Callias I see without
reasoning that he lives, although life itself is not sensible like
color and sound.
We have an experimental knowledge of our own souls, too,
inasmuch as they operate as the principles of our intellectual
and voluntary acts. We do not arrive at this knowledge by
reasoning, yet we attain to the soul’s substance only by means
of its acts. “Plato or Socrates perceives that he has an in­
tellectual soul because he perceives that he understands.”96
And, as the Angelic Doctor also teaches, the angel, too, knows
his own substance only by means of a mental term, for the
substance of an angel, although in itself intelligible in act,
is not of itself known in act {intellecta in actii) ; for the angel
is not pure act, not its own existence, not its own intellection,
and so has to be expressed in an interior word to be known.
But the reality expressed in that mental word, which makes
him an image of the Trinity, is not far from him.9T
Lastly, in discussing the knowledge which a just man pos­
sesses of God by tire gift of wisdom and through the action
of the Holy Ghost, St. Thomas purposely and pointedly adds
05 St. Thomas, Comm. in lib. II de anima, lect. 13.
80 la, q.87, a.i.
87 Cf. St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. II, nos. 1, 4, and in the Angeli­
cum, 1928, fasc. I, the author’s study of St. Thomas' proof, "Utrum mens seipsam
per essentiam cognoscat an per aliquam speciem."

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THE LOVE OF GOD

the qualification “quasi” whenever he refers to it as “experi­
mental.” In the final pages which Father Gardeil devoted
to this question 98 and in those where he shows so well how
infused contemplation proceeds from faith enlightened by
the gifts, he comes very near the explanation just given, which
we hold as traditional among Thomists.

The question of a purely natural immediate
apprehension'of God

In a recent publication,99 Father Picard poses the question:
“Can an immediate apprehension of God other than the
beatific vision be admitted ?” And he gives the answer that
even in the natural order man can have an immediate though
obscure apprehension of God’s presence. Father Picard then
seeks to discover the part of such an immediate apprehension
of God in the mystical state, trying to find support for his
views as being implied by St. Thomas.100 His interpretation
of St. Thomas’ texts is highly debatable; for example, when
he uses St. Thomas’ Commentary on the Sentences 101 by
quoting his answer to an objection according to St. Augustine
and omitting his answer according to Aristotle. Further, ref­
erences to the opusculum De intellectu et intelligibili carry no
weight since this work is not authentic.
Certainly God is intimately present to us in the natural
order since He is the conserving cause of all creatures; but
that fact does not make Him present to us in such a way that
08 Op. cit., Π, 254 ft.; Revue Thomiste, 1929, articles quoted above.
89 Lu saisie immédiate de Dieu dans les états mystiques (Paris: Editions Spes,
1923)·
100 Ibid., pp. 20-30. Cf. the author’s criticism of this position, Bulletin Thomiste.
March, 1925, p. 250.
101 D. 3, q.4, a. 5.

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169

in the natural order we have an obscure immediate appre­
hension of His presence—as Father Picard would lead us to
believe. Treating ex professo of God’s natural presence in us,
St. Thomas says: “No other perfection, except grace, added
to substance, renders God present in anything as the object
known and loved; therefore only grace constitutes a special
mode of God’s existence in things.” 102 He repeats the same
conclusion in many other places in his works.103 Father Picard
explains his use of Vallgornera’s interpretation 104 of those
texts of St. Thomas which seem favorable to his theory by
saying that he quotes Vallgornera not so much because he
seeks to lean on his authority as because he finds in him an
excellent expression of his own thought: “namely, that the
ontological presence of God 105 produces in the soul’s depths
an immediate experimental knowledge of Him, analagous to
a man’s consciousness of self.” He immediately adds: “In de­
tail, the theory I propose is perhaps a shade different from
his. He demands the state of grace for the ontological presence
of God to become perceptible even in an obscure fashion ; I do
not see the necessity for it.” 106 Do these two theologies, then,
differ “perhaps” only in detail and by just a shade of meaning ?
The “shade of difference” has to do with the distinction and
the distance between the order of nature and that of grace,
a distance so great that the natural powers of man and angel
could develop to infinity without ever attaining to the formal
object specifying either infused faith or the gift of wisdom.
102Ia, q.8, a.3, ad 411m.
108 la, q.12, a.ii, ad 4um; q.43, a.3; q.88, a.3; q.84, a.7; q.85, a.i; q.87,
a.2, ad 2um et 311m; also In Boetium de Trinitate, q. 1, a.3.
Mystica theologia D. Thomae, q.4, disp. 1, a.4, no. 866.
105 The presence alluded to here is that of God as the conserving cause of our
existence.
106 Picard, op. cit., p. 55.

ï7o

THE LOVE OF GOD

And that is what Vallgornera, together with St. Thomas,
speaks about in the quotation referred to. Of course, Father
Picard admits that our natural intuition of God is obscure and
that “under the influence of grace and the gift of wisdom, in
the ascetical plan, this immediate apprehension of God
emerges from its obscurity and becomes half-clear” and at
last, in transforming union (St. Teresa’s “seventh mansion”)
“reaches the maximum of clarity and intimacy it can attain in
this life.” 107
About this theory many readers have asked themselves the
question that Father Heris clearly formulated :108 In the for­
mal object, is there a difference between the obscure natural
intuition of God and that supernatural experimental knowl­
edge of Him proceeding from the gift of wisdom ? We do not
see this distinction. This seems to be admitted by the claim
that obscure natural intuition of God attains to Him imme­
diately, not only as it is not,108 but positively, yet without
apprehending Him as He is in Himself (sicuti est). The
double distinction between “obscure” and “half-clear” and
between the latter and “clearly distinct” does not constitute
a distinction of nature such as the difference between the
natural and the supernatural order demands. Here we need
to apply the universal and inflexible Thomistic principle that
faculties, habits, and acts are specified by their formal objects.
We make a distinction between obscure, half-clear, and
clearly distinct knowledge in the natural order. A man of
common sense knows rational principles obscurely; a young
student of philosophy has a half-clear knowledge of them;
a metaphysician of St. Thomas’ genius apprehends distinctly
i°" Ibid., p. 66.
108 Revue des Sc. phil. et théol., October, 1924, p. 612.
109 Op. cit., p. 50.

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171

their ontological value, absolute necessity, universality, and
relative subordination. Yet no matter how great a genius the
metaphysician may be, his natural knowledge can never
grasp even obscurely the formal object of either faith or the
gift of wisdom. Nor can any other creature, however perfect,
man or angel, succeed where he fails. The distinction of order
here depends on the distinction of formal objects. This prin­
ciple might be called the theme or leitmotiv of the second
part of the Summa: potentia, habitus et actus specificantur ab
objecto formali.110
If we would avoid falling into the errors of the ontologists,
and ultimately into pantheism itself, we must realize that, al­
though faith belongs essentially to the same order as the
beatific vision because it adheres to supernatural mysteries,
human reason and angelic intellect do not. The ontologists
failed to see this. For them man’s intellect naturally attains,
even if only obscurely, to the same formal object as the
beatific vision, an opinion leading to pantheism through a
confusion of the human intellect with the divine.111 Infused
faith and the gift of wisdom are not only supernatural quoad
modum, in the mode of their production, but also quoad sub­
stantiam, by their very nature, as specified by their formal
110 Cf. Ila Ilac, q.5, a. 3. Thomists have never admitted the active obediential
capacity required, it seems, by Father Picard’s view of our nature as the “pierre
d'attente pour des apports de grace" (op. cit., p. 47).
To Thomists such an active obediential capacity would be at one and the same
time essentially natural, as a property of our nature, and essentially supernatural,
as a positive inclination specified by a supernatural formal object—a metaphysical
monstrosity. Cf. John of St. Thomas, in lam, q. 12, disp. xiv, a. 2, no. 11, and
Billuart, De Deo, diss, iv, a. 5.
As John of St. Thomas remarks, "Parvus error in principio magnus est in fine."
A small error in defining the supernatural and the relations between the natural
and the supernatural can take us far astray. If our nature already has an active
obediential capacity specified by the formal object of infused faith or of charity,
there is apparently no further necessity for supernatural virtues.
111 This question has been studied at length in De revelatione, II, 337, 344-404.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

object. The resurrection of the dead entails the supernatural
restoration of natural life; but sanctifying grace, faith, and
charity, and the gift of wisdom belong to an essentially super­
natural life, which fits us for an essentially supernatural ob­
ject.
It is to be regretted that Father Picard did not treat of the
key problem about the intuition of God, that is, the distinction
between nature and grace. By nature, man’s intellect first
apprehends neither himself nor his God but the being of
sensible things.112 In a criticism he makes of our views on the
subject, Father Picard seems to be ignorant of St. Thomas’
opinion on man’s first intellectual apprehension as well as
the chief difference between St. Thomas’ ontological real­
ism 113 and both nominalism and conceptualism.114 At all
events, for St. Thomas certainly, man’s intellect is not a faculty
for die divine in the sense that his first intellectual appre­
hension attains immediately and obscurely to the divine, to
God Himself. If it did, man’s intellect would be specified
neither by the being of sensible things nor by being in general
but by God Himself. Its formal object would differ not a whit
from the formal object of faith; and, as a result, man’s will
would not be immediately specified by the universal good but
by God Himself and would have the same formal object as
infused charity, or, at the very least, of hope. Of the soul
itself we would have to say what we now teach of sanctifying
grace: that it is a real and formal participation in the divine
113 Cf. la, q.84, a.7; q.85, a.8; q.87, a.2 ad 2um; q.88, a.3.
113 la, q. 85, a. I, ad mm.
114 Although, for lack of time, the author has not answered this criticism specifi­
cally, it is met by his work, God: His Existence and His Nature, I, no ff. Cf. also
L. Noël, ‘‘Le riel et 1’intclligence,” Revue Neo-scolastique, February, 1925, p. 22;
and Maritain, Reflexion sur l'intelligence (Paris: Nouvelle Librarie Nationale, 1925),
pp. 342-45; Three Reformers, tr. (New York: Scribner, 1929).

INDWELLING OF THE TRINITY

173

nature. Thomists have always jealously defended the dis­
tinction between nature and grace against any trace of natural­
ism. One of St. Thomas’ greatest glories is that he marked
out clearly the limits of these two orders by the great principle
that faculties and acts are specified by their formal object.
So universal is this principle that, should it fall, the whole
of Thomistic doctrine would go down with it; the distinction
between the intellect and the external and internal senses
would disappear, together with the proofs for the spirituality
of the soul ; and we would revert to radical nominalism, the
lineal forefather of contemporary positivism ; the way would
be immediately opened also to naturalism and pantheism, for
it would no longer be evident that the natural powers of in­
tellectual creatures cannot attain to the formal object of the
divine intellect. No wonder St. Thomas so treasured this
principle, confirmed 115 in modern times by the Council of
the Vatican.110
116 Cf. Contra Gentes, Bk. I, chap. 3; Bk. ΠΙ, chap. 50; Summa, la, q. 12, a.4;
De veritate, q.8, a. 3.
Condi. Vatic., Denzinger, 1795, 1816.

CHAPTER IV
Love of God and the Mystery of the Cross

i
ff
I
I

The mystery of the cross throws open to us vait perspectives
that add width and depth to our knowledge pf God and of
Christ, as well as to our understanding of sin. The cross offers
us the clearest and most impressive evidence of God’s love
fdr the supreme good, which is Himself, for His incarnate

Son, and for our souls. It tells us, too, not only of His love
for good, the basis of all duty, but also of His hatred for
evil, and of the need for reparation to re-establish the order
of justice.
Moreover, incredible as it may seem at first, it speaks to us
Îof God’s great love for the Word made flesh. Jly sending
Christ to ignominious death on Calvary, the Most High;
willed to have Him gain a hidden victory façjsurpassiug His
triumph over death on "the day of His resurrection- a victory
* without parallel, ^"overthrow of sin and Satan.^Lastly^the
cross makes known to us God’s love for our souls, since He
delivered up His only Son that we might be saved. The better
to grasp this truth, we now wish to consider the Savior’s pas-

t
£
v
I

1 Cf. the Summa, la, q.20, a. 4: “God loves Christ not only more than He loves
the whole human race but more than He loves the entire created universe: because
He willed for Him the greater good in giving Him a name that is above all names,
inasmuch as He was true God. Nor did anything of His excellence diminish when
God delivered Him up to death for the salvation of the human race; rather did
He become thereby a glorious conqueror. The government was placed upon His
shoulder, according to Isa. 9: 6."
174

THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS

i75

sion as the supreme manifestation of the plenitude of grace :
He received at His conception in view of His universal mission
as Redeemer.
One of the most mysterious and at the same time most
revealing aspects of Christ’s passion ishhe union of terrible
suffering with that great peace'He experienced in consum­
mating His redemptive work—the two perfectly united ex­
tremes of His whole interior life.2 We can learn a lesson from
our Master here:-how, in union with Him, we ought to
"preserve peace and abandonment to God in the midst~oFour
worst_trialsi When we have to undergo not only sharp and
prolonged physical pain but moral suffering as well, and are
left to ourselves with little human help, and even without ap­
parent aid from heaven, we nearly always fall into discourage­
ment and seem about to lose all courage and hope.
Rare are the souls that, in hours of profound sadness, pre­
serve perfect abandonment to God and the peace which can
come to us only from Him. First in rank among these heroic
souls and far above all the rest, stands the holy soul of the
Word made flesh, so strengthened by the superabundant grace
received at its coming into the world as to suffer much and
to be ever at peace.

ARTICLE I
our lord’s fullness of grace and ardent
DESIRE FOR THE CROSS

From the first instant of its creation and union with the
body formed in Mary’s virginal womb, the holy soul of Christ
2 This is the fundamental idea of Chardon’s beautiful book, La croix de Jésus,
written before the controversy between Bossuet and Fénelon.

/

/

THE LOVE OF GOD

V]f>

received a fullness of created grace proportionate to it? per­
sonal union with the Word; for the nearer we are to God, the
more light and life we receive from Him, just as the closer
we come to a fireside the more light and warmth it gives us.

The personality of the Word made flesh
As created, Christ’s soul was and will always be more united
to the Word of God than any other creature could be: it con­
stitutes one and the same person with Him, since it exists
by the uncreated exigence of the Word.3 No more intimate or
indissoluble union of two infinitely distant natures can be
conceived: they are one not merely because of an accidental
union by way of knowledge and love but through a sub­
stantial union by way of being itself, since, without becoming
confused, the divine and human natures really belong to the
uncreated person of the Word made flesh in such a way that
in Christ there is no human pe£sonality, no human “I,” but
only the “I” of the Word of God.
Our Savior’s humanity loses nothing because of this, but
acquires a peerless perfection found faintly reproduced in
the lives of the saints. The more the saints grow in the love of
God the more, in a sense, they lose their human personality.
In their union with God they become independent, as it were,
of everything created and rise above the natural condition of
men of their country and time so that they may guide human
generations toward the life of eternity; they oppose hatred
of self to disordered self-love; they abandon their own ideas
for the thoughts of God received through faith ; they turn their
wills from egoism to love of God until, although they are but8
8 Ila, q. 17, a. 2.

THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS

177

human beings still, they can exclaim with St. Paul: “I live,
now not I ; but Christ liveth in me.”45
The faculties of Christ’s soul, too, are thus transformed
and deified. His intellect is ruled and enlightened in all its
ideas and judgments by divine truth. Supereminent charity
guards His will from any egoism. The highest degree of
sanctifying grace has been engrafted into His soul’s very es­
sence. Yet, above and beyond all this, at the very root of His
faculties and the soul itself, exists no human self, no human
person; in its stead reigns supreme the very self of the Word
made man. The Word, who possesses from all eternity with
the Father and the Holy Ghost the infinite and indivisible
divine nature, has also intimately and forever assumed our
human nature, a body and a soul like ours. Christ can truly
say: “I am the way and the truth and the life,” 6 not merely,
“I have received truth and life,” but “I am the truth and the
life.” And as truth is being, only He who is being itself could
so speak. “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was
made, I am.” 6 “No one knoweth the Son, but the Father;
neither doth anyone know the Father, but the Son and he to
whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him.” 78“I and the
Father are one.” 8
So close is this incomparably intimate union of natures
that the personality of the Word acts as the radical principle of
all the human operations of Christ; in Him, the Word of God
knows by a human intellect, wills by a human will, speaks,
suffers, and dies for us.
4 Gal. 2: 20.
5 John 14:6.
8: 58.
7 Matt. 11: 27.
8 John 10:30.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Christ’s fullness of grace
It follows that, because Christ’s soul is nearer the source
of all grace than any other soul or any other spirit, it has
evidently received more light and more love; it has received
an absolute plenitude of created grace proportionate to the
dignity of the Word made flesh and to the universal mission
of the Savior of humanity.9 Every divine mission demands
holiness proportionate to the task; if all too often in the gov­
ernment of human affairs the incapable and the improvident
occupy high positions to the detriment of the governed, no
equal disorder or disproportion can prevail in those God
Himself has directly and immediately chosen for an excep­
tional divine work. A supereminent divine mission demands
supereminent sanctity. The soul of the Savior, already sanc­
tified by personal union with the Word, must have received
such an intensive and extensive fullness of grace that from it
grace could overflow upon all mankind and give life to all
generations. Of Christ, the constituted head of the Church, St.
John can say: “And of His fullness we all have received.” 10
The special graces received by the great servants of God
form them chiefly for the accomplishment of their missions.
Together with His mission as universal Redeemer, Priest,
and Victim, the fullness of grace was unquestionably be­
stowed on Christ. As soon as His soul existed, its ardor for the
cross was born. As St. Thomas says: “God the Father did
deliver up Christ to the passion; ... by the infusion of char­
ity, He inspired Him with the will to suffer for us.” 11
9 Illa, q-7, a. 9-13.
10 John i: 16.
11 Illa, q.47, a.3.

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Christ and His Cross
That our Savior was ever moved and inspired by the sac­
rifice of the cross, we learn not only from theology but from
a far higher source—the revelation spoken by His own mouth.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews St. Paul wrote that, in coming
into the world, Christ said: “Sacrifice and oblation [of the
blood of bulls and of goats] Thou wouldst not; but a body
Thou has fitted to Me. . . . Behold I come . . . that I should
do Thy will, O God.” 12 This act of oblation Christ unceasingly
renewed during the course of His life and expressed again in
Gethsemane, saying: “My Father, if it be possible, let this
chalice pass from Me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as
Thou wilt.” 13 He was ever moving on toward the end of His
redemptive mission. Even His anguish before the impending
cross could not weaken His efficacious desire to be fully faith­
ful to His mission of priest and victim. The desire prevailed
and came to realization in the Consummatum est.
We can regard our Lord’s ardent thirst for our salvation as
the soul of His apostolate. Although some modernists main­
tain that St. Paul’s genius invented the idea of the sacrifice
of the cross, which was foreign to Christ’s preaching, we know
that He was continually voicing it, not only in the form given
us by St. John, but in the varied ways preserved in die first
three Gospels.
In the Gospel according to St. Matthew,14 Jesus says: “The
Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give His life a ranson for many.” 15 And in one of
12Heb. 10:5-7.
13 Matt. 26: 39, 42.
14 Cf. Mark io: 45; Luke 1: 68; 2: 38; 21: 28.
15 Ibid., 20: 28.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

His most beautiful parables He tells us: “I am the good
shepherd ; and I know Mine, and Mine know Me. As the Fa­
ther knoweth Me, and I know the Father; and I lay down My
life for My sheep. . . . And there shall be one fold and one
shepherd. Therefore doth the Father love Me; because I lay
down My life that I may take it again. No man taketh it
away from Me; but I lay it down of Myself. And I have
power to lay it down; and I have power to take it up again.
This commandment I have received of My Father.” 16
The same thought recurs again and again in His preaching.
, “I am come to cast fire on the earth. And what will I, but that
it be kindled ? And I have a baptism wherewith I am to be
baptized. And how am I straitened until it be accom­
plished!”17 He speaks here of that most perfect baptism,
baptism of blood.1819
20
“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth,
will draw all things to Myself.” Which He said, adds St. John,
to signify by what death He was to die.18
When unable to bear Christ’s foretelling of His passion,
I Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying:
/ “Lord- be it far from Thee, this shall not be unto Thee,” our
I Lord answered: “Get behind Me, Satan; thou art^^scandal
unto Me, because thou sâvorest not the things that are of
?jpd^ but the things that are of men.” “^ Indeed, the human
thoughtsof PÊTér at that moment piOtested against the very
mystery of redemption and the whole economy of our sall vation.
Our Lord’s thoughts and desires were ever turning to the
18 John io: 14-18.
17 Luke 12: 49 f.
18 Illa, q.46, a. 12.
19 John 12: 32.
20 Matt. 16: 22 L

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181

cross, which He held out to us all as the one way of salvation.
As St. Luke relates: “And He said to all: If any man will
come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross
daily and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall
lose it: for he that shall lose his life for My sake shall save
it.”21 And as it is recorded elsewhere: “And whosoever doth
not carry his cross and come after Me cannot be My dis­
ciple.” 22 The sons of Zebedee He challenged with the words:
“You know not what you ask. Can you drink of the chalice
that I drink of, or be baptized with the baptism wherewith
I am baptized ?” 23
Again, in the upper room, the night before the Passion,
Christ expressed His great desire to accomplish His mission
as priest and victim by instituting the Eucharistic sacrifice,
identical in substance with the sacrifice of the cross. As St.
Luke records: “And He said to them: With desire I have
desired to eat this pasch with you before I suffer. For I say
to you that from this time I will not eat it, till it be fulfilled in
the kingdom of God. . . . And taking bread, He gave thanks
and brake, and gave to them, saying: This is My body, which
is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of Me. In like
manner, the chalice also after He had supped, saying: This is
die chalice, the new testament in My blood, which shall be
shed for you.”24
Upon going out of the Cenacle to walk to Gethsemane,
He continued speaking His thoughts: “The prince of this
world cometh; and in Me he hath not anything. But that
the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father
21 Luke 9: 23 f.
22 Ibid., 14: 27.
23 Mark 10: 38.
24 Luke 22: 15-20.

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182

hath given Me commandments, so do I. Arise, let us go
hence.”25 As St. Thomas remarks in his commentary on this
passage of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus obviously so speaks by His
Father’s inspiration, which made Him desire to die for us
out of love and obedience. And as He nears Calvary, His
words grow in clarity: “Greater love than this no man hath,
that a man lay down his life for his friends.”28 And in the
sacerdotal prayer: “Father, . . . sanctify them in truth. . . .
And for them do I sanctify Myself, that they also may be
sanctified in truth.” 27
As St. John says: “In this we have known the charity of
God, because He hath laid down His life for us; and we ought
to lay down our lives for the brethren.” 28 In other words, we
members of our Lord’s mystical body should have a more or
less perfect participation in His fullness of grace.
The decree of redemption embraced the cross and all that
the cross entailed as the consummation of Christ’s work and
destiny as priest and victim. By being personally united to
the Word and constituted head of the Church, Christ’s soul
contracted an obligation to satisfy for mankind. The head
had to rectify the disorder of its members. Our Lord’s fullness
of grace disposed Him for the perfect accomplishment of His
mission and acted as a magnet drawing Him toward the cross
and making Him desire it ardently for our salvation.

Pondus Crucis et Pondus Gloriae
Louis Chardon’s clear and masterly treatment of this doc­
trine shows that the grace of Christ acts as the principle of
25 John 14: 30 f.
26 Ibid., 15: 13.
27 Ibid., 17: 17.
28 I John 3: 16.

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183

two forces or weights, which draw Him, so to speak, in con­
trary directions: the attraction of glory28 and the pull of the
cross. Even on Thabor our Lord thought more of offering
Himself for us than of anything else and, when He spoke
with Moses and Elias, He talked about the Passion.
Plunged in the divine essence and absorbed in the fullness of
eternal happiness, . . . Christ would not allow His spirit to rest
in the joy that filled all His faculties. The divine torrent might go
so far as to reach even His garments, yet He withdrew from it,
turning His thoughts to the whips, the thorns, the.nails, the shame­
ful death that lay ahead. . . . He looked through the deifying and
deiform light of beatitude to rest His eyes on the cross ahead and
He longed for the terrible sufferings of His passion; for the satis­
factions of eternal glory could not slake His thirst to suffer.
Two extremes presented themselves to His mind: glory and dis­
honor; the life of blessedness and shameful death ... at a time
when He tasted the one and had no experience of the other. Never­
theless grace so drew Him to pay the debt of our ransom that beati­
tude could not move Him.
No joy, not eternal glory itself, could distract Christ’s mind from
the cross which held sway over all His faculties. Hence the lower
part of His soul was not inundated by the effects of the Trans­
figuration, even though it did share, by divine Providence and
through a kind of reflection, in the glory of that mystery. The at­
traction of the cross was so strong that Thabor was less in the
mind, the love, the heart, of the transfigured Christ than Cal­
vary.30
28 II Cor. 4: 17.
80 La croix de Jésus, 1st cd., pp. 40 f. Copies of the original text being extremely
rare, lengthy extracts from it can be found in Bremond’s Histoire littéraire du
sentiment religieux en France, VIII, 30. The revised text of Chardon’s work has
lost some of the savor and strength of the original.
The same idea is beautifully expressed in De Montfort’s L'amour de la divine
sagesse, Part II, chap. 5, which deals with the triumph of eternal wisdom on the
cross and by the cross.

j84

the love of god

God willed the Incarnation chiefly as redemptive. Drawn
by the same motive Christ ardently desired to fulfill perfectly
His mission as Redeemer.
The motive of the Incarnation
We enter into what is most intimate and primordial in
Christ’s life when we seek to know the motive of die Incar­
nation. “Mercy” is the best answer to our why, for the In­
carnation was motivated most of all by mercy for sinning and
unhappy humanity. Misery calls for mercy. Mercy exists be­
cause of misery.31 Mercy is, as it were, so characteristic of
God, that through it He best teaches us of His power and
goodness, as He so strikingly shows us when He lifts us up
from mortal sin and gives us back the eternal treasure of His
infinite life.
Often God gives more through mercy than He would have
given through simple liberality, as we see from the conversion
of Magdalen and the good thief, and in truth, from the
ransom of all mankind.
Certainly an opinion exists which holds that the Word
would have become incarnate even if man had not sinned.
But, St. Thomas remarks: “Since everywhere in the Sacred
Scriptures the sin of the first man is assigned as a reason for
the Incarnation, it is more in accordance with this to say drat
had sin not existed, the Incarnation would not have been.”32
In other words, mercy motivated the Incarnation, as the Credo
tells us: “Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem
descendit de coelis et incarnatus est." “For God so loved the
world as to give His only begotten Son; that whosoever
81 Ha Ilae, q.30, a. 2.
82 Illa, q.i, a. 3.

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185

believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life ever­
lasting.” 33
Insistence on this point will easily resolve difficulties raised
by those who maintain the contrary opinion. Their arguments
come to this: the superior cannot be ordered to the inferior,
but this is just what would happen if the Incarnation were
ordered to our redemption. According to St. Thomas, mercy
brings the superior down to the inferior, not, of course, to
become subordinated to him, but to raise him up and to re­
store and magnify the primitive order, the original harmony.
The Word, by becoming incarnate, by bending down in mercy
to sinning humanity, in no way subordinates Himself to
humanity; rather does He wonderfully manifest His omnipo­
tence and goodness by subordinating humanity to His
Father, to Himself, and to the Holy Ghost. From all eternity,
the divine Mercy has willed the Incarnation as redemptive:
“Ratio miserendi est miseria.” 34
Another aspect of this great mystery demands consideration.
Since God can permit evil only in vieyv^ofa^greater ^ood, it
must be said that He permittecT original sin onlyinTiew

of the redemptive Incarnation, a supreme manifestation of
mercy, wherein all the rights of justice are at the same time
safeguarded. As St. Thomas says: “There is no reason why
human nature should not have been raised to something
greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to
bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written (Rom.
5: 20) : ‘Where sin abounded, grace did more abound.’ Hence,
too, in the blessing of the paschal candle, we say: Ό happy
83 John 3: 16.
84 As St. Thomas so often says, "Omnis res est propter semetipsam operantem.**
Every being is for its operation, or better, operates for itself and ultimately for
God. Christ was willed by God to be the Savior of men.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer.’ ”35
And therefore Jesus Christ is before and above all, not
King or Doctor or Prophet or Wonder Worker, but Savior
and Victim. In His predestination this role is not something
secondary, superadded accidentally as a result of the first
man’s sin; it is primordial. By the will of God, Christ was
first and foremost the Redeemer, the victor over sin, Satan,
and death.36 So, at any rate, St. Thomas thought, and many
theologians with him, all believing themselves the possessors
of the true meaning of Scripture. If they are right, then we
can see how fundamental and predominant in Christ’s life
was His desire to save us, to suffer for us on the cross.
His hour
No one need wonder then why Christ so often spoke of His
hour, the hour of His passion, His great hour. Divine Provi­
dence had infallibly determined it from all eternity, and
before it came His enemies could do nothing against Him. He
spoke of it as an approaching certainty which in no way
violated or necessitated either His own freedom or that of
His executioners.37 The nearer this hour approached, the
more urgent became His warnings to His disciples. At
35 See the exposition of this doctrine given by the Carmelites of Salamanca,
Godoy, Gonet, who seem to have given the best interpretation of St. Thomas’ doc­
trine concerning the motive of the Incarnation, applying to the mystery the princi­
ple, causam ad invicem sunt causae in diverso genere. In other words, there is a
mutual interdependence between the Incarnation, in view of which God permitted
original sin, and original sin itself, from which the divine mercy willed that we
be delivered by the redemptive incarnation of His Son. Cf. la, q.23, a. 5, for the
application of the same principle to predestination. In both instances causes operate
upon each other mutually but from different points of view.
33Ia, q.20, a.4, ad rum.
37 Cf. St. Thomas, Commentary on St. John 2:4: “My hour is not yet come.”
Sec also John 5:25, 28; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27! *3: B 25=2> 4> 2I> 32> 17:1;
Mark 14: 41; Luke 22: 53.

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187

Gethsemane “He taketh Peter and James and John with Him,
and He began to fear and to be heavy. And He saith to them:
‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death.’ ” 38
No contradiction lies in this. Our Lord did not negate His
ardent-desire to suffer for us and to accomplish perfectly His
mission as victim. He was not just a little inferior to those
martyrs who have experienced no equal sadness in the face of
death: like St. Ignatius of Antioch, for example, who longed
to be ground by the teeth of beasts that he might become the
wheat of Christ. After the holy ardor of His oblation, our
Savior willed to be overwhelmed with grief, and, that He
might offer a perfect sacrifice, to suffer for our sakes that
mortal sadness and terror a man naturally experiences in the
face of such a death. He also willed to leave us an example for
our own hours of overwhelming sorrow. His sadness was not
an emotion which preceded and troubled the judgment of
right reason and the consent of the will; on the contrary He
willed to become sorrowful that His holocaust might be per­
fect.39 Instead of hardening Himself stoically against suffer­
ing and proudly denying its existence, Christ surrendered
Himself to it voluntarily for our salvation. Of His life He says:
“No man taketh it away from Me; but I lay it down of My­
self. And I have power to lay it down; and I have power to
take it up again.” 40
He willed each and all of His sufferings, the crowning with
thorns, the scourging, which reduced His whole body to one
great wound, the torture when His robe was put on Him
88 Mark 14:33; Matt. 26:38.
89 Cf. Summa, Illa, q. 15, a.4, 5, 6, 7; also q.46, a.6, 8, where St. Thomas
quotes St. John Damascene’s famous dictum that Christ’s divinity permitted His
body to do and to suffer in accordance with its nature.
40 John 10: 18.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

again and adhered to His wounds, the flaming of His whole
body into vivid pain when the soldiers tore it off for the
crucifixion. Being offered as a holocaust for us, He willed, too,
to be nailed to the cross, to suffer from the priests of the Syna­
gogue whose mission it was to recognize the coming of the
Messias, to suffer from Judas, who betrayed Him, to suffer
from His people, who acclaimed Him on Palm Sunday and
forsook Him so shortly after, to suffer from Peter, who denied
Him, the disciples, who deserted Him, the crowd that mocked
and blasphemed Him.41
He willed to go still farther. After taking our sins upon
Himself, He willed to suffer in our stead the curse due to sin;
becoming as St. Paul says, “a curse for us.” 42 An expiatory
victim, He felt the terrible justice of God weighing upon Him.
Isaias, contemplating the Passion with the very eyes of God,
prophetically foretold: “But he was wounded for our iniqui­
ties; He was bruised for our sins. The chastisement of our
peace was upon Him; and by His bruises we are healed. . . .
And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. . . .
And the Lord was pleased to bruise Him in infirmity. If He
shall lay down His life for sin, He shall see a long-lived seed;
and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in His hand.” 43
Our Lord’s fullness of grace brought Him even to this ex­
tremity that His mission as Redeemer and Victim might be
realized. If almost all the saints have desired martyrdom, if
St. Ignatius of Antioch longed to be ground by the teeth of
beasts, what must have been Christ’s desire for the cross ! He
41 Illa, q.46, a. 5. St. Thomas says that, generically speaking, Christ endured
every human suffering.
42 In his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians 3:14. St. Thomas says
that Christ became a curse for us by dying for us and taking on Himself the curse
due our sins.
43 Isa. 53: 5, 10.

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189

willed not only to experience through grace a holy enthusiasm
for His oblation, but also, as a victim literally bruised in our
stead, to know mortal sadness and anguish, offering it all for
us with a love so pure and intense that it could be found no­
where else but in the heart of God. “Surely He hath born?
our infirmities and carried our sorrows.” 44
ARTICLE II
THE PASSION AND PEACE OF CHRIST

In mortal sadness, in entire forsakenness, in that desolation
expressed in the twenty-first Psalm, “My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me ?” 45 Christ kept perfect mastery over
Himself, complete abandonment to the divine will, and a
profound peace that found expression in His last words.
The Seven Words

Peace is the tranquillity of order, and order is restored b^
the cross. -which reconciles sinning humanity to God. No­
where can we find an expression of greater peace than in the
last words of the dying Christ, spoken for His executioners,
for die good thief, for Mary and John, for us all: “Father, for­
give them, for they know not what they do.” 40 “Amen I say
to thee: This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise.” 47
“Woman, behold thy son.”48 “Behold thy mother.”49 “I
thirst.” B0 “It is consummated.”51 “Father, into Thy hands
** Ibid., v. 4.
45 Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34.
48 Luke 23:34.
47 Ibid., v. 43.
48 John 19: 26.
49 Ibid., v. 27.
80 Ibid., v. 28.
61 Ibid., v. 30.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

I commend My spirit.”52 These words, which we ought to
repeat daily, are our Lord’s testament whereby He restored
peace to our souls. Those He spoke last of all offered and
consecrated the sacrifice of the cross at the very moment of its
immolation.53
Calvin sought to find an expression of despair in the words,
“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”; but, on
the contrary, these are plainly the inspired words of the first
verse of Psalm 21, the Messianic psalm, which came to the
lips of our dying Lord and have an unquestionable signifi­
cance. They utter a cry of sorrow and then make an act of
perfect confidence and pure love. In saying them, Christ
thought of our blindness and prayed for us. To be convinced
of this, we have only to reread Psalm 21 :
O God, my God, look upon me: why hast Thou forsaken me?
O my God, I shall cry by day, and Thou wilt not hear: and by
night, and it shall not be reputed as folly in me.” This is the sup­
plication of a victim, who adds immediately: “But Thou dwellest
in the holy place, the praise of Israel. In Thee have our fathers
hoped . . . and Thou has delivered them. . . . But I am a worm,
and no man: the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people.
. . . Depart not from me. For tribulation is very near: for there is
none to help me. Many calves have surrounded me, . . . the coun­
cil of the malignant hath besieged me. They have numbered all
my bones. And they have looked and stared upon me. They parted
my garments among them: and upon my vesture they cast lots.
But Thou, O Lord, remove not Thy help to a distance from me;
look toward my defense. Deliver me from the lion’s mouth: and
e2 Luke 23: 46.
es A recent opinion holding that the sacrifice of the cross would not have been
a true sacrifice if it had not been preceded by the sacramental oblation at the
Last Supper, cannot be admitted. When Christ died on the cross, not only was
He immolated but He also offered Himself to the Father for us.

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my lowness from the horns of the unicorns. I will declare Thy
name to my brethren; in the midst of the church will I praise
Thee. Ye that fear the Lord, praise Him; all ye seed of Jacob,
glorify Him . . . because He hath not slighted nor despised the
supplication of the poor man. Neither hath He turned away His
face from me: and when I cried to Him He heard me. With Thee
is my praise in a great church. . . . The poor shall eat and shall
be filled: and they shall praise the Lord that seek Him: their
hearts shall live forever and ever. All the ends of the earth shall re­
member, and shall be converted to the Lord: and all the kindreds
of the Gentiles shall adore in His sight.

The Messianic psalm that welled up to the lips of the
dying Christ obviously expresses no despair; the first verse
simply cries out the deep sorrow of a victim bearing on Him­
self the curse due to our sins. Our Lord willingly shouldered
this anguish that He might deliver His loved ones from its
burden and, by the same act, pay His tribute of adoration to
the sovereign Justice that punishes sin.54
As to the other seven words, martyrdom has spoken none
stronger, none more beautiful. They spoke the peace of Christ ;
they bestowed the peace of Christ; and those who stood
around His cross were strengthened for that terrible trial
they shared with Him. St. Augustine says that the beatitude
of the peacemakers corresponds to the gift of wisdom, the
principle of contemplation. Never on earth were such heights
of contemplation reached as those Christ experienced on the
cross.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
This was said for His executioners at the very moment when
they crucified their own Savior, a word to be repeated by
54 Cf. St. Thomas, Commentary on St. Matt. 27: 46.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

St. Stephen and many other martyrs, a word that plainly dis­
tinguishes the true martyr from the false, since it rises not
from obstinacy but from strength companioned by exquisite
meekness and perfect charity.
Of like character is the word spoken to the good thief,
promising him the peace of heaven at once: “This day thou
shalt be with Me in paradise.” And no other are the words
of balm poured into the aching hearts of Mary and John.
“Woman, behold thy son.” Then did Mary become more than
ever the mother of all men represented in John, and the
mediatrix and dispenser of all graces. “Son, behold thy
mother.” And from that moment John loved the Mother of
God with the deep and reverent love of a son.
After the first words of Psalm 21, Jesus added “I thirst” and
“It is consummated.” At the very moment when He thirsts
for souls, He Himself was bringing them the living waters
of grace. There is more joy in giving than in receiving. He
had the boundless joy of consummating the work of redemp­
tion by a perfect holocaust, reconciling sinners to God, giving
peace to all who would accept it, and eternal life to all those
who would not, through their own fault, refuse to receive it.
Surely the peace of the sacerdotal prayer pervades the last
word, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” By it,
the sacrifice of the cross was consecrated. All things were
restored in God. Divine peace returned to the world, and the
love of God flowered again in the hearts of men.55
55 Illa, q.47, a. 3, St. Thomas explains the words, “My God, My God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me?” by saying that Christ said them while hanging on the
cross because His Father had left Him to the power of His persecutors, as
St. Augustine says (Ep. cxl), and he adds (ad turn): "It is indeed a wicked and
cruel act to hand over an innocent man to torment and to death against his own
will. Yet God the Father did not so deliver up Christ, but inspired Him with the
will to suffer for us. God's severity (Rom. n: aa) is thereby shown, for He would

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193

In His last discourse our Lord had promised to give us
peace.66 Dyings He kept His promise. His words express not
defeat and desperation, but victory over sin and Satan. So
mysterious was His triumph, however, that very few around
the cross recognized it—Mary and John, some faithful women,
a repentant thief, and a Roman officer. Three days later an­
other more striking though lesser triumph, bound to the
first by transcendent logic, made the earlier victory manifest.
Christ showed His supremacy over sin itself by vanquishing
the fruit of sin, death. Only the mouth that said, “I have over­
come die world” 87 could pronounce, “It is finished.”
Peace in anguish
One of the most sublime aspects of the mystery of the re­
demption, an object of study for theologians and of con­
templation for mystics, is the union of deep sorrow and
perfect peace in the dying Christ. Theologians and mystics
alike generally agree that this intimate union of seemingly
opposed sentiments is both a miracle and an essentially super­
natural mystery: a miracle, in virtue of which Christ was at
one and the same time viator et comprehensor, a traveler
toward eternity who already possessed eternal life; a mystery
essentially supernatural, because the two extremes united
here, greatest peace and deepest sorrow, are, like grace and
not remit sin without penalty: and the Apostle indicates this when (Rom. 7: 32)
he says: ‘God spared not even His own Son.' Likewise His goodness (Rom. 11: 22)
shines forth, since by no penalty endured could man pay Him enough satisfaction:
and the Apostle denotes this when he says: ‘He delivered Him up for us all': and
again (Rom. 3:25): ‘Whom—that is to say, Christ—God hath proposed to be
a propitiation through faith in His blood.’ " Concerning St. Augustine's explanation
of these words, cf. G. Joussard, “L'abandon du Christ d'après saint Augustin,"
Revue des Sciences phil. et theol., July, 1924.
5β John 14: 27.
67 Ibid., 16: 33.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

charity, both supernatural, and, as a result, their union also
is essentially supernatural, and thus inaccessible to the natural
powers of any human or angelic intellect. The coexistence of
states apparently so contrary requires some clarification, al­
though during our lifetime this union must always remain
somewhat incomprehensible to us, hidden by light too strong
for our weak eyes.
In attempting to explain this mystery, some theologians
have fallen into contradictions. They extenuate or disfigure
its truth in one of three theories now to be stated and dis­
cussed.
Certain theologians, like Aureolus, have held that, during
the Passion, Jesus suffered only in the sensitive part of His
soul, and not in its purely spiritual part.58 But, as the Car­
melites of Salamanca remark,59 this opinion goes contrary
to the common doctrine of the Fathers founded on Scripture,
according to which Christ suffered from the sins of all men, an
evidently spiritual suffering. Like contrition, such sufferings
belong not to the sensitive part of the soul, which man shares
in common with animals, but to the will, and all the more
so as the will is elevated and animated by supernatural char­
ity, the love of God and of souls in God. The ordinary magis­
terium of the Church teaches this doctrine plainly.60
A second entirely different theory was proposed by Melchior
Cano, Velantia, Salmeron, and Maldonatus. According to
them, our Lord did not will to preserve during the Passion the
beatific joy that normally originated at the summit of His
δ8 For this opinion sec Capreolus, In 111 Sent., d.16, q. I, a. 2.
59 Cursus theologicus, in Illam, q.9, a. 2, de scientia beata Christi.
60 This teaching rests on the definitions of the Third Council of Constantinople
against the Monothelitcs. These definitions establish the distinction between our
Lord’s uncreated will and His human will, without which He would not have
been really man.

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soul because of the vision of the divine essence. This second
theory conflicts with what St. Thomas says,01 and, as Gonet
notes, it appears to contain a contradiction. It seems impossible
that the Sovereign Good, God seen face to face, could be
possessed by an intellect and proposed to a created will with­
out the latter experiencing immense joy. If our Lord did have
the vision of die divine essence during the Passion, He had,
too, at the highest point of His soul, the joy which comes from
that vision.
Théophile Raynaud proposed a diird theory: that sovereign
beatitude and deepest sorrow, even if contrary can coexist
miraculously in the same soul. But, as Gonet says,62 equal
contrariety implies contradiction; and this obtains if, at the
same time, the same will is made both deeply glad and deeply
sad by die same object. Even by a miracle, God cannot do
anything contradictory. Almost all theologians admit that
the union of deepest sorrow and perfect beatitude in our Lord
was miraculous, a result of His being at the same time viator
and comprehensor,™ so that in Him the glory of the beatific
vision did not overflow into the lower part of the soul. To
recognize a miracle, however, is not to concede a contradic­
tion.
Since these three theories are evidently insufficient, let us
turn to St. Thomas and his principal commentators for an
understanding of this union of sentiments apparently so op­
posed.81
84 We shall find that the tradition preserved by them
83
82
gives us a much nobler and more comprehensive view. St.
81 Illa, q.46, a. 8.
82 Clypeus thomifticae theologiae, in lllam, q.9, a. 2.
83 Illa, q.15, a. 10.
84 Cf. Illa, q.9, a.2; q.46, a.7; q.84, a.9, 2 ob.; and sec Cajetan, Salmanticcnses,
Gonet, on these articles.

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Thomas is not one to minimize; he does not make little of the
mystery in any way. First of all, he establishes the fact that
even during the Passion Christ enjoyed the beatific vision and,
as a result, perfect beatitude; and that, on the other hand, His
sorrow far surpassed all the suffering endured by men in the
present life. The solution to this enigma St. Thomas sees in
our Lord’s will to suffer for us. His will prevented His beati­
tude from overflowing into the relatively inferior part of His
spiritual soul and into His sensibility.
The cross and the beatific vision
St. Thomas firmly believes that all during the Passion,
Christ’s soul possessed the immediate vision of the divine
essence. Our Lord’s fullness of grace overflowed in three
ways : in a very high knowledge of God and of His kingdom,
in love of God, and in love of souls. This twofold love was at
the same time the principle of Christ’s perfect peace and of
His profound sorrow at the sight of men’s sins.
For a better understanding of this doctrine, let us recall its
dogmatic foundations, all too little known. At our Savior’s
conception, the fullness of grace He received flooded His in­
tellect as the light of glory. He more than believed in His
divinity. He saw His own divine personality, and the divine
essence, from which His personality is not distinct. The com­
mon teaching of the Fathers and of theologians85 holds that
with the first moment of life Christ enjoyed the vision pos­
sessed by the blessed in heaven. Their view rests upon the
words of the Gospel, and to dissent from it would be to err
almost to the point of heresy.®8
85 Illa, q.9, a.2. Cf. on the same, Cajctan, John of St. Thomas, Gonet, the
Carmelites of Salamanca.
88 On June 7, 1918, the Holy Office forbade the teaching of the following proposi-

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“No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten
Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared
Him.”*67 Evidently these words mean that, unlike the
prophets, who had not seen God, die only Son had seen Him,
inasmuch as the Son was in the bosom of the Father, and
saw God not only by His divine intellect, but by His human
intellect as well. As man, the Son made known the Father;
as man also the Son saw the Father. Testimony and the knowl­
edge from which it springs should surely correspond.
When talking to Nicodemus about spiritual regeneration,
our Lord said : “Amen, amen, I say to thee that we speak what
we know, and we testify what we have seen. . . . And no
man hath ascended into heaven but He that descended from
heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.” 68 In these words
“what we know” is synonymous with “what we have seen.”
The “speaking,” the “bearing witness” that Christ refers
to here, He certainly did as man: as man also then He saw
God, not by the knowledge of faith but with that vision
the blessed in heaven possess. And, as at the time He was
speaking the souls of the just already dead were awaiting en­
trance into heaven, He added: “And no man hath ascended
into heaven but He that hath descended from heaven: the
Son of man who is in heaven.” Christ was already in heaven
not only as the Son of God, by reason of His divinity and His
divine intellect, but as the Son of man, through His human
intellect; not only would He be in heaven after His death and
resurrection, but He was already there; even then, by His
human intellect, seeing God face to face, without any in­
tion: “Non constat fuisse in anima Christi inter homines degentis, scientiam, quam
habent beati seu comprehensores.” Cf. Hugon, O.P., De Verbo incarnato, p. 212.
67 John 1: 18.
68 Ibid., 3: 11-13.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

termediary. As tradition says, He was at the same time viator
and comprehensor,™ traveling toward eternity and already
home and in possession of eternal life.
St. John the Baptist told our Lord’s disciples the same
truth: “You yourselves do bear me witness that I said that I
am not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him. . . . He
that cometh from above is above all. He that is of the earth,
of the earth he is, and of the earth he speaketh. He that cometh
from heaven is above all. And what He hath seen and heard,
that He testifieth ; and no man receiveth His testimony.” 70
Not only the friendly Nicodemus but even the contentious
Jews at Capharnaum were told: “Everyone that hath heard
of the Father and hath learned cometh to Me. Not that any
man hath seen the Father; but He who is of God, He hath
seen die Father. Amen, amen, I say unto you: He that believeth in Me hath everlasting life.”71 A little later the Phar­
isees as well heard: “It is My Father that glorifieth Me, of
whom you say that He is your God. And you have not known
Him ; but I know Him. And if I shall say that I know Him not,
I shall be like to you, a liar. But I do know Him and do keep
His word.” 72 Finally, in the sacerdotal prayer, when praying
for His disciples, Jesus again says: “Father, I will that where
I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me;
diat they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me, be­
cause Thou hast loved Me before die creation of the world.”73
These last words are particularly expressive: “where I am,”
69 Illa, q. 15, a. IO.
70 John 3: 28-32.
71 Ibid., 6: 45—47.
72 Ibid., 8: 54 £73 Ibid., 17:24.

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199

that is, in heaven; those who have been given to Christ al­
ready have supernatural faith; He asks the beatific vision for
them, the vision of the divine essence and of the glory He has
been given as man. “Now this is eternal life: that they may
know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou
hast sent.” 74
St. John die Apostle surely understood the Savior’s words
in this sense when he wrote: “Dearly beloved, we are now
the sons of God ; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall
be. We know that when He shall appear we shall be like to
Him ; because we shall see Him as He is.” 75 Then will be
granted the sacerdotal prayer of Jesus: “Father, I will that
where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with
Me; diat they may see My glory which Thou hast given
Me.” 78 The more we contemplate the literal meaning of these
words, the more we grasp, in the obscurity of faith, the truth
that, even in this life, our Savior possessed the light of glory.
St. Thomas gives a sound reason of congruity for this pre­
rogative of our Lord. He says that since in this world Christ,
the Master of teachers, apostles, and doctors, was entrusted
with bringing mankind to eternal life, that is, to the vision
of God, He Himself should see God even in this life. To give
we must first have. If we would dispel darkness, we must
possess light ; if we would warm others, we must provide heat.
It was eminently fitting, then, that the Master should possess
the vision of heaven so that He might lead men to see God.77
If St. Paul, called to become the Doctor of the Gentiles, was
74 Ibid., v. 3.
75 I John 3: 2.
78 John 17: 24.
77 Illa, q-9, a.2.

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caught up to the third heaven and “heard secret words which
it is not granted to man to utter,”78 with how much greater
reason should Christ, the Savior of mankind, have had evi­
dence of the supernatural mysteries about which He taught us !
Widiout the beatific vision our Lord would have remained
in the order of faith; for only through faith would He have
known His own divine personality, a thing seemingly con­
trary to His dignity as Son of God. If the fullness of grace
received by Christ’s soul at His conception surpassed the grace
of all saints and all angels combined, we must say as much of
His knowledge of divine things. In consequence of die per­
sonal union of Christ’s soul with the Word of God, and of
the fullness of created grace flowing from that union, it was
highly fitting that His human intellect be lifted up in this life
to the divine vision, in a degree proportionate to His supereminent charity which, from the very first, surpassed that of
all the just together.
Had our Lord not enjoyed the vision of God in the first
but only in the following moment of His existence then, in this
subsequent instant, grace and charity would have increased in
Him. Yet the Second Council of Constantinople teaches that
Christ non melioratus est™ “did not become more perfect,”
did not grow in charity, but received an absolute plentitude of
charity from the first instant of His life on earth.
St. Thomas did not believe80 we can admit that our Lord
lost the beatific vision during the Passion, giving several rea­
sons for his judgment. First of all, the beatitude constituted
by this vision is inamissible by its very nature. Well named
“eternal life,” it is not touched by time but shares in the
78II Cor. 12: 4.
79 Dcnzinger, no. 224.
80 Illa, 9.46, a.8.

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201

immutability of eternity.81 Our Lord never lost it even in
sleep because it required no concurrence of the imagination.
Besides, Christ possessed the beatific vision as the normal
result of the hypostatic union and of His fullness of grace.
Certainly in the Passion, no grace was lost to Him; indeed it
so filled Him as to overflow more than ever upon all men.
Lastly, even on the cross and above all on the cross, Christ
continued to be the Master of masters in the things of eternity,
incomparably superior to the greatest contemplative raised
to the most sublime union. While speaking from the height
of His cross to Mary, to John, to the good thief, to us all, Christ
was seeing God ; in this unparalleled light He pronounced the
seven words, and, as Bossuet says, “the light He received
without measure He gave to us with measure, that our weak­
ness might be able to bear it.”
The vision of the divine essence, of God’s sovereign good­
ness, was not, therefore, lost to our Lord on the cross, and
even then it gave Him happiness that nothing could trouble
or lessen. No soul can see God face to face without loving
Him and without experiencing, at least in the highest point
of the will, the joy that necessarily comes from the possession
of the Sovereign Good.
Before the Passion our Lord revealed to His disciples the
secret of His peace, of that tranquillity of order founded
on the knowledge and love of God. “Peace I leave with you ;
My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth do I give
unto you. Let not your heart be troubled; nor let it be
81 la llae, q.5, a. 4. As this article says, a cessation of the beatific vision would
presuppose God’s withdrawal of the light of glory, a thing conceivable only as a
punishment for some fault. Christ was without fault, being even in this world
incapable of sin because of His divine personality and in virtue of the beatific
vision which, once possessed, makes it impossible for the soul to turn from God.

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afraid.”82 “Behold, die hour cometh, and it is now come,
that you shall be scattered every man to his own and shall
leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father
is with Me. These things I have spoken to you that in Me
you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress.
But have confidence. I have overcome the world.”83
Charity effects peace by subordinating all our affections to
the love of God above all filings and establishing in us the
tranquillity of order.84 During His life on earth, Christ’s char­
ity surpassed that of all the saints, and it was exercised to the
greatest degree during the Passion and on the cross; and while
He was in torment He was not content to preserve His own
deep peace, but He gave peace to those about Him who were
most deeply grieved, whom He sustained and strengthened—
Mary, John, the holy women, the good thief. He was the true
peacemaker, reconciling the world to God. From His cross
comes the peace given by all the absolutions of nineteen cen­
turies. From His cross comes the peace procured through every
Mass to the end of time. The peace of the Crucified can make
every desolation sweet, every weakness strong.

The sufferings of Christ

Our Lord cannot be said to have endured every possible
suffering. Some sufferings naturally preclude others. A man
cannot both drown and be burned to death. Besides, Christ’s
body never knew sickness and remained in perfect health
up to the time of the Passion. St. Thomas maintains85 that
82 John 14: 27.
88 Ibid., 16:32 f.
84 Ila Ilae, q.29.
85 Illa, q.46, a. 5.

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203

our Lord did, however, endure for our salvation every kind
of suffering that can touch us in this life. If we consider the
men who made Him suffer, we find that affliction came to
Him from the Jews, the Gentiles, the chief priests, the people,
the disciples, Judas, from Peter himself. If we consider what
was taken from Him, He suffered in His heart by being
abandoned by His friends; He suffered in His body by being
stripped, scourged, crowned with thorns, and crucified; He
suffered in transfixed hands and feet; He suffered in His
soul, sad unto agony and unto death.
The Passion, adds St. Thomas,86 was the greatest agony
endured by any man in the present life, and that for many
reasons: because of the violence and general character of these
sufferings; because of the fineness of our Lord’s constitution;
because Christ willed to give Himself up fully to pain of
body and grief of soul without seeking any alleviation; and,
above all, because of the principal cause of these afflictions,
the sins of all men.
Christ’s body, conceived miraculously in the virginal womb
of Mary, was endowed with a keen sensibility augmented, if
we may so express it, by the exceptional penetration of His
intellect. The sufferings of the scourging, of the crowning
with thorns, of the crucifixion, of the pierced hands and feet,
on which the whole weight of His body rested, could not have
been more bitter or more terrible. As regards His interior
sorrow, all the sins of mankind were its chief cause. The
Savior had to satisfy for them—sins without number, sins the
gravity of which Jesus realized more than anyone else, sins
that made Him suffer in the measure of His love for an out86 Ibid,, a. 6.

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raged God and for sinners.87 Lastly, our Lord’s physical and
moral agony was more intense than any martyr’s because no
joy, no consideration of the higher reason, and no distraction
mitigated or sweetened it, because Christ willed to give Him­
self up fully to pure suffering, to go to the last limits of sac­
rifice: those of love.88
The objection has been made that the greater the good lost,
the greater the sorrow. It is said, for example, that a sinner
by losing sanctifying grace is deprived of a greater good than
the life of the body which our Lord lost on the cross, and
that, therefore, he knows greater desolation than that known
by his Lord. The repentant Peter is cited as an instance.
To this St. Thomas makes answer: “Christ grieved not
only over the loss of His own bodily life, but also over the
sins of all others. And this grief in Christ surpassed all grief
of every contrite heart, both because it flowed from a greater
wisdom (by which He saw better than anyone else the infinite
gravity of mortal sin) and a greater charity (love of an of­
fended God and of those who offend Him) by which the
pang of contrition is intensified, and because He grieved at
the one time for all sins, according to Isaias 53: 4: ‘Surely
he hath carried our sorrows.’ ” 89
Only a great contemplative can penetrate deeply into the
richness of these sober words. We catch a suggestion of what
they contain by thinking of those who have offered them­
selves as victims for some sinner and have sometimes had to
suffer terribly for his sins, in order to detest them in his stead
and with the intention of obtaining for him the grace of
conversion.
M Ibid.
ss Ibid.
88 Ibid., ad 4un>.

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205

Christ had to suffer not only for a few sinners, but for
thousands and thousands of all peoples and generations, and
for all their sins at the same time. The chalice of Gethsemane
brimming with all the iniquities and infamies of the whole
world He took for Himself, and gave us instead the chalice
of His precious blood, offered daily on the altar. These two
chalices, like the scales of a balance, represent the whole his­
tory of humanity, all the evil on one side and all the good on
the other: “And where sin abounded, grace did more
abound.” 90
If St. Catherine of Siena was sickened and nauseated at
seeing the interior state of certain prelates’ souls, what must
our Lord have suffered at the sight of the sins of all men! The
suffering that sin caused Mary at the foot of the cross can be
measured only by her love. To know what she suffered we
would have to realize how much she loved her offended God
and His crucified Son, how much she loved our own souls,
so ravaged by wrongdoing. Plainly, we cannot compass her
secret or her suffering. What then can we know of her Son’s?
The fullness of grace and charity in our Savior sharpened and
deepened His capacity for suffering. Our egoism makes us
live on the surface of ourselves so that we are dull to evil but
quite alive to whatever wounds our sensitiveness and pride.
Christ’s suffering, like His peace and happiness, had its origin
in His plenitude of grace. Between these two extremes of
perfect peace and unparalleled sorrow lies the whole interior
life of Christ in this world. St. Thomas offers us some measure
of understanding of this mystery which contemplation
will help us to penetrate more and more deeply each
day.
90 Rom. 5: 20.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

The union of peace and sorrow
St. Thomas in no way makes little of the divine obscurity
in this mystery. The difficulty that our minds encounter he
formulates thus: “It is not possible to be sad and glad at the
one time, since sadness and gladness are contraries. But
Christ’s whole soul suffered grief during the Passion. . . .
Therefore His whole soul could not enjoy the beatific
vision.”91 The holy doctor 92 answers with a principle ex­
pressed by St. John Damascene that has become classic:
Divinitas Christi permisit carni agere et pati quae propria:
“The divinity of Christ allowed His body to act and to suf­
fer according to its nature.”93 And, inversely, the agony of
the Passion did not prevent the highest part of Christ’s soul
from experiencing the joy proper to it because of the imme­
diate vision of the divine essence.
In this world our efforts to explain supernatural things
achieve only partial success. St. Thomas has indeed penetrated
profoundly into this mystery. With certainty, yet in the
obscurity of faith, he sees the truth and shows it to us.94 He
first answers the proposed difficulty with an abstract, wholly
metaphysical consideration of the very essence of the soul.
This serves as a preparation for a more concrete solution,
reached through a consideration of the faculties.
We must distinguish, he says, between the essence of the
soul and the total of the faculties which proceed from it. The
essence of the soul is indivisible; and, as a result, it is whole
in the entire body it informs, animates, or vivifies, and whole
91 Illa, q.46, a. 8, I ob.
92 Ibid.
93 De fide othodoxa, Bk. Ill, chap. 15.
94 Illa, q.46, a. 7, 8.

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in each part of the body, although by the head it exercises
much higher functions than by the other parts. If, therefore,
we consider the very essence of the soul of Christ, we can and
should say that Christ suffered in His whole soul, for He suf­
fered in all the parts of His body and in His different faculties
that were affected by such grievous objects. “For my soul is
filled with evils.” 95
For the same reason, that is, because of its essential in­
divisibility, the soul is the complete subject of each of its
faculties. We can, therefore, say that Christ, even during His
passion, rejoiced in His whole soul so far as His soul was
the subject of His higher faculties, and the vision of the
divine essence beatified the summit of those higher powers.
But to speak more concretely, following St. Thomas’ trend
of thought:90 if, on the other hand, we no longer consider
the essence of the soul but its different faculties in relation to
the objects toward which they are directed, then we see that,
during the Passion, the vision of the divine essence beatified
only the highest point of Christ’s human intellect and human
will ; whereas the lower part of these higher faculties and all
the sensitive faculties were plunged in agony at the sight of
the sins of men and the torments of the Passion.
If, therefore, by the expression “the whole soul” we under­
stand no longer the essence of the soul but “all its faculties,”
we cannot say that Christ was beatified in His whole soul;
for the glory which shone on the summit of His higher facul­
ties was not reflected either in their lower part or in His
other, sensitive faculties. Our Lord freely willed that these be
abandoned to sorrow, without seeking any alleviation for it
95 Ps. 87:4.
98 In fact the soul knows, loves, joys, and suffers only through its faculties.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

in the vision of the divine essence. Our Savior’s humanity was
like a mountain peak crowned with sunshine and hemmed in
by calm blue heavens, the while, far down the mountain side,
below the clouds, a raging storm seems to devastate every­
thing. Such in substance is the doctrine set forth by St. Thomas
in his Summa theologica.91
A superficial reading of these two articles has led some to
misunderstand St. Thomas, believing that, according to him,
our Lord suffered only in the inferior part of His soul during
the Passion, and by these words, “inferior part of His soul,”
they understand only the sensitive part. Aureolus, not St.
Thomas, holds this opinion, already refuted as contrary to
Scripture and to the ordinary magisterium of the Church.
That Christ suffered especially from the sins of men, St.
Thomas himself clearly asserted a little earlier in the Summa.
“Christ grieved not only over the loss of His own bodily life,
but also over the sins of all others. And this grief in Christ
surpassed all the grief of every contrite heart, because it flowed
from a greater wisdom and charity, by which the pang of con­
trition is intensified.” 98 Suffering experienced at seeing God
offended and souls lost, plainly belongs, like contrition, not
to the sensitive part, but to the purely spiritual part of the
soul, to the will that loves and desires spiritual good, and even
to the will as elevated by grace and charity. The suffering es­
sential to contrition is not only spiritual but supernatural, for
it has its immediate source in the supernatural love of God
and is proportionate to that love.
The question arises whether Christ suffered from the sins
of men in the highest part of His soul, in the summit of His
87 nia, q.46, a. 7 ct 8.
98 Ibid., a. 6, ad 4111η.

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209

higher faculties, in ratione superiori. Scotus and Suarez think
that He did. In several works89*St. Thomas teaches, on the
contrary, that our Lord did not suffer because of sin in ratione
superiori, at the highest point of His mind ; there He possessed
the Sovereign Good seen face to face and loved above all
things, as do the blessed in heaven, who no longer suffer
because of sin, although they are displeased by it, as is God
Himself.100
We need not conclude that St. Thomas was of the opinion
that the great suffering our Lord experienced at the sight of
men’s sins pertained only to His lower reason. Cajetan 101
seems to preserve the real thought of his master when he
says that it belonged to the lower reason of Christ directed
by His higher reason. According to the terminology of St.
Augustine, what is called the “lower” reason has to do with
temporal things, and sin is a temporal thing. However, the
sadness a just man experiences at the sight of sin comes from
“the higher reason” which contemplates the eternal law of
God.102 Sin makes the just suffer chiefly inasmuch as it is an
offense against God.
It would, then, be a gross error to say that Jesus suffered
only in the sensitive part of the soul, which is common to man
and animal alike; He suffered from the sins of all men in the
purely spiritual part of His soul, even in those high regions of
His mind that are enlightened by the principles of the highest
89 III Sent., d.15, q.2, a.i; d.3, a.3, q.2; Compendium theologiae, cap. 232;
De veritate, q.26, a.9, ad 711m; Illa, q.46, a.7, c ct ad 2um; Quodlibet VII, a.5.
100 Illa, q.46, a.7, c: "But Christ's higher reason did not suffer on the part of its
object, which is God, who was the cause, not of grief, but rather of delight and
joy, to the soul of Christ.” Ibid., ad 211m: “On the part of its proper object . . .
Christ’s higher reason did not suffer."
101 Cf. Cajetan, In lllam, q.46, a.7, no. vi.
102 Cf. Cajetan, ibid.

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wisdom. However, He did not suffer in the very peak of His
mind beatified as it was by the sight of God seen face to face,
by the possession of the Sovereign Good. This peak is called
the summit of the soul, the apex mentis, in relation to the
sensible faculties regarded as inferior; the mystics sometimes
also use another metaphor for it, calling it the depth of the
soul, the fundus animae, in relation to the sensitive faculties
and sensible things considered as external.
Sin causes no suffering to the saints in heaven although it
displeases them, for they see the victory of mercy in regard
to forgiven sins and the splendor of justice in the punishment
due to other sins.103 Even in this world, on Calvary, Christ
saw this victory and this splendor. Nevertheless He ex­
perienced untold suffering at the sight of sin, for He was at
the same time viator and comprehensor, both a traveler
toward eternity and a possessor of eternity, one of the blessed.
In other words, He freely prevented the irradiation of the light
of glory on His lower reason and sensitive faculties, not wish­
ing the radiance of this light and its consequent joy to sweeten
in any way the sadness that assailed Him from every
side.104
Theologians generally regard this inner state of Christ as
no less miraculous than His sudden stilling of the storm on
the sea of Galilee. According to the natural laws of life,
joy in the higher part of the soul reflects on the lower, and
inversely, the suffering of the latter has its echo in the highest
part. Christ voluntarily and freely worked a miracle that He
might give Himself up to sorrow, just as He freely willed
Summa, la, q. 113, a. 7.
104 Cf. Sl Thomas, Compendium theologiae, cap. 232.

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211

to bring back to life Lazarus and the son of the widow of
Naim.105
In the natural order perfect happiness and profound grief
cannot coexist in one person. Only a miracle could bring them
together in an entirely exceptional, unique union, the result
of the incarnation of the Word in passible and mortal flesh.
No one claims that Christ was saddened and made glad by the
same object under the same aspect, a manifest contradiction.
In reality, He suffered from His passion inasmuch as it was
contrary to His human nature and effected by the world’s
greatest crime ; He rejoiced in it so far as it was ordered as an
expiatory sacrifice for the salvation of man and therefore
pleased God.100
In somewhat the same way, a true penitent, while sorry
for his sins and saddened by them, may find much joy in his
own contrition since it proceeds from love of God.107 St.
Augustine says in his book De poenitentia: “Semper doleat
poenitens et de dolore gaudeat: Let the penitent be ever sorry
for his sins and let him find joy in his sorrow.” 108 In His
higher reason, Jesus took joy in His passion, for it pleased
God that our Lord’s suffering and death should ransom hu­
manity. The apostles mirrored their Master when “they went
out from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they
105 Illa, q.46, a.8, ad autn; the Carmelites of Salamanca, Cursus theol., de In­
carnatione, disp. XVII, dub. iv, no. 47.
108 St. Thomas, De veritate, q.26, a.9, ad 7um; Compendium theol., c.232;
Summa, Illa, q.46, a. 8, ad turn.
107 Cf. Ila, q.84, a.9, ad 2um, where St. Thomas shows at greater length than
elsewhere how joy and sadness of the sensible order cannot coexist in the same
subject, since joy expands the heart and sorrow contracts it, whereas joy and sorrow
as spiritual acts of the will have no parallel bodily repercussion and therefore ex­
clude each other only if they concern die same aspect of the same subject.
108 Chap. 13.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of
Jesus.” 109
Our Lord, therefore, suffered chiefly because of men’s sins,
and His suffering surpassed that of all contrite hearts, because
of the superiority of His knowledge and love. He saw incom­
parably better than we can the gravity of mortal sin and He
knew the number of men’s offenses. Immeasurably more than
we, He loved both Him whom sin offends, God His Father,
and our own souls, which die of sin.
God permits sin only in view of a greater good. In this life,
even during His passion, Christ contemplated this higher
good: the victory of mercy and the splendor of justice: the
supreme victory of the Sovereign Good over sin, Satan, and
death.110 Therefore the divine and holy permission for sin
caused the higher reason of Christ no suffering. What we have
been contemplating in Christ is both miracle and mystery
and lies beyond the laws of nature and the ordinary laws of
the order of grace.
More and more clearly we can see that the fullness of grace
in our Lord produced two apparently contrary effects that
were like the two poles of His interior life: the vision of God
bound Him to eternal life, desire for the cross drew Him on
to the mortal agony of death that He might be a perfect holo­
caust.

The harmony within our dying Lord
In our Lord, these two effects originated in the same radical
source, His fullness of grace; and, in a more proximate way,
they proceeded from His charity, from the intensity of His
109 Acts. 5: 41.
110 la, q.2O, a-4, ad turn.

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213

love for God and souls. Here we have the secret of their in­
timate union.
To love God above all things is to have peace, for, as St.
Augustine says, peace is nothing but the tranquillity of order,
the wonderful harmony of all sentiments and all desires com­
pletely subordinated to one supreme love, which ought to have
first place in our hearts.111 Love of God burned so ardently
in Christ’s soul that He could bear and even forget His phys­
ical suffering. On the other hand, this very love added to
His suffering.
Sin is the practical denial of the Creator’s infinite goodness.
Christ realized this fully and saw how many times men would
attempt, as it were, to wrest from God His dignity as their
last end merely to gain some miserable, momentary satisfac­
tion. And because He loved the Father so intensely, this
knowledge caused him terrible suffering.112
Our Lord experienced such peace in suffering because of
His love for God and also because of His love for us. On the
cross He certainly knew boundless joy in saying, “It is con111 Cf. Ila Ilae, q.29, a.3: “Whether peace is the proper effect of charity?"
See also, ibid., q.28, a. 1, where St. Thomas says that both joy and sorrow proceed
from love but in contrary ways. “For joy is caused by love, either on account of
the presence of the thing loved or on account of this, that the proper good of the
thing loved exists and endures in it; and the latter is chiefly in the love of
benevolence, whereby a man rejoices in the well-being of a friend though he is
absent. On the other hand, sorrow arises from love cither on account of the
absence of die thing loved or on account of this, that the loved object to which
we wish well is deprived of its good or afflicted with some evil. Now charity is
love of God, whose good is unchangeable, since He is His goodness, and from
the very fact that He is loved, He is in those who love Him by His most excellent
effect, according to John 4:16: ‘He that abideth in charity abideth in God, and
God in him.’ Therefore spiritual joy, which is about God, is caused by charity."
112 Ibid., q.28, a.2: “The joy of charity whereby we rejoice in the divine good
as participated by us . . . can be hindered by anything contrary to it; wherefore,
in this respect, the joy of charity is compatible with an admixture of sorrow, so
far as a man grieves for that which hinders the participation of the divine good
either in us or in our neighbor, whom we love as ourselves.”

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THE LOVE OF GOD

summated.” There is, indeed, more joy in giving than in
receiving, in loving than in being loved; and the more
precious, lasting, and immortal our gift is, the more joy
there is in sharing it with others. Now, in dying for us, Christ
merited eternal life for us all, bringing back to us the stream
of divine mercy. He told us He came that we might have life,
and have it in abundance; surely He experienced great joy in
giving Himself up for us. “Greater love than this no man
hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” 113 He said;
and from the height of the cross He seemed to repeat the
words: “If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He
that believeth in Me, as the Scripture saith: Out of his belly
shall flow rivers of living water.’ ”114 Since that time the
Sacred Heart has never ceased saying to us: “Only in the heart
of a God will souls find ease for their sufferings and strength
for their weakness; let them stretch out their hands to Me, I
Myself will lead them to that heart.”
On the other hand, Christ suffered in proportion to His
charity for men and the gravity of their sins, which He had
taken upon Himself to expiate. He knew sin as the destroyer,
the death of souls, the way from God to abysmal misery,
misery as inexpressible as the glory of which it is the privation.
The thought that some souls would not profit from the sac­
rifice of the cross, however infinite and superabundant its
value, made our Lord suffer in the measure of His love for
us, a love so great that the hearts of all saints and angels to­
gether could not hold it.115
113 John 15:13.
114 Ibid., 7: 37 f.
115 The famous melody of the Grail, the holy cup which legend says received the
blood from Christ's pierced heart, attempts to express this infinite supernatural
wealth. An unknown artist of the Middle Ages composed the melody at the time
when the great cathedrals of Europe were being built. It was an Amen accompani-

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215

The desire of dying for us on the cross was always alive in
the heart of Christ, even on Thabor at the moment of the
Transfiguration. As St. Luke relates, “And whilst He prayed,
the shape of His countenance was altered, and His raiment
became white and glittering. And behold two men were
talking with him. And they were Moses and Elias, appearing
in majesty. And they spoke of His decease that He should ac­
complish in Jerusalem.” 116 A little while later,117 Jesus again
prophesied His sorrowful death to His disciples.
The fullness of grace in Christ was, then, the source of His
perfect happiness and intense suffering. In the seventeenth
century Louis Chardon, O.P., made this sublime thought the
soul of his masterpiece, La croix de Jésus. He says:
The same unction of grace 118 is both a principle of joy and a
source of sadness for our Lord. If, on one hand, it disposed His soul
to enjoy the perfection of eternal happiness, on the other, it filled
His powers to overflowing with untold suffering. He was anointed
for immortality; He was also anointed for death. ... Of old, men
used two kinds of oil, one for feasts, the other for the burial of the
dead. The soul of Jesus was anointed with both kinds of oil: with
festal oil because of His beatific love, and with burial oil because
of His love for justice. . . . He had an unction to make Him im­
passible; He had an unction to make Him susceptible to suffering.
He received the oil of glory and He received the oil of the cross.

A little while before his martyrdom, Polyeuctus expressed
the same great thought.
ment, whence its name Amen-Dresden. Both Wagner in his Parsifal and Mendelssohn
in his Reformation repeat the melody although it is not theirs but comes from a
higher source, seeming to belong to the genius of Christianity, as though heard
in ecstasy and composed under divine inspiration.
118 Luke 9: 29-31.
117 Ibid., v. 45.
118 La croix de fésus, Ier entretien, chap. 11 to the end.

2i6

THE LOVE OF GOD

God alone do I adore, God alone
The Master of the universe, before whose throne
Heaven and earth and hell must bow;
Whom love led here for love to die,
Sharp-limned in shame against His own wide sky;
Who, still unsatisfied with giving, stays till now
With us—the same dying, deathless victim as when
First offered as the homely bread of men.118

Seen from without, this mystery, like a stained-glass win­
dow, appears unintelligible and almost contradictory; seen
from within, in the right light, by those who understand it a
little by living it, it expresses the divine harmony of mercy
and justice, of strength and gentleness, of deepest suffering
and that peace which will shine undimmed throughout all
eternity.

The lesson of Calvary

Fortis est ut mors dilectio. “Love is strong as death.” What
is particularly striking in Christ’s love, whether for His
Father or for our souls, is the close and wonderful union of
deepest tenderness with heroic strength in suffering and
death: Fortiter et suaviter. Our love sometimes lacks one of
these qualities. Neither can survive long without the other.
119 Corneille’s Polyeuctus, speaking elsewhere of earthly pleasures, says:
Source délicieuse, en misères féconde,
Que voulez-vous de moi, flatteuses voluptés?
Before Corneille, Richard of St. Victor had remarked in his work De quatuor
gradibus violentae caritatis how the contraries, joy and sorrow, are at times united.
This union may range from the abnormality of perversion all the way up to that
true antithesis realized on the cross, the bitter source of a wealth of delight. The
liturgy expresses this for us by singing
Te adorandam, te crucem vivificam,
Per te redempti, dulce decus saeculi,
Semper laudamus, semper tibi canimus:
Per Lignum servi, per te sumus liberi.

THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS

217

Without strength, tenderness becomes languid and affected;
without sweetness, strength grows bitter and harsh.120
No one can know how Christ loved His Father. If He loved
the Virgin Mary tenderly, how much more He must have
loved His Father, to whom He rendered unceasing adoration
and thanksgiving! Supernatural tenderness has always flowed
out from Him to empty itself upon souls, not merely on those
of one country or time, on a restricted group of a few friends,
but on the souls of all generations that all may have life
eternal.
Christ’s love, while tender, is stronger than death, stronger
than sin, stronger than the spirit of evil. It led our Lord to
offer Himself as a victim in our stead, to save us, by satisfying
for us, by giving God an infinite reparation. Cor Jesu, fornax
ardens caritatis: in that heart all the tenderness and energy of
love are wonderfully blended; for the heart of the Savior is a
pure mirror of mercy and justice, the two great virtues of the
uncreated love of God.
Members of the mystical body of Christ should participate
in His life more and more so as to become like unto Him. The
sacred humanity of our Savior communicates to us progres­
sively the graces it merited for us on the cross. The head of
the mystical body pours out its riches on its members. Our
Lord desires to assimilate us more and more to Himself, by
baptism, absolution, frequent Communion, the crosses or
purifications necessary for our advancement, at the last by
extreme unction and up until our entrance into heaven. The
lives of many of the saints show this progressive assimilation
120 See Chardon, La croix de Jésus, chap. 8, where he shows that God wills the
tenderness of His creatures so that He may unite it with His own divine strength
and work its transformation.

2l8

THE LOVE OF GOD

by a sort of reproduction of the mysteries of Christ’s life—
first His childhood and hidden life, then His apostolic life,
and, at last, His sorrowful life or passion.121
One of the great marks of the spirit of Christ in souls is the
reproduction of those two effects that have their origin in His
own inner life and flowed from His fullness of grace. The first
is peace, the tranquillity of order, the more and more perfect
subordination of every sentiment and desire to the love of
God and of souls in God, a love ever growing by the actual
influence of Christ.
The second is acceptance of the cross in order to follow the
Master, as He has bidden us to do. We must accept the cross
with patience, otherwise our burden increases but bears no
fruit; with thankfulness, for it is a hidden grace, as those
who bear its weight will find out ; with love, for, in any cross,
Christ crucified comes to us, to reproduce in us His own traits.
Love like this brings abandonment and peace, and offers
for our discovery the true wisdom, divine contempla• 199
tion.
In commenting on St. Paul, the austere Louis Chardon
makes some profound statements:
A reverential consideration of Christ’s energetic and insatiable
longing for the cross gives us a great deal of light on His disposi­
tion of crosses among those souls who belong to Him by the bonds
of grace. ... We understand, too, that the more closely souls are
united to His spirit, the greater the obligation they contract to
suffer. ... It would be a disorder in grace and against the laws of
121 See the encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, June, 1928, in which Pope
Pius XI speaks of the reparation due to God for the sins of all men.
122 Cf. De Montfort, L'amour de la divine sagesse, Part II, chap. 6: means of
obtaining divine wisdom: (1) ardent desire; (2) continual prayer; (3) mortifica­
tion in all things; (4) a true and tender devotion for the Blessed Virgin.

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219

love for delicately bred members to be united to a head pierced
with thorns. . . .
The same grace that has its universal source in Christ sanctifies
His members. His grace as head is communicated to Him for the
purpose of His office, which is to satisfy the strict justice of God
for the sins of His members. Consequently He contracted the lov­
ing obligation to suffer, the cause of that mighty attraction which
constantly bore Him on toward the cross. Of necessity, then, grace
produces the same propensity in predestined souls and makes the
same demands of them, that the mystical body may not seem an
entirely monstrous whole in the order of grace, which it would in­
deed be if the spirit of Christ were contrary to itself—altogether
otherwise in the members than in the head . . .
In its original source, the soul of Christ, grace produces an at­
traction that relates to the end for which He was made man. Over­
flowing upon men’s souls, the grace of Christ necessarily effects
the same disposition in those made worthy to receive it.123

By its essence grace is a participation in the divine nature,
but, so far as it is transmitted to us by Christ, it has a special
modality which configures us to Him, an effect of the grace of
Christ as such. This St. Thomas teaches when he asks whether
sacramental grace, and, in particular, baptismal grace as such,
adds anything to the grace of the virtues and the gifts as
possessed by Adam before die fall.124
Louis Chardon rounds out St. Thomas’ thought with the
teachings of men like Tauler and St. John of the Cross.
Because this kind of grace cannot be idle in a soul ... it hun­
gers for growth and, because it cannot receive any considerable
increase without the help of crosses, . . . God does not fail to aban123 La croix de Jésus, ist ed. pp. 119-21 (Lethicllcux cd.), I, 14, 29, 43, 136;
Π, 376, 450.
124 Illa, q.62, a.2.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

don the soul to its own weakness and to naked grace, stripped by
Him of all its sensible effects. This is done to teach the soul to
know itself and to renounce itself and to cleave to Him alone. The
closeness and intimacy of its union depend on its separation from
everything else.
Whence it comes that the same love is at once the principle of
life and of death . . . uniting and separating . . . detaching and
binding together. . . . For the holiness of God as communicated
to His creatures completely deprives them of all that is incompat­
ible with His immaculate purity.125 . . .
To experience this glorious death ... is to be rich in divine
fruitfulness ... for in it we find more presence than absence;
more union than separation . . . although it is a death more cruel,
for all that, than the common way of nature . . . leaving only sad
desolation within the soul. Nevertheless those who are well versed
in the characteristics of sacred love, and of the end that the good
God has in view in all these trials, would not wish to change for
a moment their hard martyrdom for the rapturous delights of par­
adise, or the cruel torments of death for a happy life in glory.12®

One historian, who would make amends for the way
Chardon’s work has been neglected, says: “Never, perhaps,
has the separating, simplifying, stripping action of grace been
analyzed with more penetration.” 127 To see it at work we
have only to turn to the life of Mary.128
125 Chardon, op. cit., pp. 125-28.
126 Ibid., pp. 146 f.
127 Bremond, Histoire Utt. du sentiment religieux en France, VIII, 43. Whether
Chardon had read St. John of the Cross the author cannot say; in any event he
drew from Tauler’s doctrine and explains it.
128 Chardon, op. cit., shows in the first of his three dialogues how love that de­
mands separation was the principle of the cross borne by the Blessed Mother and
the apostles. He has ten chapters of great depth on the interior martyrdom of the
Blessed Virgin. In his third dialogue he uses the same great principle to describe
the spiritual heights attained by Abraham, Elias, Jacob, Benjamin, the spouse of
the Canticles, Martha, and Mary Magdalen. Pages like these show how mystical

THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS

221

Reread slowly the beautiful chapter of The Imitation of
Christ,*129 “On the Few Who Love the Cross of Jesus,” and you
will see that the mark of Christ’s spirit is peace and abandon­
ment in suffering, peace and abandonment in the anguish
of the Passion as reproduced in different degrees in souls for
their own purification and for their cooperation in their
neighbor’s salvation with and by our Lord and through the
means that He Himself used. So, in a sense, Christ is in agony
until the end of the world in His mystical body, until it is fully
purified and glorified, until the word of the Master, “I have
overcome the world,” is perfectly realized by the final victory
over sin, Satan, and death.
When by faith we look with the eyes of God into what the
holy liturgy tells us, we see how infinitely it surpasses the
sublimest flights of human poetry.

Salve Crux sancta, salve mundi gloria,
Vera spes nostra, vera ferens gaudia,
Signum salutis, salus in periculis,
Vitale lignum vitam ferens omnium.
Crux fidelis, inter omnes
Arbor una nobilis:
Nulla silva talem profert
Fronte, flore, germine:
Dulce lignum, dulces clavos,
Dulce pondus sustinet.

O magnum pietatis opus! Mors mortua tunc est, in ligno
quando mortua Vita fuit.
theology is normally the crown and complement of theology itself and was so
judged by St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and all the great masters.
129 Bk. Π, chap. 9.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Nos autem gloriari oportet in Cruce Domini nostri Jesu
Christi.
Crux benedicta nitet, Dominus qua carne pependit, atque
cruore suo vulnera nostra lavit.

Blessed Grignon de Montfort provides us with a conclusion
for this thought.
In His incarnation, Wisdom incarnate has taken the cross for
His treasure and has espoused it with ineffable love. During His
whole life, which was nothing but a continual cros^THe sought
after it and carried it with unutterable joy. At last He was fixed
and, as it were, fitted to the cross; and He died in its dear embrace
joyfully, as though it were a couch of honor and triumph. . . . Do
not believe that for His greater triumph after death He is now de­
tached from the cross, that He now rejects the cross. . . . Heroes
not wish the homage of even relative adoration to be paid to crea­
tures, however great, like His own most holy Mother; this great
honor is reserved and due only to His dear cross. On the day of
the last judgment He will bring to an end the worship of the relics
i of the saints, however venerable; but as for the worship of the
j cross, He will command the first among the seraphim and the
cherubim to go out into the world and gather up every piece of the
true cross. These, by His all-powerful love, will be so well reunited
that they will make but one cross, the very^ross on which He died.
He will have thisxfoss carried in triumphby the angels. . . . He~
will have it go before Him anaTseated on a cloud of glory such as
eye has never seen, He will judge the world with it and by it.
t What joy the friends qf the cross_will then know! . . . Wisdom
' eternal awaitsthat day . . . desiring the cross to be the sign^the"seal, and die sword of all the elect. He has hidden so many of life’s
treasures and graces in the cross that He gives the knowledge of it
only to those He most favors. . . . (5ià, how humble, little, morti-

THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS

223

fied, interior, and despised we must be to know the mystery of the
cross! Whoever carries it shall fincTit an eternal weight of glory in
heaven.130
'
—---------130 Op. cit., Part II, chap. 5.

CHAPTER V
The Love

of

God and the Mystical Body of Christ

The Church our Lord founded is an external, visible,
hierarchical society, in which the supreme authority is vested
in the successor of Peter. It is a society commissioned to pre­
serve and propagate tire evangelical doctrine and to sanctify
the faithful by the administration of the sacraments, the
oblation of the Holy Sacrifice, and the direction of souls.
Protestants, who are unwilling to admit the visible hierarchy
of the Church, ignore Christ’s words: “And I say to thee:
that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church.
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” 1 “But I
have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and thou, being
once converted, confirm thy brethren.” 2 After the resurrec­
tion Peter was told: “Feed My lambs. . . . Feed My sheep.” 8
He was thus constituted the supreme pastor, the vicar of Jesus
Christ; and the divine words, “the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it,” were said for him and for his successors
until the end of time.
Although visible in its external aspect, the Church is a
spiritual society essentially ordered to the life of eternity;
as St. Paul says, it is a mystical body, whose members are
united by supernatural life to the Holy Ghost, the soul of the
1 Matt. 16:18.
1 Luke 22:32.
• John 21: 15, 17.

224

THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST

225

body, and to Christ, its head, in communion with the souls
in purgatory and the saints in heaven. This is one of the most
fundamental and sublime doctrines of our holy religion. Let
us try to make it more understandable by seeing: (1) what
die mystical body of Christ is; (2) how the faithful are in­
corporated in Christ, what relationship exists between mem­
bers and head; (3) the nature of the communion of saints,
the relationship of the members to one another, and the way
all things work together in this body for the advancement of
the love of God.

Nature of the mystical body of Christ
The mystical body of Christ, often referred to by St. Paul,
shows the resemblance of the Church to our physical body and
to a moral body, like the family or nation.4
Our physical body is a group of organs and members ani­
mated by one and the same principle, the soul, the highest
functions of which are exercised in the head, which sees,
hears, directs the members, and transmits neural impulses to
die whole organism. The organs really form but one body
because they are vivified by the same soul and vitally united
with the head. When in old age the organism wears out, we
make up for its losses by artificial devices which do not form
a part of man’s body for they receive no vital influx from it.
In a moral body, like the family or nation, there are also
members; they are animated by the same family or national
spirit and are banded together under the direction of a leader
or head. In a family the father, mother, and children form a
whole, all the parts of which are united by ties of blood, af­
fection, common interest, honor, ancestry, name, and re* Cf. I Cor. 12: 27; Eph. 4: 15-16; 6: 5.

22Ô

THE LOVE OF GOD

semblance. These ties act as a vital principle animating the
whole. The family truly forms a moral body in which each
lives upon the same affection, devotion, and memories—
everything that unites them all. Like ties should bind us to our
country, for we are its debtors because of its goodness and the
benefits of all kinds we have received from it. “Consequently
man is debtor chiefly to his parents and his country, after
God.”5 True patriotism is the moral virtue of filial piety,
which, in the light of supernatural faith and Christian pru­
dence, is, as found in St. Louis and St. Joan of Arc, an infused
virtue perfectly subordinated to the love of God and of all
men in Him.
The Church forms a still higher body uniting men and
nations to bring them into the kingdom of God. This higher
body is called the mystical body. Why? Because in the Church
the principle that animates the whole is essentially mysterious,
infinitely superior to, and infinitely more unitive than the
soul of our body or the spirit of either a family or a nation. The
soul of the mystical body is the Sanctifier, the Holy Ghost,
who dwells in all just souls but exercises His highest functions
through the humanity of Christ. The Holy Ghost is the source
of grace ; He pours charity into our hearts, but always through
the soul of our Savior, as an intermediary, for our Savior is
indeed the head of the mystical body. The fullness of sanc­
tifying grace received by Christ was ordered, in fact, to die
sanctification of all mankind. We enter into this body by bap­
tism, which, by applying the merits of the Savior to us, remits
original sin and makes us children of God.®
s Ila Ilae, q. ιοί, a. I.
e St. Thomas frequently says: "Christus et Ecclesia est una persona mystica."
■Cf. in Epist. ad Coloss., I, lect. 6; Summa, Illa, q.19, a.4; q.48, a.i, a.2, ad lum;
q.49, a.i; q.69, a.2. For the mystical application of this doctrine, sec Chardon,
op. cit., Ier entretien, chaps. 1-6.

THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST

227

In the mystical body there is great diversity but profound
unity: a true harmony. It has the diversity of very different
nations and races gathered together by baptism under one
Spirit and under one head; St. Paul says: “For in one Spirit
were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles,
whether bond or free; and in one Spirit we have all been
made to drink. For the body also is not one member, but
many.” 7 At Pentecost, die apostles miraculously spoke many
unknown languages to make it evident that the Gospel was to
be preached to all nations in spite of differences of race, cus­
toms, manners, and institutions.
It also has diversity of function. St. Paul describes the
details of this mysterious body by telling8 us about the sub­
ordinated functions of eyes, hands, and feet. These last sym­
bolize those who, in the vine of the Savior, are dedicated to
the active life. The ear cannot say: “Because I am not the
eye, I am not of the body.” The hand should not wish to per­
form the function of the eyes. No body can live without diver­
sity of function. If all the members of the human body had
the dignity of the eye, the eye itself could not exist.
In this diversity a wonderful unity rules, and ought to be­
come increasingly predominant. All Christians are kinsfolk,
brothers, members of the same body. These members are or
ought to be united much more closely than those in a human
family. Among them there ought to be, as is commonly
taught, unity of faith, unity of obedience to the hierarchy,
unity of worship, especially through the Mass, unity in the
common fare of Communion, and unity of life, since each
ought to be nourished by Jesus Christ; unity of sentiments, of
7 I Cor. 12: 13 f.
8 Eph. 4: ii.

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affection, of interests that are great and eternal, unity of hope
and of charity. Since here all live by grace and later all will
live in glory, they have unity of wealth, the merits of Christ,
and unity of heritage, eternal life.
As our members form a physical body, so do the faithful
united in faith, hope, and charity form the mystical body of
our Lord; they are His members; more than that, they are
members of one another, too,9 and help one another like the
fingers of one hand.

How incorporation into Christ is effected
Christ said: “I am the vine; you the branches. He that
abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit.” 10
Before the Passion He prayed to His Father, saying: “That
they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee.
. . . And the glory which Thou hast given Me, I have given
to them; that they may be one, as We also are one.” 11
St. Paul,12 too, said that incorporation into Christ is ef­
fected by a kind of engrafting union in which two lives are so
intimately mingled that they are lost in each other. In this
union the life of the grafted branch is absorbed into the life
of the trunk. “If the root be holy, so are the branches. And if
. . . thou, being a wild olive, art ingrafted in them, and art
made partaker of the root and of the fatness of the olive
tree . . . thou bearest not the root; but the root thee.” 13
Christians live a new life; Christ lives in them through faith.
He ought to be the principle of their thoughts, of their words,
9 Rom. 12: 5.
10 John 15:5.
11 Ibid., 17: 21.
12 Rom. 6: 5.
Ibid., ii: 16-18.

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229

of their acts. Let us see how Christ exercises His functions as
head of the Church and how the members of His body are
more and more animated by Him.
First of all, Christ exercised His functions as head of the
Church by meriting and satisfying for us. The merits of the
Savior have an infinite value because He is the Word made
flesh; and He has been able to communicate these merits to
us in strict justice, because He is constituted head of mankind.
As Adam, the constituted head of mankind, could lose the
life of grace for us by his sin, so could Christ pour His justice,
His sanctity, into our hearts and give us back supernatural life.
The substitution of the dying Christ for us is clearly ex­
plained in the light of the revealed doctrine that our Savior
received capital grace. This constituted Him the head of
mankind and was meant to flow out from Him into His
members. “And of His fullness we have all received.” 14 God,
says St. Paul, “hath made Him head over all the Church,
which is His body.” 15
Christ still really exercises His function as head or leader
of the Church, by interceding for us and by communicating
to us the graces He merited for us on the cross. As a living
instrument ever united to the divinity, the source of all grace,
He communicates His grace to us, just as our head communi­
cates to our bodily members the vital influx that has its prin­
ciple in the soul. To understand this well, we must distinguish
between our Lord’s divinity and His humanity.
As die Word, Christ lives in the depth of our soul in the
same way as die Father and die Holy Ghost. Closer to the soul
than the soul’s own self, He preserves its natural and super14 John 1:16.
15 Eph. 1:22 f.

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natural life; and by operating grace excites it to wonderful
hidden acts far beyond its own powers.1®
The Savior’s humanity is, as St. Thomas says,17 an instru­
ment ever united to the divinity, through which all graces
are communicated to us. The sacraments, too, the water of
baptism and the sacramental form, for example, are the instru­
mental physical cause of sacramental grace in the sense that
God makes use of the water and the form, communicating to
them a divine transitory virtue in order to produce grace:18
so the humanity of the Savior, especially the acts of His holy
soul, are the instrumental physical cause of all the graces we
receive, either in the sacraments or outside of them.
A great artist like Beethoven uses an instrument in order to
transmit his musical thought to us; a great thinker has his
own particular style, a special language that he chooses as a
means of self-expression. God, too, has His instruments for
the production of effects that are properly divine and can come
only from Him. The Savior’s humanity is a conscious and free
instrument united to the divinity in the production of any
and every supernatural effect. The graces Christ merited for
us on the cross, He communicates to us. Every illumination of
the intellect, every grace of attraction, of consolation, and of
strength is transmitted to us by the soul of our Savior. His
influence is continual, extending to every salutary act we
make, so all-incompassing that a mother’s loving influence on
her child bears only a dim analogy to it. The beating of the
Sacred Heart, the thoughts and desires of Christ’s soul, trans­
mit supernatural life to us daily. And as new graces are con­
tinually being accorded to souls, Christ’s activity never ceases.
16 la Ilae, q. ill, a.2.
1T Illa, q. 43, a. 2; q. 48, a. 6.
18 Ibid., q. 62, a. 4.

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231

Our Savior transmits to unbelievers the light of faith, to
sinners justifying contrition, to die just persevering charity,
to the souls in purgatory the indulgence that is dieir deliv­
erance, and to saints in heaven the glory that is the fulfillment
of grace. Throughout the ages Christ has been the light and
life of all who live supernaturally, the spiritual sun of souls,
shining the same on every generation. He exercises His in­
fluence especially through the Sacrifice of the Mass, in which
the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated in substance until the
end of time. It is a unique sacrifice, not exactly renewed, but
continued in substance {idem nunc offerens}, perpetuated in
a way that transcends time and applied to all generations. He
is like an inexhaustible source of living water, to which all
can and must come to quench their thirst.
But the Savior’s influence is not restricted to the Sacrifice
of the Mass and the sacraments; it extends to people who do
not yet know of the Eucharist, of baptism, of absolution. Not
one of them is entirely removed from the influence of the
Word made flesh. From Christ even the most degraded people
receive supernatural lights and actual graces that are ordered
to salvation.19 Christ indeed, as head, exercises an unbroken
influence on His whole body.
Because the Blessed Virgin as coredemptrix merited for us
with meritum de congruo, all that Christ obtained for us in
strict justice, she transmits to us all the graces we receive; she
is like the virginal neck uniting head and members, or, as
the Fathers called her, the aqueduct of grace. Blessed Grignon
de Montfort has given an especially clear elucidation of this
doctrine.
Through the influence of Jesus and Mary on the mystical
18 E. Hugon, O.P., La causalité instrumentale (Paris, 1924), pp. iioff., 201.

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body, its members receive life by progressive sanctification.
Baptism gives them the life of grace and blots out original
sin by remitting the chief punishment due to sin. Whoever
dies immediately after baptism goes directly to heaven; there
the soul enjoys supreme beatitude while waiting for the
resurrection and glorification of the body. If after baptism
the soul falls back into sin, it must acknowledge and repent
of its fault to obtain pardon; and if its contrition has intense
charity, even the remission of all punishment can be obtained
by the appropriation, through love and sorrow for sin, of the
merits and satisfactions of Christ Jesus.
The Eucharist, especially, makes us attain to conformity
with the will of our Savior. But deliverance from sin, in order
to be perfect, and incorporation into Christ, in order to be
complete, must follow the three phases of the purgative, illu­
minative, and unitive life. Before communicating His glo­
rified life to us, Christ first communicates to us the life of grace
as He lived it in a world of strife.
We must first, St. Paul says, die more and more to the
earthly man and crucify our old self that we may no longer
be slaves of sin.20 “And be not conformed to this world; but
be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove
what is the good and the acceptable and the perfect will of
God.”21 “And they that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh,
with the vices and concupiscences. If we live in the Spirit, let
us also walk in the Spirit.”22 In the exercise of their ministry,
the apostles were persecuted, “always bearing about in our
body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may
20 Rom. 6: 6.
21 Ibid., 12: 2.
22 Gal. 5: 24.

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233

be made manifest in our bodies.” 23 These ideas, repeated in
very different ways by St. Paul, comprise one of the funda­
mental points of spiritual doctrine, and a commentary on the
Master’s: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of
wheat falling into the ground, die, itself remaineth alone.
But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his
life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world
keepeth it unto life eternal.” 24
Thus purified, the Christian must put on the new man 25
and be ever enlightened and renewed according to the image
of his Creator. “Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy
and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, mod­
esty, patience; bearing with one another, if any have a com­
plaint against another. Even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so
do you also. But above all these things have charity, which is
the bond of perfection.” We must imitate Christ and those
who resemble Him; we must have His sentiments, assume
the spirit of His mysteries, His passion, crucifixion, death,
burial, and ascension. So it was that St. Paul suffered the pangs
of labor until Christ should be formed in the souls of the
faithful, until their souls should be enlightened by the true
light of life.
A soul so enlightened and configured to Christ must live
in continual union with our Lord. “Therefore, if you be
risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ
is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are
above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are
dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God.”26 “And let
23 II Cor. 4: 10.
24 John 12: 24 f.
23 Col. 3: 3-17.
28 Ibid., 1-3.

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the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts; wherein also you
are called in one body. And be ye thankful. Let the word of
Christ dwell in you abundantly: in all wisdom, teaching and
admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual
canticles, singing in grace in your hearts to God. All what­
soever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by
Him.” 27 “When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you
also shall appear with Him in glory.” 28 Thus, each member
of Christ should receive supernatural life progressively, ad­
vancing in sanctification until he reaches full and perfect
maturity.

The communion of saints
One of the principal qualities of a living body is the union
and solidarity of its parts. In the human body, each member
or organ profits from the activity of the others. The heart
could not make the blood circulate if the blood were not re­
newed by the respiration of the lungs; and respiration itself
would be impossible if the heart stopped beating. If one organ
functions well, the others, well nourished in their turn, ex­
ercise their functions all the better ; but if, on the contrary, one
member or organ is sick, all the others are affected.
In a moral body we find the same phenomenon verified.
Let one member of a family disgrace himself, and the whole
family is shamed. On the other hand, a family is overjoyed
when one of its own covers himself with glory. This solidarity
is straiter in die mystical body of Christ than anywhere else.
The communion of saints is a mysterious community of life
27 Ibid., 15-17.
28 Ibid., 4.

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235

and of interests in virtue of which whatever one member of
the Church has and does reflects on all the others.
The principal part of this mysterious communion is the
divine intercourse between God and souls through Christ.
The Blessed Trinity is the source of all supernatural life,
which, like a stream of living water, descends through Christ
to all the blessed in heaven, to the souls in purgatory, and to
all Christians on earth, making its influence felt even in un­
believers. Then this stream of divine life reascends toward
Christ and the Blessed Trinity in the form of prayer, merit,
adoration, and thanksgiving.
From the point of view of expiation as well, the sins we have
committed have been transferred to our Savior’s head, and
the full value of His merits has become our property. Each
time a sin is pardoned us or a grace is accorded to us, it is
done in virtue of our communion with the Saint of saints.
The members have communion with one another, too: they
share one another’s goods. The saints in heaven intercede for
us, and through our veneration receive an accidental glory
that is like an added ray in their aureole. We gain indul­
gences, have Masses said, and offer sacrifices for the souls in
purgatory; in return we shall be rewarded for our charity.
The deceased father and mother are helped by their children
still living in the world, and the Lord blesses this assistance.
Lastly, all the members of the Church militant who journey
toward eternity together can be of help to one another. The
virtues and prayers of one draws the divine mercy upon the
other—the tears of a St. Monica obtain die conversion of a St.
Augustine.
It must also be recognized that the crimes of the wicked
sometimes bring down the effects of divine vengeance upon

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the just. An atheistic school prevents a child’s mind from
opening up to the things of God, provides him with the
means of becoming perverted, makes vice easy and virtue dif­
ficult for him. For the impiety that promotes and results from
such conditions, reparation must be made.
Besides, evil is not found merely in the enemies of the
Church ; it seeks to penetrate within. The Church is not only,
as certain heretics have believed, a spiritual society of pre­
destined just; it includes sinners even among its ministers.
Their sins and the sins of the faithful mar the external features
of the Spouse of Christ, as St. Catherine of Siena was told,29
but the light and grace the Church gives are nonetheless divine
for all that.30 “For the evil of My ministers can neither spoil
nor defile My blood nor lessen its grace and virtue.”31 “And
since the mystery of the sacrament cannot be diminished or
divided by their sins, the reverence due to the treasure of My
blood, and not to them personally, should not be less because
of them.”32 However, it remains true, as our Lord said to the
Virgin of Siena: “I have laid upon you the charge of working
for the salvation of your soul and the souls of your neighbors
in the mystical body of Holy Church, by example, by doc­
trine, by continual prayer. . . . Cease not to cast up before Me
the incense of prayer for the salvation of souls, for I would
have mercy on the world. Widi your prayers and sweat and
tears will I wash the face of My spouse, Holy Church.”33
The Lord permits evil, as St. Augustine says,34 only because
29 Dialogue, chaps. 13, 14, 86.
80 Ibid., chap. 12.
81 Ibid., chaps. 14, 120.
82 Ibid., chap. 118.
88 Ibid., chaps. 15, 17, 86.
84 Enchiridion, chap. II.

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237

He is powerful enough and good enough to draw a greater
good from it; so manifesting both His mercy and His justice
and showing the indefeasible rights of the Sovereign Good
to be loved above all things.
Good can exist in this life only in a state of conflict, and
that is why the Church on earth is called “militant”; for she
must fight without ceasing against the maxims of the world
and the spirit of evil. But she has the promises of eternal
life, and, if at times she must say harsh things to her children,
they ought to answer her as Peter answered our Lord : “Lord,
to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”85
We must conclude, then, that the sons of the Church can­
not be united with one another unless they are united to their
head. All coordination, St. Thomas says,36 presupposes a sub­
ordination to the very principle of order. Soldiers can have
coordination only through subjection to their leader. In the
Church, despite diversity of peoples, institutions, and human
interests, there must be sincere and profound unity of faith, of
hope, charity, and supernatural obedience.
Consequently children of the Church ought to be united by
the mutual observance of true justice and true charity, real
virtues altogether different from the word-of-mouth variety
which robs the sublime words of their true meaning. Justice
and charity ought to be practiced particularly in regard to
the suffering. We should heed the words of St. Paul: “Bear
ye one another’s burdens; and so you shall fulfill the law of
Christ. For if any man think himself to be something, whereas
he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let everyone prove
his own work. . . . For every one shall bear his own bur85 John 6: 69.
88 la Ilae, q. 100, a. 6.

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den.” 37 The two chief services one Christian can render an­
other in this life, are prayer and reparation. When the Blessed
Virgin appeared at Lourdes, she recommended that we “pray
and do penance.”
When the good pray for the wicked, their prayer calls forth
the pity and pardon of tire Lord. If faithful Christians do
penance, unfaithful Christians feel the good effects of it, and
their offenses are more likely to be pardoned. Sometimes a
just man is the savior of an impious man. Had there been
ten just men in Sodom, Sodom would have been spared.
Finally, not only can we pray and satisfy for our neighbor, but
we can merit for him, too, if not in strict justice as our Savior
did, at least with the merit of congruity founded on the bonds
of charity uniting us to God and souls.
Why did Providence permit the terrible European war of
some years back which stained almost a whole continent with
blood just when its peoples were dreaming of universal peace ?
How can we escape seeing the chastisement of God in this?
Why should there be such chastisement? Because the word
from heaven, “Pray and do penance,” was not heeded. God
punishes men through men. Why? Because Christians are
often only half-Christians, the “practicing” are not virtuous,
the good are not good enough, those consecrated to God are
not really holy. More mortification and a return to the auster­
ity of old, inspired by hatred of sin and love of God, would
bring peace back to the world. In our own time the con­
version of the good to a better life, is perhaps the most effi­
cacious good to be accomplished ; for, in the mystical body,
supernatural life descends from above in order to reascend
toward the Lord. Let the good join repentance of heart to
87 Gal. 6: 2-5.

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239

prayer and action, then in virtue of the communion of saints
diey will save many others in saving themselves. To dam up
the inflowing grace that Christ wills to communicate to other
souls through us would be a terrible misfortune.
Charity is “the bond of perfection” in the mystical body
uniting members to their head and members with one an­
other; this bond ought to keep on growing until in eternity
the saints and the angels have become one and are, in a way,
but one spirit with God. “But he who is joined to the Lord
is one spirit.” 38
Such perfect union of mind and heart cannot be attained
by regarding souls simply in the light of the senses or as de­
formed by prejudice; for, seen so, the diversity of tempera­
ments, inclinations, characters, and human conceptions would
revolt and disgust us. We need to realize that this diversity,
when subordinated to a higher, supernatural, and truly divine
principle, can contribute to the harmony and beauty of the
whole.
We must see souls in the light of faith. Then, beneath a
sometimes dull and rough exterior, we reach the supernatural
being of souls—their nature, not as opposed to grace, but as
capable of receiving it. And we end by discovering among
their very real faults, the work of the Savior. Failing to see
souls in this light, we will only too often keep in embittered
hearts the memory of hard words said to us, sometimes even
when they have been taken back by contrition and confession.
When we see souls in the light of faith, we cannot help but
love them and try to contribute to their sanctification. Let us
remember our Lord’s prayer: “That they all may be one, as
Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee. . . . And the glory
»81 Cor. 6: 17.

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which Thou hast given Me, I have given to them ; that they
may be one, as We also are one.”39 Let us see one another in
this light. Then divisions will begin to disappear. The heart
will grow large with active, not merely verbal, charity. Justice
according to the spirit rather than the letter of the law will
be established, real and simple obedience, equally alien to
servility and insubordination. This is more than the keeping
of the law; it is true equity,40 wholly penetrated with the
spirit of Christ.
We should think of the great doctrine of the mystical body
of our Lord while assisting at Mass, in which the sacrifice of
the cross is perpetuated on the altar. Communion ought to
be a participation in this sacrifice; by it our Lord desires to
make our hearts like to His own heart of priest and victim; in
continuing to offer Himself, He offers His mystical body,
particularly those souls that pray and suffer supernaturally
somewhat as He suffered.
St. Paul could say: “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for
you and fill up those things that are wanting of the suffer­
ings of Christ, in my flesh for His body, which is the
Church.”41 So, in a sense, in the mystical body, Christ is in
agony until the end of the world. From this point of view, as
stated many times by St. Paul, contemplation on the re­
deeming Passion and suffering supernaturally borne are as
necessary for the mystical body as the light of the sun is for
our bodily eyes.42
Unfortunately, great sufferings, which could become puri­
fying, only too often merely crush and exasperate souls not
89 John 17: 21 f.
40 Cf. Ila Ilae, q. 120, a.2.
41 Col. 1: 24.
42 Cf. Chardon, op. cit., Ier entretien, chaps. I, 2, 3, 18, 24.

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241

open to the light that would reach them from the crucifix
and the tabernacle, if they would but pray and persevere in
prayer. God’s providence sends afflictions not only to individ­
uals, but to groups of men, that they may come to know them­
selves better, to find out by experience their own limitations,
to discover and correct their faults, to aspire to a higher good,
and to enlist a more perfect help in reaching that end.
We sometimes believe a conflict of duty exists between sub­
ordinate obligations when opposing human passions have
really upset their perfect balance.43 To see their subordination,
we must purify our hearts by prayer and love of God and
neighbor; we must silence pride and listen to our Savior; we
must be as kind and understanding with others as we need
them to be with us. The gift of understanding will then illu­
minate our understanding, and we shall grasp in apparently
complex and difficult cases the true meaning of our obliga­
tions, die right way to our last end or salvation. We shall dis­
cover how all truth and all human justice are subordinated
to the “one thing necessary,” the thing we must seek above
all others.44 Calmly, as Christians, we can then recall that, if
we have a family and an earthly country to love and defend,
we are also members of a great spiritual family founded by
Christ, the mystical body of the Savior. We Christians belong
to that Church which combats the spirit of guile and iniquity
in this life, which suffers in purgatory, and which in heaven,
our true homeland, is intimately associated with the life of
God, with His infallible knowledge, sovereignly luminous
with total and infinite Truth, in His immutable love of the
unmixed Good, and with His eternal happiness that no dis45 Cf. Ila Ilae, q. 101, a. 4.
44 Cf. ibid., q. 8, a. 4.

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order can trouble or decrease. Under the guidance of the Good
Shepherd, who incorporates us with Himself, who assimilates
us to Himself by giving us life, let us push on toward our
true country, which is His and ours, too, since the life of
grace is eternal life already begun.
Having spoken of God’s love for us and the return He ex­
pects from us, of the love of God and the mystery of the
cross in our Lord, and lastly, of the love of God and the mys­
tical body of Christ, we are now about to consider our progress
in love. The Christian grows in love by self-imposed mortifi­
cation, by meritorious acts, by Holy Communion, by the
crosses sent to purify senses and spirit and to make him work
with and like Christ and His Blessed Mother, for his neigh­
bor’s salvation.
The doctrine as developed by St. Thomas and St. John
of the Cross is what we shall follow. With the latter we shall
see, as we have indicated in another work,45 that “the passive
purification of the senses is common, and occurs in the greater
number of beginners”46 in order to lead them into the illu­
minative way. We shall also see that the proficient or advanced
find themselves in “the way of illumination or of infused
contemplation wherewith God Himself feeds and nourishes
the soul.”47 As to the passive purification of the spirit, it is,
as we shall show, the door to the perfect unitive way, which
in turn is a prelude to the life of heaven.
45 Christian Perfection and Contemplation, tr. Doyle, pp. 6, 7, 223.
48 The Dark. Night, Bk. I, chap. 8.
47 Ibid., chap. 14.

PART II
The Love of God and Mortification

CHAPTER VI
Mortification

or

Active Purification

Spiritual progress, being especially progress in charity,
ought to make us fulfill more and more perfectly the two
great precepts of love of God and of neighbor, to which the
other commandments and the three evangelical counsels are
subordinated. In other words, we must make God some re­
turn for the love He has shown us in creating us, in pre­
serving us, in having us participate in His intimate life, in
increasing the life of grace in us that He may bring us to the
life of eternity. Progress in charity is measured not by sensible
consolations, which sometimes accompany devotion, but by
two essential manifestations: a dying to sin and progressive
configuration to Christ Jesus by imitation of His virtues.
Let us consider these two signs of spirtual advancement;
and first, the dying to sin. Speaking to all of us, as St. Luke
remarks, our Lord said : “If any man will come after Me, let
him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” 1
“Let him deny himself”: this is the law of mortification,
which should be self-imposed. “Let him take up his cross”:
this is the obligation to bear patiently the trials God Himself
sends us to purify us and to make us work for the salvation
of souls. To make it clear that renouncement is not an end, but
a means, masters of the spiritual life often call mortification
active purification because we impose it on ourselves, and the
1 Luke 9: 23.
245

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cross passive purification, because it is imposed on us. Both of
these forms of purification we are about to discuss; the former,
first.
ARTICLE I
PRACTICAL NATURALISM

Mortification and humility as permanently organized in
the religious life through the practice of the three counsels of
poverty, chastity, and obedience, are things so contrary to the
spirit of the world that it feels forced to deny their necessity.
Practical naturalism keeps reappearing in one form or an­
other, and it always makes little of mortification and the vows
of religion, fancying that tliese vows are not means of deliver­
ance for a man, but an obstacle to the good he ought to
achieve. It questions why Christianity talks so much about
mortification, if it is a doctrine of life ; of renouncement, if its
task is to assimilate rather than to destroy human activity ; of
obedience, if the gospel is a doctrine of liberty. Naturalism
contends that these passive virtues have nothing but the force
of inertia, and matter little except for negative souls incapable
of positive activity.
It asks why we should depreciate our natural activity, re­
minds us that nature is good and comes from God, who has
made it with a bent to love its Author more than itself and
above all things. We are told to recall that our passions or
emotions, that is, the different movements of our sensible ap­
petite, such as desire and aversion, joy and sadness, are morally
neither good nor evil; they become so only through the in­
tention of our will when consenting to them, arousing them,
controlling them, or failing to control them. The point is then

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made that we need not mortify the passions but only regulate
them, as they are forces to be utilized, not destroyed. An
appeal to the teaching of St. Thomas follows, noting how
much he differs from many spiritual authors and in particu­
lar the author of The Imitation.2 That the expressions found
in the latter’s treatment of “the different motions of nature
and of grace” are somewhat Jansenistic is delicately proposed.
To wage such war on our own judgment and will may
make us a prey to scrupulosity, reduce us to a state of servi­
tude, and rob us of all spontaneity. We should not condemn
the life of the world, since Providence has placed us in the
world, not to fight it but to make it better. The value of re­
ligious life can be measured by its social influence. That it
may exercise this influence, it must not be hampered by ex­
cessive preoccupation with renouncement, mortification,
humility, and obedience. On the contrary, it ought to permit
the greatest possible development of the spirit of initiative
and every natural aspiration. Only in this way can we under­
stand the people of our own time and make contact with a
world we should not despise but improve. This is the ob­
jection formulated by Americanism and repeated by Modern­
ism, a clever mixture of truth and falsity which invokes St.
Thomas’ authority for support.
St. Thomas does say that the emotions or movements of the
sensible appetite, the passions as he calls them, are forces
to be utilized and not destroyed. He also says we should
regulate and not kill them. Nevertheless we must not forget
that as soon as they are not well regulated by temperance,
detachment, chastity, strength, patience, humility, meekness,
justice, obedience, and the other virtues animated by charity,
2 Bk. ΙΠ, chap. 54.

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these passions become the roots of a host of faults and vices.
Almost all the virtues, both the theological and the cardinal,
as well as the others connected with them, must avoid two
contrary vices. Now vices and their consequences ought not
simply to be covered up or regulated or moderated ; they must
be rooted out. The virtue of penance inspires us to make
reparation for our sins by mortification.3 St. Thomas has
laid open to us, in the Secunda secundae of the Summa theo­
logica, the whole field for mortification by his enumeration
of the vices: the seven capital sins, progeny of the three con­
cupiscences and parents each to six or seven offspring worse
than themselves.4 St. Gregory describes the terrible progeny
of the capital sins as numbering more than forty vices, which
happily at least are not connected like the virtues; for, unlike
the kingdom of good, the kingdom of evil can never be one
since it has forsaken unity.5 The material for mortification
is scattered but, sad to say, nowhere lacking, whatever ama­
teurs may say of the “short and easy way” to go to God.
Frequently, too, practical naturalism repeats St. Thomas’
principle: “Grace must not destroy but perfect nature.” The
motions of nature, it is added, are not as disordered as the
author of The Imitation says; we must have the full develop­
ment of nature under grace. When a man lacks the true spirit
of faith, he misinterprets the very principle he invokes. St.
Thomas as here quoted is speaking of nature in the meta­
physical and not in the ascetical sense of the term; that is,
of human nature as such, the nature of man as abstractly
defined, in its essential goodness as a work of God. As such
8 Cf. Hia, q. 85, concerning the virtue of penance and its relation to the other
virtues.
4Cf. la Ilae, q.84.
6 Ibid., q.73, a. I, ad turn.

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it certainly ought to be perfected and not destroyed by
grace.
In this instance St. Thomas is not speaking of man’s fallen
and wounded nature deformed by that often unconscious
egoism which alloys so many of our actions, human nature as
really found in the concrete since the sin of Adam. And it is
of just this nature, hurt by wounds so slow to heal even after
baptism, that ascetical and mystical works like The Imitation
speak. And drey are merely restating what St. Thomas him­
self taught about the results of original and personal sin.6
The disorder consequent upon sin ought certainly to be de­
stroyed; and grace works for this destruction, for it not only
lifts us up but also heals us, gratia sanans et elevans.
To a thoughtless young man who never left off invoking
the principle, “Grace does not destroy nature,” a fine priest
and teacher once answered: “Grace not only does not destroy
nature, but reconstitutes and restores it by destroying the
seeds of death in it; that done, grace perfects nature in pro­
portion to the thoroughness of this salutary destruction, as the
lives of the saints all show.” Only in the saints can we see what
the “full development of nature under grace” means. To
look elsewhere is to risk a misunderstanding that may end in
perverting it completely, by destroying both nature and grace
under the pretext of saving everything.
Because the equivocal use of the word “nature” provides
the lukewarm and the mediocre with an escape, they are apt
to keep and cherish it with swift and disastrous consequences.
The tree is judged by its fruits. Because they have cared too
much about the world, these new style apostles have not con­
verted the world but have been converted by it They begin
8 Ibid., q.85 et 86.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

by ignoring the consequences of original sin; holding, with
the Pelegians and Jean Jacques Rousseau, that man is born
good. Next, they forget the infinite gravity of mortal sin as an
offense against God; and consider it only from the human,
the external, point of view, by the evident evil it works in the
present life. As a natural consequence they cannot appreciate
at all the gravity of sins of the spirit: incredulity, presumption,
pride, and the disorders resulting from these.
Likewise they disregard the infinite sublimity of our super­
natural end. Instead of speaking of the beatific vision and the
life of eternity, they indulge in talk about a vague moral
ideal, tinged with religion, wherein the radical opposition
between heaven and hell disappear. Finally, the writers to
whom we refer have completely forgotten that our Lord
chose the cross as the great means to save the world.
By its four principal consequences this doctrine plainly
reveals its sources: practical naturalism or the practical nega­
tion of the supernatural, a principle that has at times been
openly declared in this form, “Mortification is not essential to
Christianity.”
ARTICLE II
THE NECESSITY OF MOMIFICATION

According to the teaching of St. Paul, all these more or less
cleverly presented inventions clearly have no connection with
the life and doctrine of our Lord and the saints. The work
our Savior came to do on earth was not human philanthropy,
but divine charity ; He accomplished it by talking to men more
about their duties than about their rights, by telling them they
must wholly die to sin in order to receive new and abundant

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life; and He willed to prove His love for diem by dying on
the cross for their redemption. The saints have followed Him;
they have all been marked by the likeness of Christ crucified;
they have all loved mortification and the cross, whether they
were saints of the primitive Church, like the first martyrs,
or saints of the Middle Ages like St. Bernard, St. Dominic,
and St. Francis of Assisi, or saints of more recent times like
St. Benedict Joseph Labre and the holy Cure of Ars.
Our Lord was speaking to us all when He said: “If any man
will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his
cross daily and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life
shall lose it: for he that shall lose his life for My sake shall
save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole
world and lose himself and cast away himself?”7 “Amen,
amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into
the ground die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he
that hateth his life in this world keepeth it unto life eternal.” 8
Blessed are they who hate themselves in the sense in which
the saints use that expression. Because they glorify God by
hating that self within them which is compounded of egoism
and pride and by loving their own souls holily, in and for
God, they glorify Him on earth, and His glory will be their
song for all eternity. God helps them in this work of dying
that He may make them live with new and superabundant
life, for He has said: “I am the true vine; and My Father is
the husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit,
He will take away; and every one that beareth fruit, He will
purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” 9 This pruning
7 Luke 9: 23-25.
8 John 12: 24 f.
8 Ibid., 15: I f.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

is surely not done without suffering. The mortification and
patience demanded in the Sermon on the Mount,10 as we
shall see, go far in that direction.
St. Paul continues the teaching of the Master. He does not
merely say, like pagan moralists, that man must restrain his
passions. He says: “I chastise my body and bring it into sub­
jection ; lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself
should become a castaway.” 11 “The flesh lusteth against the
spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. For these are contrary
one to another; so that you do not the things that you
would.” 12 “For I am delighted with the law of God, accord­
ing to the inward man ; but I see another law in my members,
fighting against the law of my mind and captivating me in
the law of sin that is.in my members. Unhappy man that I
am, who shall deliver me from die body of this death ?”18
“And they that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh, with
the vices and concupiscences.” 14 Moreover, by the works of
the flesh, St. Paul meant not simply immorality, licentious­
ness, but also, as he says in the same place: “enmities, con­
tentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects.” 18
All of diese are opposed to the fruits of the Spirit: “charity,
joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mild­
ness, faith, modesty, continency.” 10 That the new man may
live, the old man must indeed die. “This then I say and testify
in the Lord: That henceforward you walk not as also the
Gentiles. ... You have not so learned Christ: if so be that
10 Matt., chaps. 5-7.
111 Cor. 9: 27.
12 Gal. 5: 17.
18 Rom. 7: 22-24.
14 Gal. 5: 24.
16 Ibid., 20.
18 Ibid., 22 f.

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253

you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, as the
truth is in Jesus: to put off, according to former conversation,
the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of
its error. And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and
put on the new man, who according to God is created in
justice and holiness of truth. . . . And grieve not the holy
Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of re­
demption. Let all bitterness and anger and indignation and
clamor and blasphemy be put away from you, with all malice.
. . . Be ye therefore followers of God, as most dear children;
and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us and hath de­
livered Himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for
an odor of sweetness.” 17
“Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things
that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of
God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are
upon the earth. For you are dead; and your life is hid with
Christ in God.” 18 “If you live according to the flesh, you shall
die; but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you
shall live. For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they
are the sons of God.” 19
The law of mortification and the cross applies especially to
apostles, who ought to follow our Lord Jesus Christ more
closely diat they may manifest Him to the world and save
souls. This is why St. Paul writes: “We have this treasure
[of divine light] in earthen vessels, that the excellency may
be of die power of God and not of us. In all things we suffer
tribulation, but are not distressed. We are straitened, but are
17 Eph. 4:17-5: 2.
18 Col. 3:1-3.
10 Rom. 8:13 f.

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254

not destitute. We suffer persecution, but are not forsaken.
We are cast down, but we perish not. Always bearing about
in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of
Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies. For we who live
are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life
also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh. . . .
For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man
is corrupted, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For
that which is at present momentary and light of our tribula­
tion worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal
weight of glory.” 20
St. Paul’s words, like his Master’s, are a far cry from the
practical naturalism we spoke of earlier ; for to maintain that
mortification is not of the essence of Christianity amounts to
saying that Christianity does not teach us to die to sin and
its consequences, that the virtue of penance is unnecessary
for Christians. The preaching of the Precursor and all that St.
Paul wrote about putting off the old man and putting on the
new have no place in such teaching and have to be passed
over or suppressed.

ARTICLE III
PRINCIPLES OF ST. THOMAS AND ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS
CONCERNING NECESSARY PURIFICATION

Later, with St. Thomas, we shall study the four great
reasons why mortification and the cross are imposed on us;
let it suffice us for the moment to recall as a fundamental
principle the specific difference he pointed out between Chris­
tian or infused temperance, as described in the Gospel and
20 II Cor. 4: 7-17.

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255

St. Paul, and acquired temperance, as described by Aristotle
and the great pagan moralists.
He thus expresses himself: “Any change introduced into
the difference expressed in a definition involves a difference
of species. But the definition of infused virtue contains the
words, “which God works in us without us.” 21 Therefore ac­
quired virtue, to which these words cannot apply, is not the
same species as infused virtue.22
There is a twofold specific difference among habits. The first is
taken from the specific and formal aspects of their objects. Now
the object of every virtue is a good considered as in that virtue’s
proper matter: thus the object of temperance is a good in respect of
the pleasures connected with the concupiscence of touch. The
formal aspect of this object is from reason which fixes the mean in
these concupiscences . . . Now it is evident that the mean that is
appointed in such concupiscences according to the rule of human
reason, is seen under a different aspect from the mean which is
fixed according to the divine rule. For instance, in the consump­
tion of food, the mean fixed by human reason is that food should
not harm the health of the body nor hinder the use of reason:
whereas, according to the divine rule, it behooves man to chastise
his body and bring it into subjection (I Cor. 9:27), by abstinence
in the matter of food and drink and the like. It is therefore evident
that infused and acquired temperance differ in species; and the
same applies to the other virtues.
The other specific difference among habits is taken from the
21 la Ilae, q.63, a. 4.
22 Λ virtue is therefore essentially infused when it cannot be acquired by the
repetition of acts but can be produced in us only by God. By analogy, theologians
generally speak of infused contemplation (although contemplation is not a virtue,
a habitus, but an act) because, unlike philosophical or even theological contempla­
tion, it is not the result of our personal activity but is produced in us by a special
inspiration of God. Infused contemplation is not an act that we can perform at
will, like the ordinary acts of faith, hope, or charity or the simple attentive con­
sideration of the mysteries of faith.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

things to which they are directed : a man’s health and a horse’s are
not of the same species, on account of the difference between the
natures to which their respective healths are directed. In the same
sense, the Philosopher says (Polit., Bk. Ill) that citizens have di­
verse virtues according as they are well directed to diverse forms
of government. In the same way, too, those infused moral virtues,
whereby men behave well in respect of their being fellow citizens
with the saints, and of the household of God (Eph. 2:19) differ
from the acquired virtues, whereby man behaves well in respect of
human affairs.

Infused or Christian temperance and the acquired temper­
ance described by Aristotle are virtues of different orders.
The Christian virtue, under the direction of faith and the
inspiration of charity and penance, requires mortification that
acquired temperance does not demand. Ruled by the prin­
ciples of natural reason, the acquired moral virtues could go
on increasing indefinitely without ever attaining the dignity
of the correlative infused moral virtues; for the latter have
an essentially supernatural object, inaccessible to the natural
powers of man or angel; they are ruled by principles essen­
tially supernatural, and thus, in proportion to their formal
objects which specify them, they are directly conformed to
participation in the divine nature, that is, sanctifying grace
as received at baptism. The infused moral virtues do not be­
long to the natural order, whether human or angelic, but
to the supernatural order of the inner life of God. Hence
infused temperance, and the virtues annexed to it, are ruled
by faith and infused prudence, under the inspiration of char­
ity and penance. This we know from the Church’s doctrines
on original sin and the gravity and consequences of mortal
sin, as well as other teachings of the Church, all of which

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257

can come to us only through divine revelation, since they are
above the natural grasp of even the angelic intellects.
Lastly, let us remark that, according to St. Thomas, the in­
fused moral virtues ought to keep growing, to climb toward
the summit of perfection, without deviating toward their
contrary vices on the right or tire left; they are something
besides and above the social virtues of a good citizen. They
progressively merit the name of purifying {purgatoriae} vir­
tues or virtues of the purified soul {virtutes purgati animi}.
We recall how St. Thomas describes the purifying virtues:
“Some are virtues of men who are on their way and tending
toward the divine similitude; and these are called perfecting
virtues. Thus prudence, by contemplating the things of God,
counts as nothing all things of the world, and directs all the
thoughts of the soul to God alone; temperance, so far as
nature allows, neglects the needs of the body; fortitude pre­
vents the soul from being afraid of neglecting the body and
rising to heavenly things; and justice consists in the soul’s giv­
ing wholehearted consent to follow the way thus proposed.
Besides these, there are the virtues of those who have already
attained to the divine similitude: these are called the perfect
virtues. Thus prudence sees nothing but the things of God;
temperance knows no earthly desire; fortitude has no knowl­
edge of passion; and justice, by imitating the divine mind, is
united thereto by an everlasting covenant. Such are the vir­
tues attributed to the blessed, or in this life to some who are
at the summit of perfection.” 23
According to St. Thomas’ teaching, every Christian should
become an interior soul and attain to the truly solid, purifying
virtues which, with actual grace, are capable of resisting the
23 la Ilae, q.61, a. 5.

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temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But these
purifying virtues, as St. Thomas has just described them, are
conceivable only in a spiritual organism animated by an al­
ready high degree of charity and they must be accompanied
by the corresponding gifts of the Holy Ghost, under the direc­
tion of the gift of wisdom.24 Therefore even people in the
active life should aspire to complete development of the spir­
itual organism ; they ought to tend toward perfection not only
by the moral virtues, but by the theological virtues and the
gifts. Aldiough evidently not called to the life of a Carthu­
sian or a Carmelite, they ought to remember, as St. Thomas
says, that the active life disposes us for the contemplative
life,25 that it precedes the contemplative life “as that which is
common to all precedes in the order of generation that which
is proper to the perfect.” 26 The contemplative life belongs
properly to the perfect because, as the holy doctor says, “it is
directed to the love of God not of any degree but to that
which is perfect.” 27 By its radiation, love becomes the veri- .
table soul of the aspostolate.
Moreover, many Christian souls ought to unite the life
of Martha with Mary’s in the mixed life. Our Lord willed
His apostles to have this type of life. In itself it is higher than
either the active or the purely contemplative life.28 If our
own hearts are not purified, if we ourselves are not closely
united to God, we cannot snatch souls from evil, make them
love Christ more than themselves, and lead them successfully
to the works of salvation.
2i Ibid., q.68, a. 5.
25 Ha Ilae, q. 182, a. 4.
28 Ibid., ad lum.
27 Ibid.
28 Ila Ilae, q.188, a.6; Illa, q.40, a-i, ad 2um; a.2, ad 311m; Ila Ilae, q.182,
a.i, ad turn.

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If a truly perfect life requires the full development of the
spiritual organism by the virtues and the gifts connected with
charity, a profound purification is needed to reach such a
development. To obtain a clear idea of this truth, we need only
recall that, in our advance toward the summit of perfection,
often we deviate from the right path, and we then try to make
good our error in one direction by going as far wrong in the
other. Without exterior and interior mortification and the
testing of purification, we cannot keep to the ascending course
traced by the Lord between negligence and oversolicitude,
imprudence and cunning, cowardice and rashness, softness
and stubbornness, timidity and pride, discouragement and
presumption, self-depreciation and bragging, obedience and
servility, inept indulgence and excessive harshness.
We find divergence from the right path easy because of
secret pride, of subtle self-love worming its way into the
apparent practice of the highest virtues. Therefore, at the
beginning of the Ascent of Carmel, St. John of the Cross
described a symbolic mount at die base of which the soul
finds three paths which seem to lead to the summit ; although
in reality only one path does so. In the center the narrow
way of perfection plunges steeply upward. It begins with
total abnegation. At the entrance we read: “Nothing, nothing,
nothing,” and a little fardier on: “Since I desire nothing out
of self-love, everything is given to me without my seeking it.”
The misguided spirit may take the way of the good things
of die earth, where it is written: “The more I seek, the less
I find ; I cannot climb the mountain because I have lost my
way.” Whoever takes this route must ultimately make this
admission.
The imperfect spirit chooses a third way—wishing to reach

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the goods of heaven without too much trouble and stopping to
delight in first consolations or even in the exercise of the
apostolate. Over this road we read: “I have dallied and so
have not gone far or high, for I did not take the narrow path.”
To arrive at the summit of perfect union with God, we must
take the narrow path of mortification and of the purification
of the senses and the spirit: “How narrow is the gate and
strait is the way that leadeth to life !” 29 But the route that
is so narrow at the beginning widens out more and more in
the sketch made by St. John of the Cross. He shows that it
leads to the four cardinal virtues, to the virtues of the purified
soul, then to the seven gifts, to the perfect theological virtues,
to the twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost, and finally to the
very summit of the mount where we read: “Divine silence,
divine wisdom, unending banquet; the glory and honor of
God five alone on this mountain.” This is truly, as the
Psalmist declares, “a mountain in which God is well pleased
to dwell”30 and to which He calls His friends.
29 Matt. 7:14.
80 Ps. 57: 16.

CHAPTER VII
Mortification and the Results of Original Sin

Mortification is not, as naturalism would have us believe,
the destruction of nature, but the restoration or healing of
nature through the destruction of sin and its consequences.
It entails surgery, but only to extirpate the seeds of corruption
and to restore health. It can be defined as “death to sin,” which
is, in reality, death to death or increasingly perfect life, holy
and pure and unalterably united to God. An integral defi­
nition would put it: Mortification is the destruction of sin and
its consequences, the renouncement of things licit but not
useful for us, so that preoccupation with them may not absorb
us to the detriment of divine union.1 Being ordered to the
spiritual edification of Christians, this destruction is necessary
for all; for everyone, each according to his condition, ought
to tend toward the perfection of charity in virtue of the first
commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy
whole heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength
and with all thy mind.” 2 And if all cannot actually practice
the three counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, all
ought to have the spirit of these counsels, the spirit of de­
tachment, that they may die more and more completely to
the three concupiscences and fulfill more and more perfectly
the one great commandment.3
1 Cf. Summa, Ila Ilae, q. 184, a. 2; la Ilac, q. 108, a. 4.
2 Luke 10: 27.
’Ila Hae, q. 184, a.3, c.
261

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Mortification as here defined has nothing in common with
the misrepresentation of it given by naturalism, with a view
to denying its necessity. It is a far cry, too, from what the
Jansenists made of it, for their proud austerity did not en­
large the heart but narrowed it. They forgot the words of
the divine Master: “But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy
head and wash thy face, that thou appear not to men to fast,
but to the Father who is in secret. And thy Father who seeth
in secret will repay thee.”4
Mortification is called active purification, for we impose it
upon ourselves in conformity with what Christ “said to all,”
as St. Luke relates: “If any man will come after Me, let him
deny himself.” 5 What our Lord immediately adds: “and take
up his cross daily and follow Me,” refers to whatever passive
purifications God imposes on us, as Fie laid the cross upon our
Savior. God Himself comes, in fact, to bring the work of ac­
tive purification to deep and full completion, if we will but
permit Him, so that we may attain to perfect purity and
be associated in the great mystery of redemption dirough suf­
fering. “The Lord killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth
down to hell and bringeth back again. . . . He humbleth and
He exalteth, . . . lifteth up the poor from the dunghill: that
he may sit with princes, and hold the throne of glory.” 6 These
words of the Canticle of Anna come back to lasting life
in the Magnificat.
Mortification is, tlien, necessary for the soul to be delivered
from sin and its consequences, that it may “die to sin” and
cleave more purely and firmly to God by imitating Christ
4 Matt. 6: 18.
• Luke 9: 23.
6 I Kings 2: 6-8.

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263

Jesus. These two big reasons can be expressed more concretely
by being divided as follows: Mortification is necessary (1)
to destroy the consequences of original sin in us, (2) to do
away with the results of our own personal sins, (3) to sub­
ordinate our natural activity perfectly to the life of grace,
never losing sight of the infinite sublimity of our supernatural
end, (4) to imitate Christ crucified and be associated with
Him in the work of redemption.
In the following article we shall speak of the first reason.
We shall see the consequences, the wounds of original sin
that continue to exist in the baptized. We shall examine the
nature of these wounds and learn how they are treated and
gradually healed.
ARTICLE I
THE RESULTS OF ORIGINAL SIN IN THE BAPTIZED

In this matter we must avoid the pessimism of the Protes­
tants and the Jansenists, who maintain that our will has been
destroyed by original sin and unrestored by grace. We must
be equally careful not to fall into the unrealistic optimism
of those who, partly forgetting about the fomes peccati,
seem to believe that the state of fallen man is in no way in­
ferior to a purely natural state and that baptism delivers us
from every disorder resulting from original sin.
Baptism certainly produces two inestimable effects: sanc­
tifying grace and the baptismal character; and the “good of
grace in one [little child] is greater than the good of nature
in the whole universe.” 1 It has more value than all the angelic
natures taken together, because it belongs to an infinitely
TIa Ilae, q. 113, a. 9, ad aum.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

higher and strictly divine order, and makes us temples of
the indwelling Trinity. Baptism incorporates us into Christ,
illuminates our intellect by faith, converts our will to God by
hope and charity, opens the gates of heaven to us, and remits
all the punishment due to our sins.
However, baptism does not take away the penalties of the
present life: sorrow, concupiscence and death, the remains of
original sin in human nature. St. Thomas says that “this is
suitable for our spiritual training; namely, in order that, by
fighting against concupiscence and other defects to which
he is subject, man may receive the crown of victory.”8 “Con­
cupiscence,” he adds, “is diminished by baptism”;0 it is not
destroyed.
This doctrine is thus defined by the Council of Trent: “In
the one baptized there remains concupiscence or an inclina­
tion to sin, which, since it is left for us to wrestle with, cannot
injure those who do not acquiesce but resist manfully by the
grace of Jesus Christ; indeed, he who shall have striven law­
fully shall be crowned. This concupiscence, which the Apostle
sometimes calls sin (Rom. 6:12 ff.), the holy council declares
the Catholic Church has never understood to be called sin in
the sense that it is truly and properly sin in those born again,
but in the sense that it is of sin and inclines to sin.” 10
The wound of concupiscence that results from original sin,
begins to mend with baptismal grace but is long in healing.
It is by no means tire only wound. There are three others, as
St. Thomas explains.11
8 Illa, q.69, a. 3.
® Ibid., a. 4, ad 311m.
10 Denzingcr, no. 792. (Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent,
p. 23.—Tr.)
11 la Ilae, q.85, a. 3.

THE RESULTS OF ORIGINAL SIN

265

As a result of original justice, the reason had perfect hold over
the lower parts of the soul, while reason itself was perfected by
God and was subject to Him. Now this same original justice was
forfeited through the sin of our first parents, as already stated; so
that all the powers of the soul are left, as it were, destitute of their
proper order, whereby they are naturally directed to virtue; which
destitution is called a wounding of nature.12
Again, there are four of the soul’s powers that can be the subject
of virtue, namely, the reason, where prudence resides, the will
where justice is, the irascible, the subject of fortitude, and the concupiscible, the subject of temperance.13 Hence so far as the reason
is deprived of its order to the true, there is the wound of igno­
rance; so far as the will is deprived of its order to the good, there is
the wound of malice; so far as the irascible is deprived of its order
to the delectable, moderated by reason, there is the wound of con­
cupiscence.
Accordingly these are the four wounds inflicted on the whole of
human nature as a result of our first parents’ sin. But since the
inclination to the good virtue is diminished in each individual on
account of actual sin, . . . these four wounds are also the result
of other sins, so far as through sin the reason is obscured, especially
in practical matters, the will hardened to evil, good actions become
more difficult, and concupiscence more impetuous.

The four wounds caused by original sin and aggravated by
our personal sins may be listed as follows:
12 The words of the text are as follows: "Et ideo omnes vires animae remanent
quodammodo destitutae proprio ordine, quo naturaliter ordinantur ad virtutem;
et ipsa destitutio vulneratio naturae dicitur." St. Thomas does not say "quo naturaliter
ordinabantur," as if this order or inclination to virtue were only the effect of a
gratuitous gift of original justice and so lost by original sin; he says "naturaliter
ordinantur," giving us to understand that the natural inclination of these powers
for virtue is itself weakened.
13 The irascible and the concupiscible are the two forms of sensuous appetency
or sensibility; the irascible appetite tends to difficult sensible goods, the concupiscible
to delectable sensible goods.

THE LOVE OF GOD

206

in the will:

the wound of malice
or the inclination to
evil, egoism

in the intellect:

the wound of igno­
rance, whence come
imprudence, blind­
ness

in the irascible
appetite:

the wound of weak­
ness, whence come
pusillanimity, sloth

in the concupiscible appetite:

the wound of concu­
piscence, whence
come lust, gluttony

the
higher
faculties

Wounds
of
the
soul

the
lower
faculties

According to St. Thomas,14 original sin, initially in the
essence of the soul as a privation of the grace of original jus­
tice, first infects the will, which should be subject to God, and
then the other powers that should be subject to right reason.
Sin, found first in the rebel will, afterwards extends its rav­
ages to the other faculties.
St. Thomas examines the question whether the three
wounds of malice, ignorance, and weakness, like concupis­
cence, remain in the baptized, or whether they are immedi­
ately healed by baptismal grace. When considering grace and
the infused virtues that are the effects of baptism, he says:
“Difficulty in doing good and proneness to evil are in the bap­
tized, not through their lacking the habits of the virtues,
but through concupiscence, which is not taken away in bap14 la Hae, q.83, a.2, 3.

THE RESULTS OF ORIGINAL SIN

267

tism. But just as concupiscence is diminished, that it may
not enslave us, so are difficulty in doing good and proneness
to evil, that man may not be overcome by them.” 15 Evidently
as much must be admitted in regard to our ignorance about
the moral direction of our lives. The four wounds are in
process of healing in the baptized, but they are not cured by
baptism.
We sum up. The wound in the will, an inclination to evil,
is the source of self-love, often of gross unconscious egoism,
pride, envy, and avarice; the wound in the intellect, ignorance,
is the principle of imprudence in all its forms—thoughtless­
ness, foolhardiness, and blindness of mind in regard to higher
things; the wound in the irascible appetite, weakness, is the
principle of faintheartedness, cowardice, sloth, human respect
or worldly fear, and discouragement; and concupiscence, the
wound of the concupiscible appetite, is the principle of lust
and the different forms of intemperance.
ARTICLE II
THE NATURE OF THE WOUNDS RESULTING FROM

ORIGINAL SIN

All theologians admit that repeated personal sins gradually
weaken our natural inclination to virtue, for an inclination
to evil weakens an inclination to good.16 The question natu­
rally arises whether the wounds resulting from original sin
also weaken man’s natural inclination to virtue.
Many theologians have thought that the wounds of orig­
inal sin do not weaken our natural inclination to virtue, that
they are only a privation of the gratuitous gift of original jus15 Illa, q.69, a. 4, ad 311m.
ioCf. la llae, q.8s, a.i.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

tice, which, by elevating man to supernatural life, raised his
nature to a state of integrity or of perfection. It would follow
that man in his fallen state is no less able to do good than he
would have been in a merely natural state, called a state of
pure nature, in which God could have created him, without
giving him sanctifying grace, or integrity, or natural perfec­
tion.17
Most Thomists disagree with this opinion, believing that
man in the state of fallen and unrestored nature, has less
strength to do natural moral good than he would have had
in a purely natural state. Almost all the great commentators
on St. Thomas hold this view.18
They base tlieir opinion principally on the fact that in the
state of fallen nature man is born with a will turned away
from God by original sin, aversa a Deo; whereas, in a merely
natural state or the state of pure nature, he would have been
born with a will that could either be directed toward God
or could prefer a created good to Him, but which would not
be turned away from Him.19 Original sin certainly turns the
17 Such is the opinion of the following: Suarez, De gratia, Prolog., IV, c.9; Bellarmine, De gratia primi hominis, c. 5; Mazella, De gratia, no. 1069; Palmieri,
th. 78; Pesch, no. 282. According to them the state of fallen man is certainly
lower than the state of natural integrity, but not than the state of pure nature.
In their view fallen man and man in the state of pure nature differ only sicut
nudatus a nudo, not any more than a man deprived of his clothing and disturbed
at no longer having them differs from a naked man who never had any clothes
and who does not experience any disturbance thereby. Cf. Hugon, De gratia
(i927)> P· 79·
18 See Billuart, De gratia, diss. II, a. 3; Salmanticenses, De peccatis in lam Ilae,
q.85, a.3, and De gratia, disp. Π, dub. iii, nos. 102, 116, 135, dub. viii, no. 287.
Cited in these passages are many who hold this position: Capreolus, Ferrariensis,
Conrad Kollin, Alvarez, John of St. Thomas; to this list can be added Lemos,
Contenson, Goudin, and many others, including Hugon. In his Clypeus, Gonet
departs from this common Thomistic path, but returns to it in his later Manuale
(Lyons, 1681), I, 218. Surprisingly, it has been abandoned more recently by the
Dominican Father Kors.
18 Cf St. Thomas, De veritate, q.24, a. 12, ad 2um; De malo, q.4, a.2 et q.4, a.2.

THE RESULTS OF ORIGINAL SIN

269

will away from God as our ultimate supernatural end, and
indirectly also from God as our ultimate natural end, for
every sin against our final supernatural end is, indirectly, a
sin against the natural law, which ordains that we obey God
in whatever He commands. Since the will sets all the other
faculties in action, if it turns from God toward evil, all the
other faculties will suffer too, for they will not possess fully
the inclination to virtue that would be theirs in a purely
natural state.
That this doctrine is undoubtedly St. Thomas’ very own we
can conclude from what he teaches on the necessity of grace
both to love God, the author of our nature, above all things
and to keep the natural law. The holy doctor first says that
“man, by his natural powers alone, can love God more than
himself and above all things.” 20 Then, after recalling the
principle that every creature is naturally inclined to love God,
as the author of its nature, more than itself, he adds that in
the state of corrupt nature man cannot do so. As a result of the
corruption of his nature, his will, unless healed by the grace
of God, will tend toward its own private good.21 Against this
egoism we must be ever at war.
For the same reason man in the state of fallen nature can­
not keep the whole natural law.22 Fallen nature gets back to
20 la Ilae, q. 109, a.3: “On the contrary, as some maintain, man was first made
with only natural endowments; and in this state it is manifest that he loved God
to some extent. But he did not love God equally with himself, or less than himself,
otherwise he would have sinned. Therefore he loved God above himself. Therefore
man, by his natural powers alone, can love God more than himself and above all
tilings.” In this text, it is true, St. Thomas seems to have intended the expres­
sion "ex solis naturalibus" to mean what it meant to earlier theologians, that
is, that Adam was created in the state of integrity before receiving sanctifying
grace.
21 Ibid.
22 la Ilae, q. 109, a. 4.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

its normal state only by habitual grace which has the function
of healing (gratia sanans), as well as of restoring it to super­
natural life (gratia elevans).
In many other places St. Thomas speaks in the same way,
notably when he describes the wounds resulting from original
sin. They are not merely the privation of a gratuitous gift:
“Malice is not to be taken here as a sin, but as a certain prone­
ness to evil, according to the words of Gen. 8:21 : ‘Man’s
senses are prone to evil from his youth.’ ” 23 The wound that
Venerable Bede calls “weakness” is opposed to the virtue of
fortitude.21 Likewise the one called “concupiscence” is not
concupiscence in so far as it is natural to man “but in so far
as it goes beyond the bounds of reason.” 25
This is plainly a question not only of the wounds caused by
our personal sins, but also of those that come from original
sin 26 and continue to exist even after baptism, although they
are then in process of healing.27 St. Thomas speaks in the
same way in other places in his works.28 He even sees in the
disorder of concupiscence and the weakness for good which
we find in humanity a rather probable sign of original sin.
This doctrine seems to echo both the Gospels and the
Epistles of St. Paul, where the Apostle treats the question of the
“old man” and the necessity of “putting on the new man.” 29
23 Ibid., q. 85, a. 3, ad 2um.
24 Ibid., ad 411m.
25 Ibid., ad jum.
28 la Ilae, q. 85, a. 3.
27 Illa, q.6g, a.4, ad 3um.
28la Ilae, q.91, a.6; q.82, a.I, ad ium; q.83, a.1—3; q.109, a.2, ad 3um.
Π Sent., d.30, q. i, a.i, ad 311m; De rnalo, q. 2, a. 11; q. 4, a. 1, ad 1411m; q.4, a.2, c.;
q.5, a.i, ad 411m, ad loum, ad 1311m; q.5, a.2, ad ium; De veritate, q.24, a.12,
ad 2um; in Ep. ad Rom., vi, 6; vii, 23; ad Ephes., iv, 22; ad Col., iii, 9. Cf. also
the Tabula aurea under the words fomes, infectio, peccatum, 107, 283, 319, 329,
333> 342· Gratia, 2, 120, 121, 127, 177.
29 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 52.

THE RESULTS OF ORIGINAL SIN

271

We meet it again in the well known pages of The Imitation of
Christ30 where the author treats “Of the Different Motions of
Nature and Grace” and “Of the Corruption of Nature and of
the Efficacy of Grace.”
The saints, enlightened by the gift of knowledge in regard
to human misery, generally speak thus. And the same is true
not only of those who, like St. Augustine, have written against
the Pelagians and other deniers of original sin, but even of
those who, like St. Alphonsus Liguori, have combated
seventeenth-century Jansenism. St. Alphonsus expressly says:
“In man’s present state, concupiscence impels more strongly
to sin than it would have done in the state of perfect nature.”—
“In the state of fallen nature the miseries of man are much
graver than tliey would have been in the state of perfect na­
ture.” 31
The natural sense of certain passages of the Church’s of­
ficial teaching seems to come to the same thing. To verify
this we have only to examine what is said about the wounds
of our fallen nature. The enfeeblement and attenuation,
though not the ruin, of the will, the fomes peccati, and finally
the condemnations of naturalism and its different forms, na­
tionalism and liberalism.32
Naturalism itself gives confirmation to this view by feeling
impelled to deny the existence of the wounds of original sin,
as well as the reason for mortification and the spirit of sac­
rifice.
80 Bk. Ill, chap. 54.
81 St. Alphonsus Liguori, Historia haeresum, Confutatio XII (ed. Walter, 1903),
p. 4584, nos. 5, 14, 16.
82 Cf. Denzinger, 10th cd., nos. 174, 181, 198, 788, 793, 1275, 1616, 1627,
1634 fl., 1643.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

ARTICLE III
THE GRADUAL HEALING OF THE WOUNDS OF
ORIGINAL SIN

Our healing begins with baptism, which lessens our con­
cupiscence, proneness to evil, and weakness for good.33 But
this healing is never quite complete in this world. As the
Council of Trent34 says, in quoting St. Paul: “ ‘Therefore let
him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall’ (I Cor. 10:12).
You must ‘work out your salvation with fear and trembling’
(Phil. 2: 12), in labor, in watching, in almsgiving, in prayer
and oblations, in fasting and in chastity. You must have a
holy fear, knowing well that, regenerated in the hope but not
in the possession of glory, the battle is against the world, the
flesh, and the devil ; and victory is possible only by conform­
ing to the grace of God, according to the words of St. Paul:
‘If you live according to the flesh you will die ; but if by the
spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.’ ”
(Rom. 8:13.) Our healing will near its completion in this life
only after earnest mortification, accompanied by die passive
purifications of the senses and the spirit. In other words, as
the lives of the saints show, it will come about only in the
unitive way.
To reach diat, we must put into practice what St. Paul
says: “Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things
that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of
God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are
upon die earth. For you are dead; and your life is hid with
38 Cf. ma, q.69, a. 4, ad 3um.
84 Sess. VI, cap. 13.

THE RESULTS OF ORIGINAL SIN

273

Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, who is your life,
then you also shall appear with Him in glory. Mortify there­
fore your members which are upon the earth: fornication,
uncleanness . . . anger, indignation. . . . Lie not one to an­
other; stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, and
putting on the new, him who is being renewed unto knowl­
edge according to the image of Him that created him. . . .
Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved,
the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience:
bearing with one another and forgiving one anodier. . . .
But above all these things have charity, which is the bond
of perfection.” 35 In the same spirit, the great Apostle invites
the Ephesians to “put on the new man, who according to
God is created in justice and holiness of truth.”30
Now we can see how the infused moral virtues are of an
infinitely higher order than the acquired moral virtues as
described by the great pagan moralists.37 We can conceive,
too, what they must become in a purified soul, virtutes pur­
gati animi?3 And we have an explanation why the threefold
concupiscence of the eyes, of die flesh, and of pride finds a
perfect remedy only in the three evangelical counsels of pov­
erty, chastity, and obedience;39 and why every Christian
ought to have the spirit of the counsels, even diough the cir­
cumstances of his life do not allow him to practice them
effectively. Lastly, we understand die true greatness of the
great commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with all
thy strength and with all thy mind.” And we are no longer
85 Col. 3: 1-14.
88 Eph. 4: 24.
87 la Ilae, q. 63, a. 4.
88 tbid., q.61, a.5.
zzIbid., q. 108, a.4; Ila Ilae, q. 189, a. I.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

astonished at the words of St. Augustine: “Two loves have
built two cities: the love of self unto contempt of God, has
built an earthly city; the love of God unto contempt of self,
the City of God.” 40 Contempt of self is contempt for the seeds
of death existing in us, contempt for all that can separate us
from God and our neighbor; it is love of self as we ought to
love ourselves in order to glorify God. To destroy our egoism
and all its mean little ways, we ought to love ourselves in an
incomparably higher and deeper fashion, we ought to love
ourselves for God, desiring to see Him as He sees Himself
that we may give Him eternal glory. Then the perfect victory
of Christ over sin and death will be realized in us. Our
wounds will really heal. And supernatural life will so pene­
trate, elevate, and fortify our whole being as to fix the king­
dom of God in us firmly, fully, and forever.
40 The City of God. Bk. XIV, chap. 28.

CHAPTER VIII
Mortification

and the

Results of Personal Sin

We have seen how necessary mortification is because of
the results of original sin that continue to exist in the baptized :
concupiscence, proneness to evil and error, and weakness for
good. Mortification is no less necessary because of the results
of our personal sins; and from this point of view it proceeds
especially from the virtue of penance. This virtue, under the
higher inspiration of the theological virtues of faith, hope,
and charity, makes temperance, particularly chastity, and for­
titude and patience as well, serve to destroy sin and its residual
disorders. If penance belongs to the essence of Christian life,
as much must be said of mortification.
As a matter of fact, we must not forget that penance is a
special virtue, with its own proper acts. If each virtue formally
excludes its contrary vice, as white excludes black, penance
has for its special end to work effectively for the destruction
of sin, of all sin, so far as it is an offense against God that
can be remitted by grace together with the cooperation of
man.1
1 Cf. Summa, Illa, q.85, a.2: “Now it is evident that there is a special reason
for praising the act of penance, because it aims at the destruction of past sin, con­
sidered as an offense against God, which does not apply to any other virtue. We
must therefore conclude that penance is a special virtue.” Ibid., ad 3um: “Every
special virtue removes formally the habit of the opposite vice, just as whiteness
removes blackness from the same subject: but penance removes every sin effectively,
inasmuch as it works for the destruction of sins, according as they are pardonable
through the grace of God if man cooperate therewith.”
275

vfi

THE LOVE OF GOD

For a good understanding of this, we shall consider the
three chief effects of penance: (i) the remission of sin,
whether mortal or venial; (2) the remission of the punish­
ment due to sin {reatus poenae} ; (3) the destruction of the
remains or marks of sin {reliquiae peccati} and the struggle
against temptation.
ARTICLE I
THE REMISSION OF SIN

Remission of sin, St. Thomas teaches, is effected chiefly
in virtue of the passion of our Savior through the sacrament
of penance, and secondarily by the acts of the penitent that
appertain to the virtue of penance,2 that is, by the acts of
contrition, confession, and satisfaction, which are the proxi­
mate matter of the sacrament of penance.3
For a sin to be forgiven us, we must detest it for a super­
natural motive. Perfect contrition, inspired by the very motive
of charity or love of God above all things, remits mortal sin,
even before the reception of the sacrament of penance, if
we have at least an implicit desire to receive the sacrament.4
This implicit desire is contained in the will to accomplish
all that is necessary for our salvation. Imperfect contrition,
or attrition, is sorrow or detestation of sin which proceeds
from a supernatural motive less than charity. This motive is
either the vileness of mortal sin, as an injury done to God and
an evil for the soul, or fear of losing eternal happiness, of
being separated from the source of all good and drawing
2 Illa, q.86, a. 6.
zlbid., q.90, a.I, 2, 3; Council of Trent, sess. XIV, chap. 3.
4 Council of Trent, sess. XIV, chap. 4.

THE RESULTS OF PERSONAL SIN

277

down upon ourselves the divine chastisement.5 Even in attri­
tion, since it excludes the will to sin and implies hope of par­
don, there is supernatural love of God, as the source of all
justice.® Alone this love does not suffice to justify us, but,
united to sacramental absolution, it obtains the remission of
mortal sins by the infinite merits of the passion of our Savior.
As to venial sins, they cannot be remitted without at least
virtual regret for having committed them and the intention
to avoid them in the future: not that in this world it is pos­
sible for us, without a special privilege, to avoid all venial
sins all the time, but we can and we should avoid each in
particular, and their number should obviously diminish as we
progress in charity.7 At least virtual regret for venial sins
committed and a firm purpose to do whatever possible to
avoid falling again are contained in any fervent act of love of
God. The Our Father, the use of holy water and other sacramentals, dispose us to make fervent acts of charity and
penance; so, a fortiori, do Holy Communion and the sacra­
ment of extreme unction.8
The Imitation of Christ tells us that “through levity of
heart and neglect of our defects we feel not the sorrows of
the soul. . . . Happy the man who casteth away from him
whatever may strain or burden his conscience. . . . Have al­
ways an eye upon thyself in the first place, and admonish
thyself preferably to all thy dearest friends.” 9 “As thine eye
observeth others, so again thou art also observed by others.
. . . Ever keep in mind thine end, that time lost returneth no
» Ibid.
• Council of Trent, sess. I, chap. 6.
7 Cf. Summa, IHa, q.87, a. i, c. ct ad mm, ad 3um; a.2, ad 2um.
&lbid., a. 3.
8 Bk. I, chap. 21.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

more. . . . But if thou give thyself to fervor, thou shalt find
great peace; and thou shalt feel thy labor light, through the
grace of God, and for the love of virtue.”10

ARTICLE II
MORTIFICATION AND THE REMISSION OF PUNISHMENT

DUE TO SIN

The special virtue of penance does not merely bring us to
detest sin as an offense against God but leads us on to make
reparation for sin. To stop sinning is not enough. Satisfaction
must be offered to divine justice, since every sin deserves
punishment.11
Mortal sin, when not remitted in this life, deserves eternal
punishment because it works an irreparable moral disorder by
turning us away from God, our sovereign good and last end.
As long as it lasts, its punishment must last.12 When, on the
contrary, mortal sin is remitted in this life and the sinner
is converted, eternal punishment is also remitted ; but often
temporal punishment remains to be undergone. This is
merited by sin, whether mortal or venial, so far as it is
directed in an inordinate way toward a finite good.13 “Tribu­
lation and anguish upon every Soul of man that worketh
evil. . . . But glory and honor and peace to everyone that
worketh good.” 14
There is a profound reason why every sin merits punish­
ment, just as every act inspired by charity merits a reward.
St. Thomas explains it to us in this way:
10 Ibid., chap. 25.
11 Illa, q. 85, a.3.
12 la Ilae, q.87, a.3, 4, 5.
ls Ibid., a. 5.
14 Rom. 2: 9-10.

THE RESULTS OF PERSONAL SIN

279

For we observe in natural things that when one contrary super­
venes, the other acts with greater energy. . . . Wherefore we find
that the natural inclination of man is to repress those who rise up
against him. Now it is evident that all things contained in an order
are, in a manner, one, in relation to the principle of that order.
Consequendy whatever rises up against an order is put down by
that order or by the principle thereof. And because sin is an in­
ordinate act, it is evident that whoever sins commits an offense
against an order: wherefore he is put down, in consequence, by
that same order, which repression is punishment.
Accordingly man can be punished with a threefold punishment
corresponding to the three orders to which the human will is sub­
ject. In the first place a man’s nature is subjected to the order of his
own reason; secondly, it is subjected to the order of another man
who governs him either in spiritual or in temporal matters, as a
member either of the state or of the household; thirdly, it is sub­
jected to the universal order of the divine government. Now each
of these orders is disturbed by sin, for the sinner acts against his
reason, and against human and divine law. Wherefore he incurs
a threefold punishment; one, inflicted by himself, namely, remorse
of conscience; another, inflicted by man; and a third, inflicted by
God.18

Here we have the basis for the virtue of penance, and the
reason why reparation or satisfaction for offenses committed
against God are due Him in justice. Every sin merits punish­
ment, whether voluntary or involuntary. The vindictive jus­
tice of a judge inflicts punishment on the guilty against his
will to make the principles of the law respected. Penance is
that part of justice which impels the guilty either to submit
voluntarily to punishment or to impose on himself whatever
punishment he has merited. Although unable to offer God
15 la Ilae, q.87, a. 1.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

reparation absolutely equal to his offense, he does offer a
satisfaction proportionate to his own capacities. This derives
its value from the love inspiring it and, even more than that,
from the merits of Christ, the principle of our justification.16
Sacramental absolution takes away sin, but a penance or
satisfaction is imposed on us besides, that through it we may
obtain remission of the temporal punishment which ordi­
narily remains to be undergone, even when die sin itself has
been remitted. Satisfaction is part of the sacrament of penance,
and in this capacity does its share to restore or to increase
grace.17 By it the sinner pays in part at least the debt con­
tracted with divine justice. For the same end he should also
bear patiently the sufferings of life, and if his patience does
not suffice to purify him entirely, he will have to pass through
purgatory, for nothing defiled can enter heaven.
The dogma of purgatory serves as a strong confirmation of
the necessity for mortification because it shows us diat we
must pay our debts either in this life while meriting, or after
death without meriting. This fact makes the author of The
Imitation say: “Didst thou also well ponder in thy heart the
future pains of hell or purgatory, methinks thou wouldst
bear willingly labor and sorrow, and fear no kind of auster­
ity.” 18 On the contrary, repentance full of love washes away
both sin and punishment, like those happy tears Christ blessed
by saying: “Wherefore I say to thee: Many sins are forgiven
her, because she hath loved much.” 19
For the adult who receives it properly, baptism remits both
all his sins and all the punishment due to them, for the bap16 Illa, q.85, a.3, c. ct ad 2um, ad 3um; Suppl., q. 15, a.i.
17 Illa, q.86, a. 4, ad 2um; Suppl., q. 10, a. 2, ad 2um.
18 Bk. I, chap. 21.
18 Luke 7: 47.

THE RESULTS OF PERSONAL SIN

281

tized receives at that moment everything that should be
produced in him by the power of the Savior’s passion. By
absolution, on the other hand, we receive the effect of the
Passion according to the mode of our own proper acts, which
are the matter of the sacrament of penance and so cooperate
in our restoration; that is why the remission of the punish­
ment is complete only when the acts of penance, satisfaction
included, are complete.20
According to the fervor of his contrition, the justified peni­
tent recovers a grace either higher than, or equal to, or less
than the grace he lost.21 Merits lost by mortal sin revive ac­
cording to the fervor of contrition.22 And the fervor of a
penitent’s contrition and first satisfaction alone can be such
that all the temporal punishment due to sin is instantly re­
mitted, sometimes together with all the remains of sin, as
evidently happened in the conversion of Magdalen.23
ARTICLE III
DESTRUCTION OF THE REMAINS OF SIN BY MORTIFICATION

Even after being remitted, sin generally leaves its traces
in us, especially when, through repetition, it engenders a bad
habit, a vice. Absolution does indeed wash away the sin and
convert our will towards God, but we still have an inclination
to fall again into a fault often committed. This inclination
20 Cf. Summa, Illa, q.86, a. 4, ad 311m.
21 Illa, q.89, a.2.
22 Ibid., a. 5, c. et ad 3um.
23 Illa, q.86, a.5, ad lum: “He (God) sometimes turns the heart of man with
such power that it receives at once perfect spiritual health, not only the guilt being
pardoned, but all the remnants of sin being removed, as was the case with
Magdalen (Luke, chap. 6) ; whereas at other times He sometimes first pardons the
guilt by operating grace, and afterwards, by cooperating grace, removes the rem­
nants of sin by degrees."

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THE LOVE OF GOD

is no longer as strong as it was before contrition, but it con­
tinues to exist in some measure, just as the fomes peccati, the
tinder for sin, although diminished by baptismal grace, re­
mains in the baptized.24
Daily experience shows that this is so. A man who has
formed the habit of drunkenness, on being converted, receives
through absolution the infused virtue of temperance, together
with sanctifying grace; but he does not have the correspond­
ing acquired virtue. On the contrary, he has as inclination to
fall again into the sin so frequently committed. And he will
fall into it again if he does not avoid its occasions and fails
to have recourse to earnest mortification, to destroy the re­
mains of sin now impregnating his temperament.
The same diing can be said of unresisted antipathies and
aversions that have grown in our hearts; even after sincere
repentance and absolution, they somehow stay with us, no
longer as sins but as dispositions to fall again. These remains
of sin must not be simply covered over, moderated, regulated;
they must be put to death, mortified. Unless they are, they
will so completely impregnate our whole being that profound
and grievous passive purifications will be necessary to deliver
us from them. Our temperaments come under our own
fashioning influence. Even our faces, after thirty, are our own
creations so far as they reveal our self-sufficiency, presumption,
pride, fatuity, or envy.
The remains of sin weaken us very much, leaving us lan­
guid, debilitated, and reluctant to try what virtue demands.
Mortification must eradicate these evil roots and make our
souls healthy, doing its part to win the recovery of all our
spiritual energies.
24 Cf. Illa, q.86, a. 5.

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283

ARTICLE IV
RESISTANCE TO TEMPTATION

We need to remember that we have to fight the results of
sin and also temptations that come from the spirit of the
world and the spirit of evil. “Put you on the armor of God,
that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil.
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against
principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of
this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high
places. . . . Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about
with truth and having on the breastplate of justice: and your
feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”25
We have enemies of wonderful powers, and the evil they
can do is in proportion to their strength and greatness. Re­
membering Aristotle’s statement that a wicked man is worse
than a wild beast, we may well wonder what to think of the
devil. To resist him, we must have the armor of God, the
virtues, “taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be
able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked
one.” 28 “Resist the devil; and he will fly from you.” 27 On the
contrary, the more we yield to him, the more he pursues us.
God permitted man, when in a state of innocence and living
in divine familiarity, to be tempted by the devil, and it is
true today that the devil always tempts more directly those
who aspire to perfection and lead other souls there as well;
for he has a keen interest in making them fall from thenheight. As for great sinners, he tempts them through the flesh
25 Eph. 6:11-15.
26 Ibid., 16.
22 Jas. 4:7·

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THE LOVE OF GOD

and the world, having no need to seduce them by direct action.
Our Lord Himself willed to be tempted, after the days of
fasting spent in the desert, that He might teach us to resist
temptation and give us strength and confidence.28 And we
see from this example that the devil does not attempt to lead
a spiritual man immediately into mortal sin, but tries to bring
him by way of slight faults to grave sin.
He brought Adam and Eve to evil by the temptations of
pride, curiosity, disobedience, and gluttony (cf. St. Thomas
Ila Ilae, q. 163, a. 1, c., and ad rum, ad 2um) : “Why hath God
commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of para­
dise? . . . No, you shall not die the death. For God doth
know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes
shall be opened; and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and
evil.” 29
In like manner he sought to seduce Christ by three suc­
cessive temptations—desire for food after a long fast, vain­
glory or ostentation, and extreme pride: “If Thou be the Son
of God, command that these stones be made bread. ... If
Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down [from the pin­
nacle of the temple]. . . . All these things [the kingdoms
of the world and the glory of them] will I give Thee, if falling
down Thou wilt adore me.”30 Following the example of our
Lord, let us answer with the words of God and without argu­
ment; then temptation will become an occasion for merito­
rious acts of faith, trust, and love of God. In such moments we
are in the happy necessity of not being able to content our­
selves with acts of imperfect virtue {remissi') ; we must have
recourse to intense meritorious acts.
28 Illa, q-4i, a.i et 2.
29 Gen. 3:1-5.
80 Matt. 4:3.

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285

The principal works of satisfaction for resisting temptation
and expiating our sins are generally and fittingly distinguished
as these three: almsgiving, fasting, and prayer. Every satisfac­
tion offered to divine justice ought, for the honor of God, to
deprive us of some of the goods we have abused. Now there
are three kinds of goods: (1) those of the soul, which are
abused by pride and which ought to be atoned for by humble
prayer that bows us down before God ; (2) goods of the body,
which are abused by concupiscence of the flesh and which
ought to be expiated by fasting; (3) exterior goods, which are
abused by concupiscence of the eyes and which ought to be
expiated by almsgiving.81
All other sins stem from the two concupiscences and pride,
as from three roots; and all other works of satisfaction are
reduced to the three we have just enumerated. Whatever af­
flicts the body, like the discipline and austerities of that kind,
has the same reason for existence as fasting; watching ought
to be consecrated to prayer, so as to become a true work of
satisfaction ; and all the works of mercy we do for our neigh­
bor are like an almsgiving made to him.
When patiently borne, the trials of life are also, of course, a
satisfaction, remitting the punishment due to sin, wiping
away the traces sin leaves in us, and preserving us against
temptation.
In the old religious orders, penance has an important place.
Their religious, both men and women, must offer satisfaction
to God not only for themselves, but for sinners who are un­
mindful of the necessity for reparation. All the saints have
understood this truth, particularly the founders of orders,
and they have never stopped reminding their children: “Miti­
81 Illa, Suppl., q. 15, a. 3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

gate the observance, and you mitigate the spirit; relaxation
of rule infallibly leads to relaxation of thought and of life.
God, who inspired the rule, will not bless its decadence.”32
The world today, ravaged by so many evils, has no less need
of prayer and penance than it had in the first days of Chris­
tianity, as the Blessed Virgin reminded us when she appeared
at Lourdes. Reparation offered, as it should be, in a spirit of
love and adoration, becomes a sublime act proceeding from
the three subordinate virtues of charity, religion, and penance.
It renders God the glory that sin took from Him. And by it
we become closely associated with Christ, our priest and our
offering, in the work of redemption.
82 The observances of orders such as St. Dominic's constitute, as it were, the
bark of the religious tree, serving, despite their seemingly non-essential character,
to protect the tree and keep it alive. Religious observance and study have no quarrel
between them but work together as means to contemplation and divine union,
the fountainhead of apostolic life.

CHAPTER IX

Two Methods

of

Examination

of

Conscience

As a practical application of the doctrine just developed
concerning mortification, two methods of examination of
conscience will now be proposed. Both serve to point out
those things in us needing mortification and they show us
also, in part at least, the obstacles we possess to divine union.
Later we shall have to discuss the passive purifications of the
senses and the spirit which act as a means of destroying
obstacles to divine union and of configuring the fervent
and generous Christian more and more to Christ cruci­
fied.
Examinations of conscience generally follow the order of
the commandments and of our duties to God, to our neigh­
bor, and in relation to ourselves. For growth in self-knowledge,
it is useful sometimes to vary this examination and the ques­
tions comprising it. While remembering that whenever we
look at self we should always keep our gaze on God, the
exemplar of all virtue, we will find it helpful at times to ex­
amine ourselves in reference to the seven capital sins and the
sins derived from them, and at other times, on the contrary,
by considering the hierarchy of the virtues that constitute the
different functions of our spiritual organism. It is important,
too, for us not to neglect the relation between the interior
life and external behavior.
287

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288

ARTICLE I
AN EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE WITH REFERENCE TO
THE SEVEN CAPITAL SINS

An examination of conscience concerning the capital sins
and their consequences can easily be made by using die
enumeration given by St. Thomas1 following St. Gregory die
Great. As organized under the following headings, the sins
called capital because diey are the head or principle of all the
others reveal themselves as derived from the three concupis­
cences spoken of by St. John the Apostle. They are called
capital not because they are the gravest of all sins but those
toward which we are most inclined and which lead to
estrangement from God and still graver wrongdoing. Vain­
glory, for example, leads to disobedience, hyprocrisy, and
animosity. And animosity is the principle of discord and
obstinacy in heresy. No man reaches complete perversity all
at once ; he is led there step by step.
St. Thomas says that every sin originates in egoism.2 In­
ordinate love of self prevents us from loving God above all
things and prompts us to turn away from Him. From in­
ordinate self-love proceed the three concupiscences of the
flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life. From the three concu­
piscences the capital sins, the principles of all the others, are
derived.
This outline shows us how the capital sins are the prin­
ciples of all other sins, and themselves spring from pride and
concupiscence: pride turning us away from God, and con1 Summa, la llae, q.77.
2 Ibid., a. 4, 5.

EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE

ÔJO

289

Vainglory, from which arise disobedience, boast­
fulness, hypocrisy, contention, discord, eccentricity,
and obstinacy. Vainglory has as a further conse­
quence the following sin:
Sloth, a disgust for spiritual things and the work
of sanctification. It is contrary to the love of God
and gives birth to malice, spite, faintheartedness,
despair, spiritual sluggishness, neglect of the com­
mandments, and the seeking for unlawful things.
Envy, or sadness at another’s good as though it
subtracted from our own exaltation. From it come
hatred, tale-bearing, detraction, joy at another’s mis­
fortune, and grief at his prosperity.
Anger, which is opposed to meekness and from
which are born quarreling, swelling of the mind,
contumely, clamor, and blasphemy.
Covetousness, which is contrary to liberality and
often to charity and justice as well, and from which
are derived treachery, fraud, falsehood, perjury,
restlessness, callousness, and violence.

Gluttony, which engenders unseemly joy, scur­
rility (buffoonery), uncleanness, loquaciousness,
and dullness of mind.
Lust, the contrary of chastity, from which pro­
ceed blindness of mind, thoughtlessness, rashness,
inconstancy, self-love, hatred of God, and an at­
tachment to the world destructive of any hope in a
future life.

cupiscence inducing us to seek our highest happiness in
earthly goods.
We see, too, the importance of humility, how it well merits
being called the fundamental virtue because it checks pride.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Pride is, in fact, the source of all other sins in the sense that
the act of turning away from God found in every mortal sin
appertains more directly to pride than to any other sin. In­
ordinate love of our own excellence makes us refuse submis­
sion and obedience to God.3
A thoughtful reading of the preceding classification will
reveal how vainglory can bring us by degrees to terrible falls,
even to apostasy. It leads first to disobedience and boastfulness,
then stoops to hyprocrisy to hide its ugly inner core, turns then
to contention and discord and, in matters of doctrine and
religious practices, prompts us to eccentricity to the point of
clinging obstinately to error and even to heresy.
Another consequence of vainglory is the capital vice of
sloth, disgust for spiritual tilings and the work of sanctifica­
tion. This sin goes directly contrary to the love of God and
the holy joy resulting from love. When a man’s life no longer
mounts towards God, it starts to go down the path away from
Him; the man’s soul is weighed down with sadness, with a
disgust for holy things. Not only weakness but malice may
follow, showing itself in spite toward neighbor, fainthearted­
ness before duty, slackness and sloth in spiritual matters. The
same discouragement that leads the spiritual sluggard to
neglect the commandments sets his mind hunting a refuge
in forbidden things. By losing their footing on the slope of
pride, vainglory, and sloth, many unfortunately have aban­
doned their vocation, forgotten the promises they made to
God, and started down the way of damnation.
This kind of consideration of the sources of sin makes it
possible for us to avoid two contrary faults in the examination
of conscience. On one hand, we are forewarned against the
s Ila Ilae, q. 162, a. 7.

EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE

291

carelessness of the quietists, who called examination of con­
science useless, under the pretext that the heart of man is so
inscrutable that he can know it only superficially. They even
said, and this statement has been condemned, that “all reflec­
tion on self is harmful, even the examination of our sins,” and
they added that it is a grace from God no longer to be able
to reflect on our sins.4 The rejoinder to this statement is easy:
precisely because the nature of our interior dispositions is so
difficult to know, we must examine them well and ask for
divine light to discern whether they are as upright as we
would have them be.
On the other hand, we thus avoid the meticulous searching
for every least fault taken in its materiality, a search apt to
lead to scrupulosity and sometimes to the neglect of really
important things. Statistical compilation is beside the point
here. To cure a skin eruption no doctor sets about counting
every pimple on the surface of the skin. He looks for the
source of the trouble and tries to remedy it. We do wisely not
to neglect contemplating God lest we may spend too much
time considering our own soul. We have no need to anticipate
divine prevenient grace but only to follow it faithfully as
duty requires.
Self-examination in the way just described, especially
through considering the capital sins in relation to spiritual
things, as St. John of the Cross does,5 helps the soul to dis­
cover its predominant fault, the source of its other failings.
Some people are more prone to pride, others to spiritual sloth,
others to sensuality, others to impatience or anger, or even
to excessive natural activity insufficiently ordered to God, to
4 Dcnzinger, nos. 1230 fl.
& The Dark, Night, Bk. I.

THE LOVE OF GOD

292

fruitless agitation which makes them forget their last end, the
one thing necessary: to love God above all things.
The people who live with us generally know our predomi­
nant fault well enough. Often it stands in their way as a
hindrance to the common good. We ourselves should be able
to recognize it and, if the superficiality of our self-examination
prevents that, we should bear with having others call it to
our attention.
ARTICLE II
EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE WITH REFERENCE TO THE

HIERARCHY OF THE VIRTUES

For us to know our predominant fault is not sufficient; it
is expedient for us besides to examine ourselves in regard to
our fidelity to the principal inspiration by which God draws
us to Himself. In the order of salvation we can do nothing
without grace. Our Lord says: “Without Me you can do
nothing.” 6 We must, therefore, be attentive to the divine
inspiration given to us, whether in the broad sense, that is, in
every prevenient actual grace, or by inspiration properly so
called, as it proceeds from the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Not
only must we be attentive to the inspiration of God but we
must ask to be more enlightened and more impelled by it
that we may triumph over all attachment to sin and go ahead
generously in the practice of virtue.
Just as every soul has a predominant fault, it has also a par­
ticular spiritual attraction, answering to the name God has
given it from all eternity. In the parable of the good shepherd
it is said that “he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth
8 John 15: 5.

EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE

293

them out.” 7 In some souls the intellect naturally dominates;
they receive special graces of enlightenment and, if they are
faithful to these, they will also receive a greater and greater
degree of the graces of fortitude to lead them to perfection.
Others climb toward the mountain peak by another ap­
proach. They receive graces which lead them to spend them­
selves without calculation in the service of God; in them
graces of enlightenment are hardly perceptible at first and
become evident only later. Others, in whom memory and
practical activity dominate, receive chiefly graces of fidelity
to daily duty and can be led by that way to a very high degree
of perfection, to a wonderful exercise of the theological virtues
and the corresponding gifts. Each soul has, in the natural or­
der, a particularly strong aptitude, which grace delights in
perfecting that it may then enlighten and enliven abilities
less strong. Some people are more attracted to prayer, others
to austerities, still others to the apostolate in one form or an­
other.
Certainly no special supernatural inclination need be re­
sisted. It ought to grow stronger, serving as a means of making
a man die to sin and attain to perfection. The action of grace
ought not to destroy whatever is good in our personality but
should perfect it by abnegation and the cross. So saints are
made. “Be supernaturally yourselves minus your faults,” as
an excellent director expressed it. Wisdom warns us not to
imitate clumsily whatever is unsuitable for us. It is a wise
David who sticks to his slingshot and lets Goliath wear the
armor.
Frequent self-examination by the yardstick of the virtues
will help us to attain to being ourselves minus our faults. The
’ Ibid., 10: 3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

virtues are, as it were, the different functions of our spiritual
organism. By considering them we understand better the
things within us opposed to their perfection.
In the outline that follows, the hierarchical character of the
virtues stand out. At the top is charity, the highest of the
theological virtues. Directly beneath the theological virtues
we find prudence, and under prudence the moral virtues,
which it directs. Beside the virtues are their opposites, the
contrasting vices which, because of this contrast, show up
more clearly in their ugly gravity.
We can picture the hierarchy of the virtues as the spiritual
edifice of traditional symbolism. The necessary excavation
made for its foundation represents humility. This must be dug
not once and for all as in house building but worked at until
the end of life, for the spiritual edifice is in fact a growing
organism and the taller it gets the farther its roots must
reach into the earth. The dome of this temple is supported by
the twin columns of faith and hope. The keystone of its great
value is love of God, charity, the highest virtue and life-giver
of all the rest. Opening inward, two great doors swing on four
great hinges or cardines, the four cardinal virtues of prudence,
justice, fortitude, and temperance. The wrought iron about
these hinges is the annexed virtues. Justice is companioned
by religion, penance, obedience, truthfulness; fortitude by
magnanimity, patience, and perseverance; temperance by
chastity, meekness, and humility. For each cardinal virtue
there is a corresponding gift of the Holy Ghost, symbolized
by a precious stone set in the door. And into the column of
faith is fastened the sconce of the gift of understanding, and
from the keystone of the vault swings the lamp of wisdom,
illuminating the whole interior.

EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE

295

towards God, and the gift disgust for spiritual­
Charity- of wisdom
things
.towards neighbor, and mercy envy, discord, scandal

0 , Hope
"o
■5
Faith

confidence,

abandonment,

and the gift of fear opposed

presumption
despair

to presumption
and the spirit of faith, and
the gifts of understanding
and knowledge

infidelity, blasphemy,
blindness, culpable
ignorance

Prudence, docility to good advice,
and the gift of counsel

imprudence and neg­
ligence, carnal pru­
dence, craftiness

Justice and the annexed virtues
religion (gift of piety),
penance, of filial piety,
obedience, of gratitude,
truthfulness, of fidelity,
liberality

injustice, impiety,
superstition, hypoc­

of
of
of
of
of

Fortitude and the gift of fortitude,
with the annexed virtues of
magnanimity, patience, and

risy, lying

foolhardiness, mean­
ness, pusillanimity

perseverance
Temperance (sobriety and chastity)
and the annexed virtues of

intemperance, lust,
anger, pride, curiosity

meekness and humility

The final important point to be made regarding methods
of examination of conscience is that the relationship between
the interior life and external behavior should not be neglected.
Some directors have beginners pay a great deal of attention
to their deportment at prayer, while assisting at Mass, when
receiving the sacraments, in dealing with their superiors, thenequals, and, as a matter of fact, in every situation. This is as
it should be, but carried to excess such a method leads to a

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THE LOVE OF GOD

certain hypocrisy, to neglect of the interior life while keeping
up appearances. Our Lord said: “When you fast, be not as
the hypocrites, sad. For tliey disfigure their faces, that they
may appear unto men to fast. Amen I say to you, they have re­
ceived their reward.” 8
Reacting against this excess, others do not give enough at­
tention to external behavior and, as their souls are not united
closely enough to God, their ways leave much to be desired.
They wish to “skip a grade” and, through unconscious pride,
do not take sufficiently into account those things that are
useful or necessary for both beginners and proficients. Man,
being composed of spirit and body, knows spiritual and in­
terior things only in the mirror of sensible and exterior things,
in speculo sensibilium. The latter, while remaining quite
secondary, ought to be given their proper place in the scheme
of things.9
Here again truth rises like a mountain top above and be­
tween two contrary tendencies. It rests on the principle that
the end sought, though first in the order of intention, comes
last in the order of execution. A man putting up a building
first sees its noble beauty as an idea in his own mind. Then he
decides on whatever means are necessary to have it built,
neglecting nothing and beginning with the meanest part of
the work, for the foundations have to be laid. All the time,
little by little, at every stage of the undertaking, he is pushing
on to the realization of the end he desires to obtain. In the
same way, a man who desires a doctorate must first follow a
course of study in a graduate school, and before he can do
even that he must register diere.
8 Matt. 6: 16.
8 Ila Ilae, q.8i, a.7.

EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE

297

The same can be said of man’s approach to perfection. Al­
though reached at die very last, the end of the interior life
has to be first in the order of intention, and widi the help of
grace efficaciously willed. Those who lean to preoccupation
with externals need to remember this fact.
On the contrary, when we start to put our intention into
execution, we must not neglect the little means so necessary
for beginnings. We must give real attention to our external
behavior, the framework, as it were, of our spiritual life. With­
out exterior recollection, union with God is impossible, and
unless we practice humility externally we shall never come
to possess true humility of heart.10 Our inner life and outer
conduct are interrelated, as are die physical and the moral,
the sensible and the intelligible, the image and the idea, the
passions and the will. The image precedes the idea, which is
abstracted from it; then afterward the image serves to express
the idea.
Bodily worship and vocal prayer dispose us for mental
prayer, which then animates psalmody and the liturgical
chant. The interior surely has the primacy; yet the exterior
cannot be neglected without real loss to ourselves and prob­
ably scandal to our neighbor.
By means of this twofold examination of conscience, we
come to see plainly the necessity both for mortification and
for those passive purifications or crosses which God sends
us to cleanse us from all attachment to the world and to self
that our love for Him may take first place in our soul and be
10 Ibid., q. 161, a.6, ad aum: “Man arrives at humility in two ways. First and
chiefly by a gift of grace, and in this way the inner man precedes the outward man.
The other way is by human effort, whereby he first of all restrains the outward
man, and afterward succeeds in plucking out the inward root. It is according to
this order that the degrees of humility arc here enumerated.”

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THE love of god

reflected in all our acts. By whatever form we examine our­
selves, we do well not to look at ourselves without keeping
our eyes on God, the exemplar of all perfection. This look at
God is a look of faith, perfected by the gift of wisdom, and it
makes us judge all things in relation to God, the first cause
of our salvation and our last end.
In thinking about the divine perfections of truth, beauty,
love, justice, and mercy, we see the misery of man and the
disorder of sin the better for this contrast. In thinking about
the book of life and the whole story of our own fife written
there with absolute truth, we can see more clearly, and as if
from above, how much we have been of and for ourselves
through pride, vanity, jealousy, and concupiscence instead of
being of and for God, ex Deo nati, by humility, meekness, tire
spirit of faith, hope, and charity. Made in this way, examina­
tion of conscience tends to become transformed into prayer,
into prayer that begs for efficacious grace to enter again into
intimacy with God.11
11 In The Cloud of Unknowing, written by an English mystic of the fourteenth
century, we read (chap. 39): “Prayer in itself is nought else, but a devout intent
directed unto God, for the getting oFgood and the removing of evil. And therefore,
since it so is that all evil is comprehended in sin (either by cause or by being) let
let us therefore, when we will intently pray for the removing of evil, cither say,
or think, or mean, nought else and no more words, but this little word SIN. And
if we will intently pray for the getting of good, let us cry, either with word or
with thought or with desire, nought else and no more words, but this word GOD.
For in God is all good, both by cause and by being. . . .
“But although the shortness of prayer be greatly commended here, nevertheless
the ofteness of prayer is not therefore restrained. For as it is said before, prayer
is made in the length of the spirit; so that it should never cease till the time were
that it had fully gotten that that it longed for." See, too, chaps. 5, 9, 36 ff., 74 ff.

/

CHAPTER X
Mortification and our Supernatural End

Having shown the necessity of mortification for destroy­
ing the results of original and personal sin, we now consider
how mortification serves to subordinate our natural activity
perfectly to the life of grace, that we may never lose sight of
the infinite sublimity of our supernatural end.
Had man been created in a purely natural state, with a body
and an immortal soul but without the life of grace, he would
have had to discipline his passions, submitting them to right
reason and will. He would also have had to submit these
higher faculties to God, the author of his nature, to whom his
first love as a faithful servant would have been due. And he
never would have known God except by the reflection of His
perfections in the mirror of His creatures. But it pleased the
Most High in His infinite goodness to call us to an incom­
parably higher last end, to call us to see Him directly, face
to face, as He sees Himself, and to love Him as He loves Him­
self. It pleased Him to have us participate in His intimate
life and, even in this world, to possess the beginning of
eternal life in the life of grace, for grace is the seed of
glory.
It follows that man in his every deliberate act should live
not only in a reasonable but in a supernatural way, since
everything he does should be ordered at least virtually to his
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last supernatural end, the goal of his journey.1 We ought to
live as reasonable beings and also children of God redeemed
by His only Son. We must not only submit our passions to
reason but subordinate reason itself to faith, to the spirit of
faith, and subject all our natural activity to the life of grace
and charity, in fidelity to the Holy Ghost.
Our supernatural end, because of its infinite sublimity, de­
mands the mortification of the first interior movements of
concupiscence, pride, anger, jealousy, and envy. It requires
even the mortification of natural activity which, though not
plainly reprehensible, would not hesitate to push its own
development to the detriment of the life of grace. What is
generally meant in ascetical language by natural activity is ac­
tivity insufficiently subordinated to our last supernatural end,
unsanctified activity, activity stemming almost entirely from
an extroverted temperament, from natural enthusiasm, poorly
disciplined curiosity, and a need for diversion, influence, and
recognized and enjoyed success. People of this type, while
no doubt doing good, unconsciously tend to make themselves
the center of things, to attract souls to themselves instead of
drawing them to God. They forget the words of the Master,
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His justice; and all
these things shall be added unto you.”2
Natural activity can be developed to a point where its detri­
mental effect on the life of grace is astonishing. Christians
of great literary, scientific, and legal education whose faith
has scarcely developed at all since their first Communion are
1 Cf. Summa, la Hae, q. 18, a. 9. In the concrete no deliberate act is indifferent,
that is, neither morally good nor morally bad. Some acts, like walking, are in­
different with regard to their object, but they are either good or bad because of
their end, for whatever a man does must be done for some good end, itself subordi­
nate to the last supernatural end, which is to be loved above all others.
2 Matt. 6: 33.

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301

not few and far between. And even when they have managed
to keep the faith, it is so unenlightened and weak, so out of
proportion to their natural activity, that it has little defense
against the dangers which surround it. Giants in scholarship
are often spiritual dwarfs.
People devoted to the active apostolate or to study, even
to the study of philosophy, theology, exegesis, or canon law,
may allow themselves to be so taken up with natural activity
that the life of grace, the spirit of faith, influences them but
little. Overworked, ridden with too human preoccupations,
they seem to be living intensely when, in the eyes of God,
they are supernaturall y sick unto death.
Men with an infinitely sublime supernatural end require
mortification that no merely natural man can understand.
The perfection of charity requires it. And by the great com­
mandment every Christian is committed to perfection, not as
being bound to realize it immediately but as ceaselessly tend­
ing toward it in his own state of life.3
In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord has something to
say on this subject. It would be well for us to consider His
words in relation to the first inordinate movements of our
natural appetency and, later, to what ascetical doctrine calls
“natural activity.”

ARTICLE I
MORTIFICATION AND OUR INORDINATE TENDENCIES

Because our Lord wished to show the excellence of the
new law, the law of love and grace, and its superiority over
the Old Testament law of fear, He put insistent stress on the
8 Ila Hae, q. 184, a.3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

sublimity of our supernatural end by beginning the Sermon on
the Mount with the eight beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in
spirit ... the meek. . . . Blessed are they that mourn . . .
they that hunger and thirst after justice . . . the merciful
. . . the clean of heart . . . the peacemakers. . . . Blessed
are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake; for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.” 4 They will be comforted, satisfied,
they will obtain mercy, they will see God, they will be called
His children, they will have a great reward in heaven.
How can men attain an end as high as the eternal life of
God Himself? They must begin to live it in this world by
grace: “Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father
is perfect.” 5 For such perfection real mortification is neces­
sary and it must be exercised not only in our outer life but
especially in our inner life, where it deals with the beginnings
of every unregulated movement of concupiscence, anger,
hatred, pride, and hyprocrisy.
The true Christian is not to keep resentment or animosity
in his heart. “If therefore thou offer thy gift at the altar, and
there thou remember that thy brother hath anything against
thee, leave there thy offering before the altar and go first to
be reconciled to thy brother; and then coming thou shalt
offer thy gift.” 6 “Be at agreement with thy adversary be­
times.” Looking on an adversary, we must see a brother and
a son of God. Blessed are the meek.
The evil looks and desires of concupiscence by which a man
commits adultery in his heart must be mortified. “If thy right
eye scandalize thee, pluck it out; . . . thy right hand . . .
4 Matt. 5: 1-10.
‘ Ibid., 48.
8 Ibid., 23 £.

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303

cut it off. . . . For it is expedient for thee that one of thy
members should perish, rather than that thy whole body go
into hell.”7 The right eye that serves as an occasion for sin
may be a really evil thought that comes to us under the pre­
text of having some value for our apostolate; it may be a
friend, an adviser, even a father, astray himself and apt to
lead us into evil. Our Lord could not have expressed Himself
more forcefully to show our danger: “If thy right eye scan­
dalize thee, pluck it out.” We can resort, if need be, to cor­
poral austerities, to fasting, watching, the discipline, and find
in them great liberty of spirit.8
Every disordered desire for vengeance must be mortified.
“You have heard that it hath been said: An eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil.”
The Christian reacts to injury not by a bitter desire for re­
venge and, although out of duty he must resist unto death any
evildoer attempting to lead him into sin, he is to endure in­
jury with patience and without irritation or hatred. “If one
strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other;
and if a man will contend with thee in judgment and take
away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him.” In other words,
the Christian is warned to be ready to endure injustice with
forbearance. The apostles, as founders of the Church, fittingly
had to meet the terrible blow of persecutions that through
their heroic constancy and goodness many might be con­
verted. But patience in bearing injuries is not reserved for
apostles but is recommended to all Christians. No other means
serves so well to mollify and win over an angry adversary.
A Christian should be less concerned with jealously de’ ibid., 29.
8 Ha Ilae, q.147.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

fending his rights than with gaining over to God his angry
brother. His special charta is not the declaration of the rights
of man but the Gospel. The greatness of Christian justice is
made manifest by its union with charity. To the man who
would take away our tunic we would do well to give our
cloak also, rather than to take action that will set souls deeply
at variance with one another. Contention should be avoided
by all; litigation by the perfect, unless the circumstances
place them under the obligation of protecting the higher in­
terests of those committed to their keeping. But if they can­
not yield in a matter of their duties, they can yield concerning
their rights, as the saints have always shown us.
Egoism and self-will must be mortified by great charity:
“Whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other
two. Give to him that asketh of thee; and from him that
would borrow of thee, turn not away.” When anyone asks
some help or service, be ready, out of kindness, to give him
even more than he asks. When it is a question of your earthly
goods or the good of your neighbor’s soul, do not cling to
what is yours.
Hatred, even toward our worst enemies, must be mortified.
Not only supernatural patience and forgiveness of injuries
but love of enemies is required of us. “I say to you: Love
your enemies; do good to them that hate you; and pray for
them that persecute and calumniate you ; that you may be the
children of your Father who is in heaven. . . . For if you
love them that love you, what reward shall you have ? Do not
even the publicans this ? And if you salute your brethren only,
what do you more? Do not also the heathens this?” Charity
has a formal motive infinitely higher than that of natural
friendship.

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305

We love those who do good to us as naturally as we are in­
clined to hate those who do us evil and to remain indifferent
to those indifferent to us. Natural love makes us love our
neighbor for his good natural qualities and for the benefits
we receive from him. The formal motive of charity is alto­
gether different, since charity demands that we love even our
worst enemies supernaturally. We must love them with the
same supernatural and theological love we have for God,
being reminded by faith that our enemies, if not actually
children of God, are called to become so, divine grace urging
them to conversion. We ought to pray for them to be con­
verted, to be saved. We ought to wish them, like ourselves,
to reach the goal of their journey, the life of heaven, through
the blessing and help of our common Father, whom all of
us are to glorify eternally. To love our neighbor in this super­
natural manner when we are suffering at his hands, we must
look at him with the eyes of faith, seeing him as a son of God,
and, for love of God, wishing him the true and imperishable
goods of die supernatural life. All this evidently requires mor­
tification of every inclination to antipathy, aversion, and
rancor. When the fire of charity has destroyed these dis­
positions in us, then will that great virtue really take first
place in our souls and animate our every action.
Finally and forcefully, our Lord makes a special demand
of those consecrated to God to mortify every least inclination
to hypocrisy and spiritual pride, for if our justice does not
surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees, we shall not enter
into the kingdom of heaven. “Take heed that you do not your
justice before men, to be seen by them; otherwise you shall
not have reward of your Father who is in heaven. Therefore
when thou dost an almsdeed, sound not a trumpet before thee,

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THE LOVE OF GOD

as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets.”9
“When ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites that love
to stand and pray in the synagogues and corners of the streets,
that they may be seen by men. . . . And when thou fast, be
not as the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their faces that
they may appear unto men to fast. Amen, I say to you, they
have received their reward.” 10
Christ points out to us the true spirit of mortification—
death to sin and its results through love of God. “But thou,
when thou fastest, anoint thy head and wash thy face, that
thou appear not to men to fast, but to thy Father who is in
secret. And thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee.”11
Anoint your face, with the oil of charity, mercy, and spiritual
joy. Wash your face; that is, purify your soul entirely of the
spirit of ostentation and of every inordinate affection. When
you do acts of piety, you are not forbidden to be seen, but to
wish to be seen, for then you would lose that purity of in­
tention which goes directly to God our Father, present in the
secret sanctuary of your soul.
Pride can be mortified in another way. “Judge not, that
you may not be judged. For with what judgment you judge,
you shall be judged. . . . And why seest thou the mote that
is in thy brother’s eye; and seest dost the beam that is in thy
own eye?” Rash judgment, generally born of pride, reads
malice into every peccadillo and fails in charity and also in
justice. God alone can judge the secrets of men’s hearts. When
we attempt it we arrogate to ourselves a jurisdiction we do not
have. Pride bribes our judgment, and we are incapable of
9 Matt. 6: I f.
10 Ibid., 5 ff.
11 Ibid., 17-18.

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307

giving a just verdict about the man we view not as a brother
but as a rival to be put down.
Of those charged with instructing others in the things of
salvation, our Lord requires a very special mortification of
intellectual pride. In speaking of the Pharisees, He says that
they “love the first places at feasts and the first chairs in the
synagogues, and salutations in the market place, and to be
called by men, Rabbi. But be not you called Rabbi. For one is
your Master, and all you are brethren. . . . He that is the
greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever
shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and he that shall humble
himself shall be exalted.” 12
St. Paul speaks in the same way. “Knowledge puffeth up;
but charity edifieth. And if any man think that he knoweth
anything, he hath not yet known as he ought to know. But if
any man love God, the same is known by Him.” 13 In com­
menting on this text, St. Thomas says that knowledge without
charity profits nothing for salvation and leads to pride. Char­
ity must accompany knowledge, and truth must be sought
not through curiosity and vainglory but out of love for God
and souls. Only then will knowledge become profitable for
salvation. St. Bernard says that some people desire to know
merely to know, and they are curious; others, to be known,
and they are vain; others, to sell their knowledge, and they
are calculating; others, to be edified, and diey are prudent;
still others, to edify their neighbor, and diey are charitable.
For us to avoid curiosity on the one hand and intellectual
sloth on the other, mortification and a special virtue are
needed. To study for love of God and souls, a supernatural
12 Ibid., 23: 6-12.
13 I Cor. 8: 1.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

end, we need the virtue of studiousness. Charity animates our
study so that we will never sacrifice the principal to the
accessory or the Creator to the creature in intellectual work;
nor, as it too often happens, pursue a detailed, critical study
of the letter of the Gospel without ever penetrating beyond
the words to the very spirit of the word of God.14
St. Thomas insists on this point when explaining the con­
clusion of the Sermon on the Mount: “Everyone therefore
that heareth these My words and doth them, shall be likened to
a wise man that built his house upon a rock. . . . And every­
one that heareth these My words and doth them not shall be
like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand. And the
rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew: and they
beat upon that house. And it fell; and great was the fall
thereof.” 15 About this the Angelic Doctor says16 that every
man must examine the foundations of his own building, the
basis on which his intention rests; some listen to the words
of the Gospel only to know, to edify merely the intellect, and
so build on sand ; others listen to put what they hear into prac­
tice, to love God and neighbor, and they build on the rock of
charity. “Who then shall separate us from the love of
Christ ?”17
The Sermon on the Mount places before us the greatness of
Christian morality and keeps us from losing sight of the
necessity for generous mortification to reach our supernatural
end. The spirit of mortification in the new law is the spirit
of the love of God and of souls in God.
“ Cf. Ila Ilac, q.166.
16 Matt. 7: 24-27.
18 St. Thomas, in Matthaeum, y. 24.
17 Rom. 8: 35.

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309

ARTICLE II
MORTIFICATION OF NATURAL ACTIVITY

Authors of ascetical and mystical writings use the term
“natural activity” to mean whatever the soul does outside of
and prejudicial to the influence of grace, unsanctified activity,
apt, when developed, to lead men from divine union toward
practical naturalism. Commonly, people are all too unaware
that they should mortify their “natural activity.” Yet, to
realize that such mortification is necessary, we have only to
recall St. Thomas’ principle that no individual deliberate act
is indifferent but either morally good or morally bad.
Objectively, some acts are indifferent—taking a walk, for
instance. Yet every act we do deliberately, we do for either a
good or a bad end, and not to act deliberately but mechanically
is hardly an ideal for man. All our deliberate acts should be at
least virtually ordered to God and have such reasonable and
truly good ends that they lead us finally to Him who has first
claim on our love.
“No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the
one and love the other; or he will sustain the one and despise
the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” 18 No one
can seek two different last ends, two supreme goods.19 “There­
fore, whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do
all to the glory of God.” 20 In the Saint Gotthard range of
the Alps there is said to be a watershed where every drop
turns either north toward the Rhine and the North Sea or
18 Matt. 6: 24.
19 la Ilae, q. i, a.5.
20 I Cor. 10: 31.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

south to the Rhone or the Ticino and the Mediterranean. So
in our lives every deliberate act goes in the direction of good
or of evil ; for in the concrete reality of life neutrality in moral
matters simply does not exist. We need, then, to consider
the proximate and ultimate consequences of our action and
our apparently good or at least inoffensive natural activity.
If it is born outside the influence of grace, it will most likely
grow up to do grace harm. Too often we keep the divine life
in us as a kind of superstratum without bearing or influence
on many of our actions which lack even virtually the spirit
of faith and love.
Of the three degrees of “natural activity” the first and gross­
est consists in that natural ardor which makes some people
undertake everything they do through impetuosity, acting
with little or no reflection and with hot and hasty vigor. The
boiling over of an impetuous disposition into activity in no
way proceeds from grace and quickly becomes contrary to it,
being trailed by disorder and followed up by trouble, inco­
herence, and blindness. The principle behind impulsive activwty is self-love. The desire for immediate self-satisfaction
makes a man act hastily and imprudently. His agitation is the
very opposite of peace, of that tranquillity of order wherein
a man keeps himself in the presence of God. Because so much
unconscious egoism, whether individual or that collective
type we might call “nosism,” enters into impulsive actions, we
do well to stop or postpone beginning whatever work seems
to carry us away. Group or party spirit may come to substitute
for the spirit of God when we desire something good to be
done but wish to do it ourselves and in our own way either
personally or through our society, religious family, or com­
munity. The resultant and saddening divisions among work­

OUR SUPERNATURAL END

3”

ers in the Lord’s vineyard certainly dispose no one for divine
contemplation.
Sometimes natural ardor manifests itself in loud, expressive
enthusiasm, so tiresome to thoughtful and recollected people
who recognize it as a rhinestone imitation of the diamond of
spiritual joy and as different from it as chauvinism is from
patriotism or the silly, affected cult of knowledge is from love
of truth. But the man of impulse is himself fooled, believing
himself, when only an unformed or mediocre scholar, to be
quite an authority, or, if a very ordinary administrator, an
exceptional man of affairs. If a man like this is simply an
inoffensive megalomaniac, he may be nothing worse than
ridiculous ; but if he is ambitious and reaches a high office, he
can be dangerous because of the harm he can do.
The second, less gross and less dangerous, degree of natural
activity may be called natural eagerness. Natural eagerness
marks a man when, although he has a much more delicate
conscience than the ambitious enthusiast, he does not enter
enough into the privacy of his heart to listen to the Holy
Ghost. Self-will slips into his activity and blocks the workings
of grace. Fascination for some proximate end like study or
the apostolate makes him lose sight of its relationship to the
ultimate end, the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
Then, not keeping his ultimate end sufficiently in mind, he
no longer turns to God enough for help to do what he should,
he no longer prays enough. He has forgotten the great prin­
ciple St. Thomas recalled so often: the order of agents cor­
responds to the order of ends. No one can tend toward the last
end without the concurrence of the supreme agent, the author
of our salvation, God. When we see only the proximate and
human end to be attained, we rarely have recourse to anything

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but human effort and let our natural eagerness take control.
Then if our success does not measure up to our expectations,
we become sad and upset. This would not happen if, instead
of acting precipitately, without counsel or precept, we awaited
the movement of grace, the motive force of God’s will. Many
souls aspiring to perfection have this fault and fail to realize
what an obstacle it is to the operation of the Holy Ghost. To
overcome it we must always consult God in prayer about any
important affair, asking earnestly for His light. Only thus can
we become really interior souls, guided in all things by the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
As our Lord led His apostles to sanctity, He corrected this
fault little by little. Before the Passion, Peter said to Him:
“Although all shall be scandalized in Thee, yet not I.” And
Jesus answered : “Amen I say to thee, today, even in this night,
before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny Me thrice.” 21
When James and John wished for fire from heaven to fall on
a village that had remained deaf to God’s words, He replied :
“You know not of what spirit you are.” 22 And St. Paul re­
minds us that natural activity can puff a scholar up with pride
and make a preacher but sounding brass and a tinkling cym­
bal.23
The third degree of natural activity, though without pas­
sion and excessive eagerness, is a natural movement of more
subtlety and therefore more difficult to know than the two
others. People of well controlled passions and pure intention
who consult God in prayer about anything of importance may
still not wait sufficiently for the action of grace before carry21 Mark 14: 29 f.
22 Luke 9: 55.
23 I Cor. 13:1.

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ing out some work. They seem to forget that the Holy Ghost
knows the day and hour for doing.
From time to time some trace of unconscious self-love
makes them judge things, not in the spirit of faith, but in a
wholly natural way, so that they act in an entirely human
fashion without waiting for the time willed by God. Not be­
ing contemplative enough, they forget the lesson of Psalm
39, Expectans expectavi Dominum, et intendit mihi. This
does them more harm than they think, forming a cloud be­
tween them and God, momentarily dimming the divine light
in their souls. The soul already possessed of union is for that
instant somehow disfigured, commonplace, even vulgar.
Overanxious to get things started, it has lost the particular
assistance of the Holy Ghost and marred God’s work within
itself. And diat “sense” it once had for the things of God may
be lost to it for a while.
When Christ foretold His terrible passion to His disciples,
Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him by saying:
“Lord, be it far from Thee, this shall not be unto Thee.” But
Jesus turned on him and said, “Go behind Me, Satan; thou
art a scandal unto Me, because thou savorest not the tilings
that are of God, but the things that are of men.”24 Peter had
spoken too naturally, forgetting that no one can reprove the
Son of God. Of course he spoke out of his love for Christ, but
it was a natural reaction, not conformed to the Spirit of God ;
were it not for Christ’s response, the devil could easily have
used it to deceive Peter and prevent him from understanding
the great mystery of the redemption.
The infinite sublimity of our supernatural end requires
24 Matt. i6:2af.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

mortification to prevent the first disordered movements of
natural activity from developing and from harming the di­
vine life, to keep us from dissipating ourselves in externals,
and to save us from forgetting the indwelling Master of our
sanctification. Practiced generously, mortification will make
us appreciate more and more that the contemplation of the
mysteries of salvation through habitual recollection belongs
to the normal way of sanctity.
We can understand why our Lord told us: “How narrow
is the gate and strait is the way that leadeth to life! And few
there are that find it.” 25 The way of the flesh, of pride, is
very wide at the start but narrows down more and more as it
leads on towards hell. On the contrary, the way of the spirit
begins as the narrow path of humility and abnegation but
widens afterward until it becomes as immense as God Him­
self, to whom it leads. At its end, the full heart cries: “O how
great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou
hast hidden for them that fear Thee!”20
St. Paul, too, tells us: “This therefore I say, brethren: The
time is short. It remaineth that they also who have wives be
as if they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept
not; and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and they
that use this world, as if they used it not. For the fashion of
this world passeth away.” 27 Therefore, to oppose the three
concupiscences, the three counsels of poverty, chastity, and
obedience have been given to us that our lives may be “hid
with Christ in God.” If we follow the narrow way that grows
ever wider and wider, we shall find realized within us what
nature could never hope for, the fulfillment of die promise:
25 Ibid., 7: 14.
20 Ps. 30: 20.
271 Cor. 7: 29-31.

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“When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also
shall appear with Him in glory.” 28 “For whom He foreknew,
he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image
of His Son, that he might be the firstborn amongst many
brethren.”29
Tired and bruised, men will push on through the risks and
hardships of mountain climbing to stand on Mt. Blanc and
view its great glaciers. The vision of the divine Essence for all
eternity is surely worth more mortification. “For that which
is at present momentary and light of our tribulation worketh
for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.
. . . Now He that maketh us for this very thing is God, who
hath given us the pledge of the Spirit.” 30 For us not born of
flesh, nor of blood, but of God, for us who are of God—
Noblesse oblige.
For a practical, simple, yet sublime summary of all that has
been said about mortification and its relationship to the love
of God and die spirit of wisdom, we now turn to Blessed
Grignon de Montfort’s L’Amour de la divine Sagesse?1
Not in those who live at their ease, who concede to their passions
and senses all they desire, is Wisdom found; for the wisdom of the
flesh is the enemy of God and those who walk according to the
flesh cannot please God.32 “My spirit shall not remain in man
forever, because he is flesh.” 33 All who belong to Christ, Wisdom
eternal, have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences
and carry actually and always in their bodies the death of
Christ. . . .
28 Col. 3:4.
29 Rom. 8: 29.
80 II Cor. 4: 17; 5: 5.
81 Part II, chap. 6.
82 Rom. 8:8.
88 Gen. 6: 3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Never imagine that Wisdom, purer than the rays of the sun,
enters into a soul and body stained by sense pleasures. ... To
communicate itself, Wisdom demands not partial and temporary
mortification, but universal and continual mortification that is
both courageous and discreet. If you would have Wisdom:
1) You must really give up the goods of this world ... or at
least detach your heart from them and possess them as though
not possessing them. . . .
2) You must not conform to the outer manner of worldlings, a
practice more necessary than people are apt to think.
3) You must neither accept nor follow the false maxims of the
world. . . . Ordinarily worldlings will not teach sin expressly;
they simply treat it as though it were either honest virtue or a mat­
ter of indifference and little consequence. This adroitness the
world has learned from the devil to cover up the false and ugly
face of sin, and it is this very sagacity that constitutes the malice
St. John speaks of in his first epistle: “. . . and the whole world is
in the power of the evil one” (I John 5:19). Now more than ever,
the whole world is thoroughly penetrated with malice.
4) You must, in so far as you can, keep away from evil and dan­
gerous companions and even devout people who stand in your way
and waste your time . . . that your life may be hidden with Christ
Jesus in God (Col. 3:3). Keep silence among men that you may
converse with Wisdom, for a silent man is a wise man (Ecclus.
20:5).
5) To have Wisdom, you must mortify the body, not only by
suffering patiently whatever sicknesses and inconveniences come
to you but also by punishing yourself with fasting, watching, and
the other austerities penitent saints have practiced. . . . The
world rejects as useless all mortifications of the body and will do or
say anything to turn saints away from practicing austerities since
it knows that all of them have brought their bodies into subjection
by some use of fasting and the discipline. . . .

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317

6) Although voluntary exterior mortification is good, you must
join to it, by holy obedience, mortification of the judgment and
will. Obedience routs self-love, the despoiler of all things; then
every smallest act becomes meritorious . . . and a man arrives
surely and as though while asleep at the door of salvation. All this
is reaffirmed by the great counsel : Leave all and you shall find all
—in Jesus Christ, Wisdom incarnate.

CHAPTER XI
Imperfection

Before turning to the passive purifications and considering
how they help to destroy the imperfections of beginners and
proficients alike, we wish to return to a previously examined
question 1 much discussed lately in French, Belgium, and
German reviews: the distinction between venial sin and im­
perfection. To understand the question better, we shall com­
pare it to another similar problem, that of the lesser of two
evils.
Everyone agrees that there are imperfections distinct from
venial sin in actions done without deliberation ; for example,
in good or, at the very least, objectively indifferent acts, done
mechanically because of involuntary inattention. One man’s
abstraction may be another man’s distraction. The absent­
minded man who blunders noisily into chapel will certainly
disturb diose praying there. And whenever we chant more
quickly or more slowly than the rest of the choir because
our minds are not on what we are doing, we annoy those
around us. Life is full of such imperfections. In communities
the chapter of faults is meant to remedy them, lest community
life become a general torture that hinders the progress of
souls toward perfection. Actions of this kind are not venial
sins as long as they remain indeliberate and altogether invol1 Christian Perfection and Contemplation, pp. 429-34; Vie Spirituelle, September,
1923, pp. 583 if.; January, 1925, pp. 85 ff.
318

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319

untary, but they should become less and less frequent in any­
one truly tending toward perfection. Were we more closely
united to God, more attentive in our duties, more delicate in
regard to our neighbor, more reverential toward all that gives
life value, such things would hardly happen at all. They had
no place in the life of our Lord or His Blessed Mother.
Besides, we must not forget that troublesome indeliberate
actions begin to be venial sins as soon as we can and should
stop to consider and resolve to mend our ways but do not do
so. Then our inadvertence is no longer absolutely involuntary
but indirectly voluntary and partly culpable through negli­
gence. The same is true of the first inordinate movements of
sensuality or impatience. They begin to be culpable when
we can and should notice and repress them but fail to do so.
So far in this matter almost everybody is agreed.

The lesser good—an evil?

But all are not agreed about whether it is in itself a venial
sin deliberately to choose a lesser good when we know the
greater good is better in itself and also better for us here
and now. The problem assumes that the choice involves no
contempt of counsel, no laziness or negligence, but simply
less effort, less generosity, to advance in the way of perfec­
tion.
First of all, we should note that, when people prefer a lesser
good to something better both objectively and subjectively,
they often make that choice through laziness and negligence
and thereby, of course, commit venial sin. We also agree with
Billuart that it is illicit to omit a thing better for us solely
because we are not bound to do it and wish to use our liberty.
This is, as the Thomists say with good reason, a desire without

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THE LOVE OF GOD

a proper motive ;2 and since no individual deliberate act is
indifferent (for each must have a good end or be bad) the act
in question is bad.
But it is not impossible to prefer a lesser to a greater good
for a legitimate, though less good, motive. Many theologians
express this view as follows: “A man accepts a lawful satis­
faction, like eating between meals, smoking or using snuff,
purely for pleasure and without necessity. Or he prolongs
useful conversations he could have shortened. All these things
remain within the circle of what is licit and therefore meri­
torious, too ; but he would have progressed much more rapidly
and merited much more intensely had he chosen the other al­
ternative.” 3
We find a similar example in the good doctor who, having
assisted at Mass for nine consecutive days to obtain a special
grace, notices that this half hour given to God each morning
does no harm at all either to his medical studies or his prac­
tice. On the tenth morning he has this good thought: “I could
continue to attend Mass daily, and it would be better in itself
and better for me, although of course it is not obligatory.
Not only would it do no harm to my work but it would even,
in a higher sense, be good for it. My confrere assists at daily
Mass without his duties as a faculty professor suffering from
it and I could follow his example and thus do more good.
This may be an inspiration of the Holy Ghost. It is, however,
not an obligation but a counsel. I am far from despising it.
I know it would be better for me to follow it but I commit no
sin by employing this half hour every morning in study. I
2 Billuart, De actibus humanis, diss. IV, a. 6, solv. obj. 3.
* Hugon, O.P., Vie Spirituelle, July, 1920, p. 279.

IMPERFECTION

321

admit it is a lesser good and that, with more generosity, I
could find time later for a half hour’s work at my books. It
is, then, less good, but still good. Let us not call something bad
in itself when it is only less good in itself, and let us not say
it is bad for me when it is only less good for me.”
We find an analagous case in the priest who habitually
makes a fifteen-minute thanksgiving after Mass and has this
good thought: “If I really wished to, I certainly could give a
half hour to my thanksgiving as so many of my friends do
whose ministry seems much more fruitful than my own.
However, I am not obliged to do it and I will not allow myself
to become lazy but will study some philosophy or history at
that time although that could, with more generosity, be put
off until later.” Surely this priest has no idea that he com­
mits sin. Please God, he may not come to devote himself to
study with such immoderate ardor that he will neglect prayer
for it and let his prayer become no more than a moment of
relaxation and pleasant idleness. Imperfections, especially
when repeated, like lax virtuous acts, dispose us indirectly to
venial sin by allowing tendencies to develop which we would
do well to struggle against with more energy.4
However, to return to the question whether whatever is less
good for us is bad for us, those who deny the distinction be­
tween imperfection and venial sin answer that to prefer a
lesser good to one that seems better for us here and now is a
venial sin, the motive for doing it cannot be legitimate, and
* Because of their lack of intensity, actus remissi of charity, while good and
meritorious, react but feebly in combating our inordinate tendencies and in that
way dispose us indirectly or per accidens for venial sin. If we wish to content our­
selves with the mere avoidance of sin, God, who gives us beyond what is necessary,
will give us fewer graces. Cf. Billuart, De caritate, diss. II, a. a, de actibus remissis.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

what some people would like to call less generosity is really
sloth or negligence.®
Theologians who take this stand are preoccupied with the
relative side of the problem, the lesser good compared to the
greater rather than the lesser good taken in itself, absolutely.
They thus come to think at least implicitly that the lesser good,
in comparison to what is better for us here and now, becomes
an evil; and so they make no distinction between imperfection
and venial sin which they view as differing only per accidens,
lack of attention reducing sin to imperfection.
This point of view encounters serious objections in the very
arguments invoked in favor of the contrary solution as pro­
posed, among Thomists, by the Carmelites of Salamanca,®
and stated in Christian Perfection and Contemplation? Ac­
cording to this second viewpoint, venial sin and imperfection
are distinct in themselves, and the lesser good must be con­
sidered absolutely, as it is in itself, before being compared to
something better. For example, in the case of the doctor just
discussed, it would be better for him to continue going to daily
Mass, but it is still good and legitimate for him to consecrate
that half hour to studying medicine—an act that is good be­
cause of its object (the study to which he devotes himself
without falling into either sloth or curiosity), because of its
end (the care of the sick), and because of its circumstances,
for we are assuming that he studies as he should, when he
should, and where he should. Now, according to the prins In an article entitled “Péché véniel et imperfection,” Ephemerides theol.
Lovanienses, April, 1926, p. 179, Μ. E. Ranwez writes: “To choose what we
know without doubt to be less good for our soul is a sin."
• Cursus theol. de peccatis, tr. ΧΠΙ, disp. 19, dub. 1, nos. 8, 9. Cf. also Illa, q. 15,
a. I, where St. Thomas shows that it would have been impossible for Christ to
have had either venial sin or imperfection.
7 Christian Perfection and Contemplation, pp. 429-34.

IMPERFECTION

323

ciples St. Thomas enunciated in regard to the morality of
human actions,8 this action is good in its object, end, and cir­
cumstances. It is less good than assistance at Mass but, after
all, what is only less good in itself need not be called bad in
itself, and what is only less good for us here and now need
not be called bad for us here and now.9
The first reason for adopting this point of view is that hu­
man actions are specified by their objects and not by the re­
lation of their objects to some greater good. Therefore, if the
object and the motive for which it is willed and the circum­
stances in which it is done are all conformed to right reason,
the act is good, although it may be less good than another
which could be done at that time.
A second reason is based on the distinction between a coun­
sel and a precept, a counsel by its nature not obliging but only
inviting us to do what is better. And it cannot be said, as is
sometimes claimed, that this is true of counsels in the abstract
but not of a counsel in the concrete which, because it appears
opportune to me here and now, thereby becomes obligatory.
We might just as well say, as Billuart somewhere remarks, that
in the concrete a counsel loses its nature, its very essence as a
counsel, and becomes a command. This can no more be ad­
mitted than that a man, by being a particular man, loses his
human nature. Should any counsel here and now oblige any­
one, it would do so not of itself, but in a wholly accidental
fashion, because not to follow the counsel would involve sloth
or contempt. Sin has elsewhere been defined as any word, deed,
or desire against the eternal law, whatever is contrary to a
precept sub gravi or sub levi.
8 la Ilae, q. 18.
9 For the common teaching of Thomists concerning imperfect acts of charity,
actus remissi, see Ila Ilae, q.24, a. 6, ad mm.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

We admit that the perfection of charity falls under the
great commandment to love God. “Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul, and
with all thy strength and with all thy mind.” But perfection
comes under the commandment not as matter, or as some­
thing to be immediately realized, but only as the end toward
which every Christian should tend, each according to his
state of life.10 This is the sense in which every Christian ought
to have the spirit of the counsels.
Sin occurs only through the transgression of a precept re­
garding the matter of that precept, obligatory sub gravi or
sub levi.11 Even an expedient counsel, some good inspiration
about a matter of counsel, even when conformed to our vo­
cation, does not suffice ipso facto to constitute an obligation.
In the lives of the saints we see that the Holy Ghost sometimes
makes them understand that a certain act is better for them
(for example, to offer themselves as a victim for some great
cause) but that they are not obliged to do it, unless they have
made the vow to do what is most perfect. However, they are
made to understand that, having offered themselves, they
should not take back their gift. The virtuous act being speci­
fied by its object, the virtues should be considered, not apart
from the commandments, but together with them.12
A third reason could be added : that God Himself does not
always choose what is best in itself, for He can create beings
10 Ila Hae, q.184, a.3.
11 Cf. ibid., ad aum: "And since that which is a matter of precept can be ful­
filled variously, one does not break a commandment through not fulfilling it in
the best way, but it is enough to fulfill it in any way whatever. Now the perfection
of divine love is a matter of precept for all without exception, so that even the
perfection of heaven is not excepted from this precept, as Augustine says (De perf.
justit. viii), 'one escapes transgressing the precept, in whatever measure one attains
to the perfection of divine love.' ”
12 la Ilae, q. 18 et 19.

IMPERFECTION

325

more perfect than those to whom He has given existence. And
to save men, He was not bound, but freely willed, to choose
the Incarnation. It was, of course, wonderfully fitting, but
the choice of some lower means of salvation would not have
implied anything unfitting. God could have contented Him­
self with sending us a prophet to tell us that He would par­
don us under certain conditions. Likewise, despite the fact
that it was fitting for Him to create, God could very well not
have created. The absolute optimism of Leibnitz, who de­
clared that God would not be good or wise had He not created,
is a grave error, a heresy. Between God and ourselves there is
this undoubted difference: He is not greater for having cre­
ated the universe, whereas we do become better by being more
generous. However, analogously is also remains true that I
can refrain from acting with great liberality to a poor man
and content myself with giving him merely a little money—
and still commit no sin.
The three reasons just given have not been really refuted
by those theologians who reject the distinction between
venial sin and imperfection. Their answering objection comes
to this: that the refusal of a greater good cannot be referred
to God and is therefore a venial sin.
To which the reply is, that the refusal of a greater good can­
not be referred to God when this greater good is obligatory
or when, in a matter of the counsel, the refusal is made with
contempt of the counsel or through sloth or negligence. But
the same cannot be said when, for a legitimate motive, a man,
to do something less good, omits some greater good that is
counseled. For example, if the doctor we were speaking about
a little while ago stayed away from Mass when it was not
obligatory to give himself to study, even if he recognized that

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THE LOVE OF GOD

with more generosity he could find time to do both, he would
commit no sin. Besides, as has already been said in agreement
with the theologians of Salamanca, the absence of perfection
in the less generous act is not good, but the less perfect act it­
self is still good because of its object, end, and circumstances,
and it can be referred to God. You can climb mountains by
direct and difficult footpaths or by zigzaz roads that wind
upward less steeply. If you choose the winding highway in
preference to the short but hard assent, you move ahead more
slowly to the summit but you still go on, you do not come
down. What is less hot it not cold. Because ten degrees of
temperature is lower than twenty, it does not equal zero.
Although we may not find it easy to distinguish between
the highest degree of vegetative life and the lowest degree
of sensitive life, and the question arises whether a sponge is a
plant or an animal, yet the distinction between these two or­
ders holds. The highest degree of the lower order in some
way touches the lowest degree of the higher order, but the
vegetable and the animal kingdoms are distinct. Likewise, in
the concrete reality of life it may be anything but easy to dis­
tinguish between slight venial sins and imperfections. How­
ever, unless everything is to become confounded, there is
surely a difference between what is purely and simply evil
and what is only less good in itself and for us. Before compar­
ing a lesser with a greater good, which is a relative matter,
we should consider the lesser good absolutely, as it is in itself.
As such it can be referred to God. Effort is indeed withheld,
yet this is not to stand still on the mountainside and not to
retrace the steps already taken, but only to go forward more
slowly by an easier route. We have merely to recall the de­
sign made by St. John of the Cross for the ascent of Mt. Car-

IMPERFECTION

γη

mel to see that, besides the middle course, the narrow way that
mounts directly and steeply to the summit by complete ab­
negation, and the way of the misguided spirit which leads
away from God, there is a third path—that of the imperfect
soul. As this route spirals its slow, sloping way up the moun­
tainside, it offers much slower travel than the narrow way
of perfection, but it still goes upward. St. John of the Cross
has managed, in this design and its headings, to preserve all
the nuances needed to safeguard so delicate a subject, and his
doctrine prompts the generous to holy austerity without dis­
couraging those less generous but still good.
The lesser evil

The question of the lesser evil—whether it is lawful to
choose a lesser evil in order to avoid a greater—throws light
on the subject under discussion. Nobody doubts that lesser
physical evils may be chosen, for example, the amputation of
some part of the body to save the whole. But may a man
choose a lesser moral evil ?
Some theologians answer affirmatively, saying that the lesser
evil takes on the nature of good when compared to the
greater evil to be avoided. The comparison of the lesser to
the greater evil, a relative consideration, takes precedence over
the consideration of the lesser evil taken in itself, absolutely.
A little while back we saw how this precedence of the relative
’ over the absolute led to a certain rigorism by confusing the
lesser good with evil, and imperfection with venial sin. Now
it results in a sort of laxism by confusing the lesser evil with
good. Such inconsistent fluctuation between two extremes ap­
pears to be the sign and seal of relativism.
St. Thomas seems to give the solution to this problem when

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THE LOVE OF GOD

he takes up the question whether lying is always a sin. The
objection states that we must choose a lesser evil to avoid a
greater and goes on to say that, as a doctor amputates a limb
to save the body, so a lie may cause error in another’s mind
to prevent a homicide, since a lie works less harm than such
a crime. St. Thomas gives his answer: “A lie is sinful not only
because of an injury to one’s neighbor, but also on account of
its inordinateness, for speech is by its nature made for the
expression of thought, just as the intelligence is made to
know truth. Now it is not allowed to make use of anything
inordinate in order to ward off injury or defect to another.
. . . Therefore it is not lawful to tell a lie in order to deliver
another from any danger whatever. Nevertheless it is lawful
to hide the truth” 13 because hiding the truth is not speaking
against it. Actually, when the saints found themselves in dif­
ficulties of this kind, since they were habitually united to God,
they received from the Holy Ghost through the gift of counsel
an inspiration which supplied for the imperfection in their
prudence and made them avoid lying while keeping their se­
cret when it was absolutely necessary that it be kept. Our Lord
said to His disciples: “When they shall deliver you up, take
no thought how or what to speak; for it shall be given you in
that hour what to speak.” 14
It follows from St. Thomas’ answer that no one may will
something intrinsically evil in order to avoid a greater evil.
Human acts are in fact specified by their objects. If the object
of an act is essentially evil from a moral point of view, the
act specified by it is morally bad. But if certain things or per­
sons, a man running for some public office, for instance, possess
13 Ila Ilae, q. no, a.3.
14 Matt. 10:19.

IMPERFECTION

329

enough good for us to be able not positively to choose but
merely to tolerate the evil in them, we may have recourse
to them to avoid greater evils, as long as we cannot by other
means avoid the evil they entail. Yet we ought to try either
to find other means or to create them, so as not to prolong a
critical situation and cooperate in its disorders. We have a
duty, for instance, to do what we can to have good candidates
run for office.
To return to the question of imperfection, it should be re­
marked that if the lesser evil does not become a good simply
by being chosen to avoid a greater evil, neither does a lesser
good become an evil simply because it is chosen in preference
to something better both in itself and for us. Acts are specified
by their objects. If the object is intrinsically bad, even if less
bad than another, the choice specified by it is bad. If the object
is good, even if less good than another, the choice specified
by it is still good.
Conformity to the divine will

Conformity to the will of God differs on earth and in
heaven, during our exile and in our homeland. In this life, as
we travel toward eternity, we are bound to conform our will
to the divine will by willing for the same motive as that for
which God Himself wills—for the good and the glory of
God; but, except in the case of a precept, we are not bound
to will each thing that God wills, such as the death of a father
when it comes time for him to die. What is actually a good
from the universal viewpoint of Providence may not be good
from the particular point of view of some living Christian in­
dividual or family.15 Filial piety itself makes ys grieve to lose
15 la Ilae, q. 19, a. 10.

33°

THE LOVE OF GOD

father or friend, even while we submit to the divine will.
Christ wept at the tomb of Lazarus. When God sends us some
humiliation or temporal affliction, we do better, of course,
to will the event itself, but we are not obliged to do so and
need only will the accomplishment of divine justice and the
order of Providence.16
In heaven the blessed see in God everything they are to
desire and will and they not only never fail to will God’s glory
but they also will all that He wills so that they are no longer
saddened by what would have legitimately grieved them here
on earth.17 Indeed they no longer see all things in the limited,
particular way they saw them during their earthly pilgrim­
age, but from the higher, eternal viewpoint of divine Provi­
dence. Evidently no imperfection exists in heaven although
we find it on earth and know it as distinct from venial sin.
What is less white is not therefore black, the lesser good is not
an evil, and less generosity becomes neither sloth nor neg­
ligence by being compared with greater generosity.
Nevertheless imperfect actions dispose us indirectly for
venial sin because, as in the case of the man with five talents
who acts as though he had but two, they allow tendencies to
develop in us which we would do well to struggle against
with more energy.18
Shortly an exact statement of this doctrine will be found in
studying what St. John of the Cross has to say about the role
of the passive purifications in perfecting souls—in beginners
by means of the purification of the senses, in the more ad­
vanced through the night of the soul.
10 Ibid., ad 2um.
17 Ibid., end of the article.
18 Cf. Billuart, De Caritate, diss. II, a.2.

IMPERFECTION

33ï

Difficulties about the question of imperfection

In the preceding pages the question has been asked whether
not to act with the maximum generosity of which we are here
and now morally capable is in itself a venial sin. Suppose I
can attend Mass daily without great difficulty and know that
I can, must I do so or commit venial sin? Or may I use the
time which attendance at Mass would take to do some other
work less good in itself and less good for me ? Suppose I know
it would be better for me to bind myself by vow to fast for nine
days than merely to fast without making a vow, must I, under
pain of venial sin, make the vow? Or, as theologians com­
monly teach, am I merely less generous ? Is the lesser good an
evil ? The difficulty of the question offers no excuse for con­
fusing good and evil, but gives us an opportunity for solving
the problem through the application of self-evident principles.
To know what St. Thomas really teaches on this point,
since his opinion has been invoked as contrary to the opinion
generally accepted, all his texts relative to the subject should
be consulted, both where he treats the question ex professo
in the Summa theologica, his definitive thought expositively
taught, and where the subject comes up in his other works.
Having seen the reasons for his doctrine, we can then turn
to an examination of opposing difficulties.

Important Thomistic texts
In his treatise on the New Law,19 answering the question
whether it was fitting to add counsels to commandments, St.
Thomas says: “The difference between a counsel and a com18 la Ilae, q. 108, a. 4.

33a

THE LOVE OF GOD

mandment is that a commandment implies obligation,
whereas a counsel is left to the option of the one to whom it
is given. ... We must therefore understand the command­
ments of the New Law to have been given about matters that
are necessary to gain the end of eternal bliss . . . but that
the counsels are about matters that render the gaining of
this end more assured and expeditious.”
This is true not only of the three counsels properly speaking
but even of the others, for at the end of the same article St.
Thomas adds: “For instance, when anyone gives an alms to
a poor man, not being bound so to do, he follows the counsels
in that particular case. In like manner, when a man for some
fixed time refrains from legitimate carnal pleasures that he
may give himself to prayer, he follows the counsel for that
particular time. And again, when a man follows not his will
as to some deed he might do lawfully, he follows the counsel
in that particular case: for instance, if he do good to his
enemies when he is not bound to, or if he forgive an injury
of which he might justly seek to be avenged.”
By means of these different cases, St. Thomas shows us
that, although some acts are better than others both in them­
selves and for the man performing them, they are still not
obligatory for him at the time. They are acts which may be
lawfully left undone, not merely without mortal sin but
without venial sin as well. St. Thomas’ meaning is plain be­
cause he has just said, “He could lawfully follow his own
will.” Now no one can ever lawfully commit a sin. We are,
in the strict sense of the word, bound to avoid every venial
sin, bound sub levi, according to St. Thomas and all theo­
logians.20
20Ila llae, q.iio, a.3, ad 411m.

IMPERFECTION

333

The definition of sin given by St. Augustine (dictum, vel
factum, vel concupitum contra legem aeternam') applies not
only to mortal sin, but, analogically, to venial sin as well. li
the latter is not against the eternal law, properly speaking, in
the sense that it does not turn us away from our last end, it
departs from the law as a disorder in the use of means to our
last end. Consequently it is not a lesser good but an evil,
and we are bound to avoid it.21 (On this point Passerini, when
appealed to in the discussion, has the same thing to say as
the other commentators.) 22 The case of good but less gen­
erous acts is quite different and a man may, as St. Thomas has
just said, licitly decide to do something less perfect.
In the same article of the Summa,23 St. Thomas notes, as
theologians commonly do, that in regard to the counsels a
distinction must be made between what is better in itself and
what is better for us here and now. Thus virginity, in itself
more perfect than marriage, is not expedient for us all. “He
that can take, let him take it.” 24 Simply because of this dis­
tinction we may not conclude that, according to St. Thomas,
whatever appears better here and now, not only in itself but
for us, becomes by that very fact obligatory for us; for St.
Thomas has just said, in the body of the same article, that at
the very moment when accomplishing a better act of this
21 De mala, q.7, a.i, ad turn.
22 Cf. Passerini, De hominum statibus et officiis, q.184, a.3, no. 37; “Quaestio
de voce erit disputare an peccatum veniale sit vel non contra legem, non enim de
re est dubium, sed est certum adesse aliquam obligationem vitandi illud; unde
dici potest quod loquendo communiter, peccatum veniale est contra legem, licet
magis proprie loquendo dicatur quod est praeter legem.” The other text from
Passerini cited as contrary to commonly accepted doctrine has long been known to
the author and seems not to emphasize sufficiently that the perfection of charity is
of precept non ut materia, sed ut finis. Passerini admits and explains this distinction
elsewhere. Ibid., p. 50, no. 72.
23 la Hae, q. 108, a.4, ad lum.
24 Matt. 19: 12.

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kind, we can licitly abstain from doing it. Likewise, when ex­
plaining in his Commentary on St. Matthew the "Qui potest
capere, capiat,” he says : “He who has received from God the
grace to comprehend the value of absolute chastity is counseled
to practice it”—counseled, but not therefore obliged under
pain of venial sin.25
As a matter of fact, the holy doctor had already noted in his
Commentary on the Sentences 26 that a counsel never obliges
of itself but only on account of particular circumstances,
when it may have the force of a command. For example, some­
one who has not made a vow of absolute chastity may be ob­
liged to practice it for a certain time because of circumstances.27
All this obviously harmonizes with the Thomistic principle
already discussed at length 28 —that the perfection of charity
comes under the commandment of love, not as matter or
something to be realized immediately but as the end toward
which all ought to tend, each according to his state of life.28
For St. Thomas, as well as for St. Augustine, the command­
ment of love embraces even the perfection of charity realizable
only in heaven,30 clearly not as matter to be immediately
effected but as the final end and summit toward which all
should go, some with great strides, some with less, some by
the steep and generous bypath of perfect abnegation where
the saints climb upward, others over the gently sloping, slower
route of less perfect souls.31
25 St. Thomas in Matthaeum, xix, 12: “Unde qui potest per firmitatem voluntatis
capere, capiat, et non a natura, sed a Deo. Unde qui hoc a Deo habct, consulimus
quod hoc capiat et contineat."
28 IV, d. 19, q.2, a.2, q.r, ad jum.
22Ila Ilae, q. 124, a.4, ad turn.
28 Christian Perfection and Contemplation, p. 429.
29 Ila Ilae, q. 184, a. 3; q. 186, a. 2, ad 2um; Comm, in Rom., xii, lect. I, in medio.
80 Ila Ilae, q. 184, a. 3.
81 Cf. Cajetan in lam Ilae, q. 184, a. 3, no. 5.

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Moreover, even in the case of religious, St. Thomas teaches
in the Summa: 32 “Hence he who enters the religious state is
not bound to have perfect charity, but he is bound to tend to
this, and use his endeavors to have perfect charity. For the
same reason he is not bound to fulfill those things that result
from the perfection of charity, although he is bound to intend
to fulfill them: against which intention he acts if he despises
them, wherefore he sins not by omitting them but by con­
tempt of them. In like manner he is not bound to observe
all the practices whereby perfection may be attained, but
only those which are definitely prescribed to him by the rule
which he has professed.”33
In the same article he remarks: 34 “Yet there is a certain
wholeness of perfection which cannot be omitted without sin,
and another wholeness which can be omitted without sin,
provided there be no contempt. ... So too, all, both religious
and seculars, are bound in a certain measure to do whatever
good they can ... as required by the conditions of their
state of life.” 35 In other words, as expressed in the body of the
article, all ought to tend toward perfection—without having
to do right now whatever seems best, without being obliged
to push ahead as fast as they can by the quickest and most
82 Ila Ilae, q. 186, a. 2.
88 ‘Tile qui statum religionis assumit, non tenetur habere perfectam caritatem;
sed tenetur ad hoc tendere et operam dare, ut habeat caritatem perfectam.”
84 Ibid., ad 2um.
85 St. Thomas closes by saying: "Yet there is a way of fulfilling this precept so as
to avoid sin, namely, if one do what one can as required by the conditions of one’s
state of life; provided there be no contempt of doing better things, which contempt
sets the mind against spiritual progress.” Between these words and the thought
expressed in la Ilae, q.108, a.4, there is no quarrel: “And again, when a man
follows not his will as to some deed which he might do lawfully, he follows the
counsel in that particular case; for instance, if he do good to his enemies when he
is not bound to, or, if he forgive an injury of which he might justly seek to be
avenged.”

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THE LOVE OF GOD

direct route, to attain at every moment the maximum gener­
osity which they are capable of. The case would be different
if they had made a vow to do always what is most perfect.
The Summa theologica contains many other similar passages.
Moreover, not only in the Summa but in many other of his
works St. Thomas reiterates this view. The early Thomists
knew these passages well, as we can see from the Tabula aurea
operum S. Thomae of Peter of Bergamo where, under the
words imperfectio 38 and even more precisely, melius, quota­
tions to the point are cited.37 These different passages he sums
up in two propositions: first, that all are bound to aspire to
what is better but not to accomplish it, for not to care for what
is better is to be contemptuous of good ; secondly, that all are
bound to prefer the better of two goods—in judging between
these goods but not in now choosing and acting upon them.
One of the characteristic passages quoted by Peter of Ber­
gamo is from the De veritate and treats of conformity to God’s
will. The objection is made that sin consists chiefly in perverse
choice or election and that to prefer a lesser to a greater good
is to make a perverse choice and therefore—. To this St.
Thomas makes the answer that choice involves both an act of
judgment and an act of will. If in judging a man prefers
what is less good to what is better, he acts perversely; but if
his preference is a matter of will only, he is not bound to will
seIn the Tabula aurea, under the word imperfectio a number of passages from
St Thomas are summarized in the following proposition: "Imperfectum dicitur
quadrupliciter: scilicet non valens implere omnia opera sua, tendens ad perfectionem
vel non firmatus in ea, cui deficit aliquid debitum ei, et quod non potest facere
sibi simile." In the second sense given above, the word does not necessarily imply
venial sin. As the references indicate, this kind of imperfection is found in good
but imperfect acts and in the virtues of those still in an imperfect state, whose
spiritual progress is still weak. In motion not only direction but speed is to be con­
sidered: and in the way of perfection the pace of its travelers varies.
S7 Nos. 3 and 4.

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337

or do what is better, unless it be a matter of precept. Were this
not so, every man who could follow the counsels would be
bound to do so. Again in his Commentary on St. Matthew,38
when considering our Lord’s words, "Qui potest capere, cap­
iat,” St. Thomas tells us that, although a man is obliged to
aspire to what is better, he need not do it here and now.

The crux of the question

Although a divergence of opinion exists between the com­
mon view of theologians, especially the Carmelites of Sala­
manca, and the opposing view already set down as unaccept­
able here, we need to keep the proper perspective in regard
to this difference and not to exaggerate it. As remarked earlier,
a man often chooses a lesser good through laziness or negli­
gence and to be lazy or negligent is to sin. Further, we agree
with Billuart that not to choose what is better simply because
we are not bound to do so and wish to act freely is not lawful.
Although quoted as opposed to the view expressed in this
present work,38 St. Thomas’ statement amounts to this—that
to prefer a delectable to a true good is always sinful, because
unreasonable. Even the most elementary psychology tells us
such is the case of a seminarian who had a real vocation and
who quits the seminary because he is seduced by the sensible
charms of a cousin whom he wishes to marry. In this he
resembles the young man of the Gospel who did not follow
our Lord’s call, being too much attached to worldly goods.
Even if the call was not obligatory, his rejection of the call
contained a sin, that of being too much attached to worldly
goods. In the case of our seminarian his conduct involves not
less generosity in forging ahead on the way of perfection but
88In Matt. 19: it. Compare with De veritate, q.23, a.9, ad gum.
88 In I Ep. ad Thess., v. 19; Summa, Ila Ilae, q.54, a.3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

an evident and outright turning back on the path, whatever
pretexts may be called upon to defend the action/0
A case of this kind is altogether different from the cases
given earlier.41 They involve no preference of a delectable to
a true good, but the choice of a true good, easier to achieve
than one more difficult although realizable, as evidenced in
the example of die teaching priest who daily devoted an hour
and a quarter to his prayers before beginning work. Having
said Prime, made his meditation, celebrated Mass and spent
some time in thanksgiving, he realizes that, like some of his
confreres, he could, with more generosity, give two hours
to our Lord before beginning his daily tasks. But he does not
do so, not through contempt of the idea or because of sloth,
but to study philosophy, a thing he could do at some other
time, were he more generous. On Sunday, too, having said
his own Mass, he says his breviary while attending a High
Mass, although with more effort he could say his breviary
earlier and so perform two good works instead of one. The
problem is whether such choices are always venial sins of
negligence or sloth or whether they sometimes simply con­
stitute less generosity.
If the priest’s action is good, although less perfect than the
alternative proposed, there is all the more reason for coming
to the same conclusion about the doctor who, after making
a novena of Masses, considers the possibility of continuing
40 Suppose the case concerns someone who has not yet entered the novitiate or
the seminary, is it a sin for him not to answer the call to the religious or priestly
life? St. Alphonsus Liquori gives us the answer: "Respondemus quod ncligere
vocationem religiosam per se non est peccatum; divina enim consilia per se non
obligant ad culpam. Id tamen, ratione periculi aeternae salutis, cui vocatus se
committit, electionem status faciens non juxta divinum beneplacitum, non potest
ab aliqua culpa excusari.” In addition, as we see from the lives of the saints, divine
inspiration may take the form either of a counsel or of a command.
41 See above, pp. 319 ff.

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339

the practice of daily Mass but decides not to and devotes him­
self to studying medicine instead. The doctor is not, like the
seminarian, retracing his steps; he is going ahead, though
by an easier and slower route than he might have chosen.
He is not preferring a delectable to a true good, but a true
good of less worth than another which would demand more
effort of him.42

The basis for the distinction between imperfection and
venial sin
The basis for the distinction between imperfection and
venial sin has already been pointed out in the Salmanticenses.43
From the very first they remark that not St. Thomas but
Scotus maintains the opinion that failure to follow a counsel
is in itself a venial sin. The principal argument they use
against the Scotist position amounts to what has already been
said here: that no lesser good becomes evil from the fact that
a man chooses it in preference to something better in itself
and better, as well as more difficult, for him.44 Everybody
agrees it would be confounding good and evil to call some­
thing bad in itself when it is only less good in itself. We are
not to condemn marriage because it constitutes a less perfect
42 It may be objected that if we are logical we would say that it is better for the
doctor not to go to Mass at all out of devotion, for when he does he exposes him­
self to the danger of entertaining voluntary distractions and so committing venial
sin; it would seem, then, that the better and safer thing for him to do would be
to stay at home and spend his time in some interesting professional study. The
answer is, of course, that assistance at Mass, even when accompanied by voluntary
distractions, can be more meritorious than such study pursued without any sin
whatever. The mountain climber may take some falls as he works his way up the
mountain side but in the end he stands far above the man following his course
without mishap along the plain below. St. Teresa pointed this out for us many
times.
43 Cursus theol., de peccatis, tr. XIII, disp. 19, dub. 1, nos. 8, 9; also De incarna­
tione in Illa S. Thomae, q. 15, a. 1, concerning the sinlessness of Christ, where it is
proved that our Lord had neither venial sin nor imperfection of any kind.
44 Cf. Salmanticenses, De peccatis, loc. cit.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

state of life than perpetual virginity consecrated to God. Like­
wise, we must not call things bad for us when they are only
less good for us. Like the seminarian seeking a pretext for
leaving the seminary so that he can marry, others, too, have
abused this doctrine; but abuses of this kind take away none
of the value of the argument itself which is immediately
founded on the fundamental principle of all morality: the
distinction between good and evil.
We must keep in mind that virtue does not consist in one
indivisible unit, a maximum generosity below which there is
no room for anydiing except venial and mortal sin. Virtue
has its degrees. Fortitude, for example, is the just mean be­
tween cowardice and foolhardiness; but this just mean is
capable of acquiring new heights without deviating either
to right or left until it reaches the perfect exercise of the
acquired virtue of fortitude; the infused virtue of the same
name is still higher, and the gift of fortitude, higher yet.
Degrees of virtue inferior to this final height are not a dis­
order, like venial sins of cowardice and recklessness. The
disorder of venial sin (a deordination of means to our last
end) is evil. A lower degree of virtue is not evil; it is good,
although it has less goodness than greater virtue has.45
The same is true of charity. A man with ten talents of char­
ity who acts as if he had but two talents acts imperfectly,
whether it be apparent to others or not, but his imperfect acts
of charity are not therefore venial sins. His actions are, as St.
Thomas says, meritorious although they do not immediately
45 Anyone who, for a good motive, does some becoming action which is ad­
mittedly not as good as something else he might have done, is still imitating God
Himself who, out of many possible or potential goods, has not always chosen the
best, although whatever He has brought into actuality is well done. The plant is
a less perfect creature than the animal but not less perfecdy organized, given the
end for which it was made. Cf. la, q.25, a.6, ad ium.

IMPERFECTION

34ι

obtain that increase of charity to which they give him the
right.46
In answer to the question whether a lesser good becomes
evil from the fact that it prevents a greater good, the answer
is No, unless the good it prevents is obligatory. But no single
good, simply because it is greater than another, is here and
now obligatory, as St. Thomas tells us. Our Lord has inspired
some of the saints to offer themselves as victims for some great
cause, at the same time making them understand they were
free to do it or not, but that once having made the offering
they should not take back their gift.
Not to follow a good counsel because of sloth or negligence
or a spirit of contradiction or to respond to a counsel with
light-hearted contempt is certainly sinful. Such sins can be­
come habitual and lead to a real lack of judgment. Never­
theless a man can omit following a good counsel that he
may do something less good but still legitimate because in­
spired by a good motive. In such an instance, according to the
principle that acts are specified by their objects, the act is
good in its object, its end, and its circumstances, as in the case
of the doctor referred to earlier. All the arguments educed
are still maintained, with special emphasis on the fact that, if
we confound the lesser good with evil, we must logically, as
relativists, come to admit that a lesser evil is therefore a good.
As the Carmelites of Salamanca remark, what we call an
imperfection is an act lacking perfection. The absence of
perfection in the action, taken formally, cannot be good (for
it lacks being, and being and goodness are really identified) ;
were the privation of something obligatory the act would
constitute a sin; but if there is no immediate obligation, there
is no sin but only the absence of higher perfection, of greater
4eIIa Ilae, q.24, a.6, ad ium.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

generosity, as in an imperfect act of charity.47 St. Thomas tells
us exactly the same thing: “And again, when a man follows
not his own will as to some deed which he might do law­
fully, he follows the counsel in that particular case: for in­
stance, if he does good to his enemies when he is not bound
to, or if he forgives an injury of which he might justly seek
to be avenged.” 48
We read also: “It belongs to a well-disposed mind that a
man tend to perfect righteousness, and consequently deem
himself guilty, not only if he falls short of common righteous­
ness, which is truly a sin, but also if he falls short of perfect
righteousness, which sometimes is not a sin.”48 In other
words, a humble man may call his lack of perfection a sin
when it is only an imperfection. On the other hand, St.
Thomas also leaves us this statement: “Therefore it is not law­
ful to tell a lie in order to deliver another from any danger
whatever.” 50 To lie to get another out of great danger is
always a venial sin and not merely an imperfection. We are
allowed to hide the truth but we may not speak against it.
A Christian mother who loves God above all things with
the love of esteem but loves the child in her arms more in­
tensely, more emotionally, loves imperfectly but not sinfully.
The intensity of her mother love simply results from the
condition of our nature, more attracted by the visible and
the concrete than by the invisible, even when incompara­
bly more precious. In heaven, where we shall see God face
to face, we shall be freed from this imperfection. Mean­
while, on earth, we should tend toward loving God with
the intensity of heaven just as we tend toward heaven itself.
4T Cf. Salmanticenses, De peccatis, disp. XIX, dub. I, no. 8.
48 la Ilae, q. 108, a. 4.
49 Ila Ilae, q.113, a. 1, ad aum.
50 Ibid., q. no, a. 3, ad 4um.

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343

To lack this intensity here is not, however, a venial sin.
Admittedly, some casuists have made wrong use of the dis­
tinction between imperfection and venial sin, being too ready
to see imperfection where venial sin really exists. However,
the distinction itself was not invented by them but was given
by good spiritual authors, both ascetical and mystical, who
have leaned neither toward laxism nor toward negligence but
have studied attentively all the subtleties of human actions,
calling attention not only to venial sins but even to what
should be avoided in order to advance with generosity on the
way of perfection.51
The imperfections we should especially eliminate are those
St. John of the Cross finds existing in the proficient. These the
passive purifications should destroy. The saint says that,
while the narrow way of complete abnegation mounts straight
toward the summit to be attained, the way of the imperfect
but not wayward spirit is a winding road where the traveler
goes ahead with less effort, less speed, and less success. We
ought to have a keener appreciation of the reason why he
wrote on the diagram at the beginning of the Ascent of Mount
Carmel all along the way followed by the imperfect soul : “Not
having taken the straight way I push on slowly and shall not
reach the heights I might have attained.” On the contrary,
on the footpath which goes straight to the top, he wrote:
“Nothing, nothing, nothing. . . . Since I desire nothing
through self-love, everything is given to me without my seek­
ing for it. Since I am attached to nothing, I find that nothing
51 The opposite opinion may seem the better at first sight and formerly had some
appeal for the author. Further reflection seems to show that it detracts from the
greatness of Christian perfection, not giving enough thought to the imperfections
of the advanced souls as St. John of the Cross points them out in treating of the
dark night of the soul. Above and beyond evil, before coming to perfection, we
find the lesser good which we do well to surpass by pushing on toward perfection
with ever-increasing generosity. Cf. Cajetan, De indulgentiis, q.3, initio.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

is lacking to me.” The lesser good is not an evil, but in all
truth a lesser good.
Of those who fail to rid themselves of these imperfections,
St. John of the Cross says that they suffer “from a deadening
of the mind and the natural roughness which every man con­
tracts through sin, and the distraction and outward clinging
of the spirit, which must be enlightened, refined, and recol­
lected by the afflictions and perils of that night. These habitual
imperfections belong to all those who have not passed beyond
this state of the proficient; they cannot co-exist, as we say,
with the perfect state of union.” 62 St. Teresa tells us the same
thing.53
Only in such union is there realized, so far as it can be
realized in this life, the full perfection toward which the great
commandment bids us tend: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with
all thy mind and with all thy strength.” Then will the just
man accomplish not imperfectly but perfectly the great com­
mandment and be truly a worshiper in spirit and in truth.84
52 The Dark. Night, Bk. Π, chap. 2.
83 See the quotation given in the following footnote.
51 In regard to souls who have arrived at transforming union, St. Teresa writes:
"Do not fancy that in spite of the strong desire and determination of these souls
that they do not commit imperfections and even fall into many sins: that is, not
wilfully; for such people arc given special grace from God on this point: I mean
venial sins.” The Interior Castle, seventh mansion, chap. 4, tr. Benedictines of
Stanbrook (London: Baker, 1921).

CHAPTER XII
The Flower of Mortification: Consecrated
Virginity

At the beginning of his study on virginity,1 St. Thomas
quotes the following words from St. Augustine’s De virgini­
tate: “Virginity is continence whereby integrity of the flesh is
vowed, consecrated, and observed in honor of the Creator
of both soul and body.” 2 “It is the continual meditation [or
firm purpose] to preserve incorruptible purity in corruptible
flesh.”3
St. Thomas explains 4 that the act of the virtue of virginity
consists formally in the firm resolution to abstain until death
from sensual or sexual pleasure. It follows that a virgin pre­
serves her virginity when violated if she withholds her con­
sent, whereas she loses the virtue by mere internal consent
to sensual pleasure. In the latter case, it is true that as long as
there has been no exterior and gravely culpable action, vir­
ginity can be recovered by contrition and penance.
Following the lead of the Angelic Doctor, we now discuss
the following topics: (i) the meaning and import of the
evangelical counsel inviting men to practice the virtue; (2)
the nature of virginity and its relation to the other virtues;
1 Summa, Ila Hae, q. 15X
2 Chap. 8.
’ Ibid., chap. 13.
* Ila Ilae, q.152.
S45

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THE LOVE OF GOD

(3) the manner of consecrating virgins; (4) virginity as a
preparation for contemplation and divine union.

The evangelical counsel
Virginity is the object of an evangelical counsel, St. Paul
tells us: “Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment
of the Lord ; but I give counsel, as having obtained mercy of
the Lord, to be faithful. ... If thou take a wife, thou hast
not sinned. And if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned: never­
theless, such shall have tribulation of the flesh. . . . The time
is short. It remaineth, that they also who have wives be as
if they had none. . . . And they that use this world, as if
they used it not. For the fashion of this world passeth away.
But I would have you to be without solicitude. He that is
without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the
Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife is
solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his
wife. And he is divided. And the unmarried woman and the
virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she may be
holy both in body and in spirit. But she that is married think­
eth on the things of the world, how she may please her
husband. . . . Therefore, both he that giveth his virgin in
marriage, doth well; and he diat giveth her not, doth bet­
ter.” 5
Every evangelical counsel invites us to do something better
than the act contrary to it, est de meliori bono. Perpetual vir­
ginity preserved for love of God is more perfect than marriage.
In fact, our Lord told us that some give up having a family
that they may devote themselves more completely to the things
of God’s kingdom, “for the kingdom of heaven. He that can
» I Cor. 7: 25-38.

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347

take, let him take it.”6 And the Apocalypse adds: “These
follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. These were pur­
chased from among men, the first fruits to God and to the
Lamb. And in their mouth there was found no lie; for they
are without spot.” 7
Also, at the Council of Trent the Church condemned as
heretical the Lutheran doctrine that the state of virginity is
neither higher nor more perfect than the married state.
Luther went so far as to say that the vow of virginity is illicit,
because contrary to nature. This heresy St. Thomas refuted 8
before it was even proposed, when he showed that, because
the body is made for the soul and the soul for God, a man may
lawfully abstain from all carnal pleasure to be free to give
himself more fully to the contemplation of divine Truth.
That all means may be perfectly subordinated to our last end,
the body must live for the soul and the soul for the contempla­
tion, love, and praise of God. It seems questionable that a man
could err to the point of holding that virginity preserved for
love of God is unlawful. Far from being below the level of
common morality, virginity rises above it by disposing the soul
for the contemplative life, the life of God. It delivers men
from servitude to the body and the passions, which generally
overstep the mean unless they are kept this side of it. Our
Lord, die Blessed Virgin, and many saints after them have
excelled in the practice of this virtue.
Some, following Luther, unreasonably object that the com­
mon good of humanity, the perpetuation of the human race
assured by marriage, is higher than the individual good sought
by the preservation of virginity. Through St. Thomas wis* Matt. 19: 12.
7 Apoc. 14: 4 f.
8 Ila Ilae, q. 152, a. 2.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

dom answers9 that God, the sovereign good, is above the
common good of the human race; the divine good comes
before any human good, the good of the soul comes be­
fore the good of the body, the good of the contemplative
life before that of the active life. Now holy virginity is im­
mediately ordered to the good of the soul, to the contemplative
life and union with God, whereas marriage is ordered to the
conservation of the human species and to the active life.
Contemplation of divine things being obviously more per­
fect than the end of marriage 10 (multiplication of the human
species), the state of virginity is indisputably a higher state
than married life. To deny this would be heretical, as the
Council of Trenty stated 11 in the condemnation of Lutheran­
ism and as Pope Pius IX reaffirmed in his attack on modern
naturalism.12
By virginity, a human person lives, in a body of flesh, a
wholly spiritual life, a kind of angelic life, a life so pure that
it makes the body more and more like the soul, and the soul
more and more like God. Virginity disposes the soul for par­
ticipation in the light and love and strength of God. Purity
of heart becomes apparent in look, attitude, and gesture.
Sometimes the bodies of the saints have remained incorrupt­
ible in death, a glorious sign of their perfect chastity. The
common measure provides no norm for virginity; like mag­
nanimity, it has its own lofty measure and tends toward those
great things perfectly in keeping with the sovereign good,
God.
Against the great traditional doctrine concerning virginity,
• Ibid., a. 4.
10 Ibid., ad 311m.
11 Sess. XXIV, can. 10.
12 Encyclical Qui pluribus, Dcnzinger, no. 1774.

CONSECRATED VIRGINITY

349

Luther made a further objection: since none can know the
certainty that they will have the grace to remain faithful to
the vow of chastity, no one can prudently and licitly make
the vow. Theology replies that we need not have absolute
certainty of receiving this grace; it suffices that we hear our
Lord’s counsel, are attracted by it and, having taken the advice
of a good guide, place our confidence in God’s grace. Hope’s
certitude is not speculative like faith’s but belongs to the prac­
tical order. The will plays a part in it, tending surely, under
the direction of faith, toward its divine end. “Hence it is ex­
pedient to take vows.” 13 The vow of virginity, far from being
unlawful, is perfectly fitting for those who feel attracted by
our Lord’s counsel and put their trust in Him. In the same
way conversion to Christianity and the making of the bap­
tismal promises demand only that we know perseverance is
possible with the help of grace.

Virginity and the other virtues
Having asked whether virginity is a special virtue distinct
from simple chastity, St. Thomas answers unhesitatingly that
it is,14 because of its particular excellence, the renouncement
for fife of all sensual or sexual pleasure. Two comparable
parallels are magnanimity, which is a special virtue because
it reaches out to greatness in the practice of all the other vir­
tues it inspires; and munificence which, by its generosity,
surpasses ordinary liberality. On the other hand, conjugal
chastity and the chastity of widowhood are not special virtues
distinct from ordinary chastity.
The renouncement of the material fecundity of marriage
13 Ila Ilae, q.i8, a.4; q.88, a.4.
14 Ibid., q. 152, a. 3.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

for God’s sake receives its hundredfold even in this world;
for virginity becomes the principle, or at least the condition,
of spiritual fatherhood and motherhood, and the life it
transmits lasts not merely for sixty or seventy years but for­
ever. Our Lord founded no family of His own because He
came to found the Church, an immense family lasting
throughout time and eternity. Together with the apostles,
every priest participates in the priesthood of Christ and re­
ceives from it his spiritual fatherhood for transmitting the
life of grace to souls.
Even more fully than the apostles, the Blessed Virgin re­
ceived this power and privilege. To her was given not the
priestly character but the spirit of the priesthood in its fullness
for she is at once the mother of God and the mother of men,
the universal mediatrix of all graces in general and in par­
ticular. As she stood at the foot of the cross our Lord indicated
John, the representative of redeemed humanity, and said to
her: “Woman, behold thy son.” Together with His mother,
all the spouses of Christ who share Mary’s virginity are called
to share her spiritual motherhood of souls as well. And they,
too, must be ready to pray and sacrifice themselves for their
children.
From die fact that virginity has such greatness, it does not
follow that virgins consecrated to God are always more per­
fect than faithful Christian mothers. Although a virgin is no
doubt more perfect from one point of view, that is, because of
her virginity, she can be simply less perfect, if she has less
charity. Charity, the supreme virtue, unites us to God and
neighbor and inspires and animates all the other virtues. The
Christian virgin should be humble in her virginity and not
believe that her virginity makes her absolutely more perfect

CONSECRATED VIRGINITY

351

than some good mother who is continually sacrificing herself,
in the spirit of Christ, for her children.
Virginity is not, then, the greatest of all virtues15 but the
most perfect form of the virtue of chastity. It stands below the
theological virtues, which unite us immediately to God; be­
low prudence, which directs all the moral virtues; below
the virtue of religion, which renders to God the worship that
is His due and offers to Him the acts of religious chastity;
and even below fortitude, which sacrifices not only certain
pleasures but, if need be, life itself for God by enduring
martyrdom. Ends always have precedence over means; the
virtues, as means, are the more perfect the nearer they ap­
proach the end toward which they are ordered.
Although not the greatest virtue, virginity gives to charity
a visible body, as it were, and, by the renouncement of all
other loves, opens men’s eyes to the splendor of love for God.

The consecration of virgins
In his works St. Thomas often refers to the consecration
of virgins,16 particularly in the Fourth Boo\ of the Sen­
tences,11 where he asks whether, among people consecrating
themselves to the service of God by the vow of perpetual
continence, a special veil should be given to virgins. His an­
swer is as follows: “It is unfitting that the Church should have
in her liturgy anything erroneous. But throughout the entire
ceremony for the veiling of virgins mention is made of in­
tegrity of the flesh, as can easily be verified. Therefore the veil
of virgins can be given only to virgins.”
15 Ibid., a. 5.
18 Cf. Tabula aurea operum S. Thomae under the words consecratio, 13, 14» *5»
16, 17, and virginitas, 25, 26.
17 Dist. 38, q. I, a.5.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

St. Thomas explains the reason for this as follows :
Every sensible thing the Church uses has a spiritual significance.
And since a single corporeal thing fails to represent adequately
something spiritual, one spiritual reality may sometimes be repre­
sented by several corporeal signs. The spiritual marriage of Christ
and the Church is fruitful, for by it the sons of God are given birth;
it is pure, for, as the Epistle to the Ephesians reads, “Christ also
loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for it, . . . that He
might present it to Himself, a glorious Church, not having spot or
wrinkle or any such thing.” . . . For which reason, St. Paul writes
(II Cor. 11:2) : “For I have espoused you to one husband, that I
may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.”
Now bodily fruitfulness and virginity or integrity of the flesh
are incompatible. Therefore two different signs are needed to rep­
resent the spiritual marriage of Christ and His Church, one to
image its fruitfulness, the other to reflect its perfect purity or in­
tegrity.
Since on earth marriage represents the fruitfulness of the spirit­
ual relationship between Christ and His Church, another symbol
is needed to typify its integrity. The veiling of virgins accomplishes
this in all its words and ceremonies. Because of that fact, only
bishops, into whose keeping the Church has been committed, can
give virgins the veil, acting as the friend and proxy of the bride­
groom. Further, the pure integrity of Christ’s union with the
Church is symbolized perfectly by virginal continence but only im­
perfectly by the continence of widows. Therefore, although they
too receive the veil, it is not given to them with the same solemnity.

The holy doctor himself raises the objection: “But the veil­
ing of virgins confers no grace; if it did, it would be a sacra­
ment and should be given to non-virgins as well that they
may have the help of grace to observe continence.” To this he
gives answer:

CONSECRATED VIRGINITY

353

In the consecration of virgins, as in the anointing of kings and
other blessings of the same kind, grace is given if there is no ob­
stacle on the part of the recipient. However, these consecrations
and blessings are not called sacraments for they were not insti­
tuted, like the sacraments, to cure the sickness of sin.18
For any eminent state of life some special help of grace is needed
and is given by some sanctifying action; for example, in the con­
secration of kings and of monks and of nuns. These consecrations
are acts belonging to the hierarchy 19 . . . they have not, however,
the nature of sacraments . . . monks and abbots are blessed . . .
these blessings, unlike that of holy orders, give no power to those
who receive them to dispense divine things.20 . . .
Marriage is solemnized in . . . the array of the bridegroom and
the bride and the gathering of their kindred. Now a vow is a prom­
ise made to God; wherefore the solemnization of a vow consists in
something spiritual or something special pertaining to God; i.e.,
in some spiritual blessing or consecration which, in accordance
with the institution of the apostles, is given when a man makes
profession of observing a certain rule, in the second degree after
the reception of holy orders as Dionysius states (Eccl. Hier. vi.).
The reason of this is that solemnization is not wont to be em­
ployed, save when a man gives himself entirely to some particular
thing; ... a vow is solemnized when a man devotes himself to
the divine ministry by receiving holy orders, or embraces the state
of perfection by renouncing the world and his own will by the pro­
fession of a certain rule.21

To St. Thomas’ mind, this consecration of persons is lasting,
just as the consecration of a chalice endures as long as the
chalice is a chalice.22
18IV Sent., disc 38, q. i, a. 5, ad 2um.
18 Ibid., d.2, q. I, a.2, ad 9um.
20 Ibid., d.24, q.l, a.i; q.3, a.3.
21 Ila Ilae, q.88, a. 7.
**lbid-, a. 11.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Because of the excellence of virginity, the consecration of
virgins is reserved to bishops. Whereas priests may bless mar­
riages and give the veil to widows, only the bishop, into
whose care the Church has been confided, may espouse vir­
gins to Christ, for they are a figure of the Church, the spouse
of the Savior.23
St. Thomas himself brings up two more objections against
this ancient custom of the Church, asking first whether it is
not unjust to deny this solemn consecration to those who
through violence have lost their virginity yet desire to give
themselves to God. He answers this by saying that those who
have been violated against their will keep the glory of their
virginity in the eyes of God but, because it is so difficult not
to take some illicit pleasure in the experience and the Church
cannot pass judgment on individual consciences in this mat­
ter, the veil of virgins should not be bestowed on those who
have suffered external violence to their virginity. Pope St. Leo
considered it better that those who had lost their bodily in­
tegrity during the barbarian oppression should, out of humil­
ity and modesty, not seek to join a community of virgins.24
The second objection St. Thomas introduces is that scandal
would sometimes result when, through refusing someone the
veil and consecration of virgins, it became known that she
had lost her virginity. To this St. Thomas makes answer that
the avoidance of scandal is not a sufficient reason for modify­
ing the sacraments or sacramentals of the Church but that,
according to certain theologians, in a particular case, to avoid
scandal, those parts of the ceremony which belong to the
substance of the consecration and blessing of virgins may be
23 IV Sent., d.24, q.2, a.3, c.
24 Ibid., d.38, q. I, a.5, ad 4um.

CONSECRATED VIRGINITY

355

omitted and the word virginity replaced by the word chas­
tity.25 As a matter of fact, the ceremonials of some religious
orders, notably the Order of St. Dominic, contain certain
modifications for the ceremony of veiling widows.26
In all this St. Thomas’ teaching conforms to tradition and
follows very closely St. Ambrose’s writings, especially the
wording he used in consecrating virgins. These came at times
even from Bologna and other neighboring cities to receive this
consecration from him before the altar at Milan. The same
custom existed in the Churches of Africa and, as many docu­
ments show, goes back as far as the first century, and it was
common teaching that only a bishop could perform this conse­
cration.27 Many religious belonging to orders antedating the
thirteenth century and even a few of recent foundation still
receive this ancient consecration. In other orders, the solemn
vow of virginity is considered its equivalent.

Virginity, contemplation, and divine union
If virginity is to be a spiritual flower of unfading perfection
and delicacy, it must be carefully guarded. It needs exterior
mortification of the body and the senses, particularly sight
and touch, and interior mortification both of the imagination
and its bent for day dreaming and of the heart and its weak­
ness for forging chains to bind its own liberty to seek and find
God. It must have the freedom of a strong flame to reach up
to its infinitely good and beautiful Lord and love.
God gives the virtue of virginity. To keep it we must
26 Ibid., ad 511m.
26 Processionarium juxta ritum S. Ordinis Praedicatorum, 1913, ΡΡ· I52~62>
‘Officium ad ponendum velum monialibus.”
27 Cf. Migne’s Patrologia Latina, III, General Index, CCXX, p. 710» Index de
virginibus, chap. De consecratione virginum. See also XVI, 204, 275, 372; LII,
1098, 1099, 1100; LXXVIII, 173; CLXX, 558.

356

THE LOVE OF GOD

turn to the two great mediators deeded to us for the support
of our weakness. We must consecrate ourselves to Mary, the
Virgin of virgins, so that she may bring us close to Christ, who
leads us to the Father, making real the words of the beatitude,
“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” Blessed
are those who keep their hearts lifted up to the Most High.
They will see Him face to face in heaven and even, though in
another way, in this life—within themselves and within their
brethren, in that inner sanctuary He deigns to make His home.
St. Thomas, in his Commentary on St. Matthew, remarks
that a pure heart free from thoughts and affections apart from
God is like a temple consecrated to the Lord where He may
be contemplated even in this world. Nothing proves so great
a hindrance to divine contemplation as impurity. The pure
must possess peace, too, for as the Epistle to the Hebrews tells
us, “Follow peace with all men, and holiness: without which
no man shall see God.” 28 Even during their lifetime, the
saints, with hearts full of grace and divine justice, contemplate
God in a way far beyond the reach of those who know Him
only through material creation. The higher the effects of the
First Cause, the better they make Him known to us. Pure
hearts, as they come to know God better, make Him known
more perfectly, being more like Him, tasting and knowing
His sweetness.
By perfect chastity, the soul becomes purified of all inordi­
nate affections and, freed from every illusion, mounts, by the
gift of understanding, from the sensible to the spiritual and,
without in this life being able to behold God as He is, yet sees
more and more clearly what He is not and how He infinitely
surpasses not only all material things, but all actual and po28 Hcb. 12: 14.

CONSECRATED VIRGINITY

357

tential spirits. And the soul gains deeper and deeper insight
into the truth that the intimate life of God surpasses every
idea that we can form of Him. Even on earth the pure of
heart begin to taste experimentally that God is, in a sense,
greater than truth or goodness or wisdom or love or justice
or mercy or omnipotence, for His intimate life contains for­
mally and eminently these infinite perfections, grounded and
identified in an ineffable harmony, revealed only in the bea­
tific vision, and never fully comprehensible except to His own
uncreated intelligence.29
Happy are those who hear the evangelical counsel of virgin­
ity and follow it perfectly. To them, as to St. Bernard, St.
Thomas Aquinas, and St. John of the Cross, it is given to
grasp the meaning of the book closed to so many, the Canti­
cle of Canticles. Under the illumination of the Holy Ghost,
who loves to stoop down to pure hearts, they discover in its
pages spiritual beauties hidden from the most penetrating hu­
man critics.
In The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena certain passages
form one of the loveliest spiritual canticles ever written and
express the complete and deepening consecration of perfect
virginity.
Wherefore these pierced feet are steps by which thou canst ar­
rive at his side, which manifests to thee the secret of his heart, be­
cause the soul, rising on the steps of her affection, commences to
taste the love of his heart.30
But there are many who begin their course climbing so slowly,
and render their debt to me by such small degrees, and with such
negligence and ignorance, that . . . because they imperfectly
20 Ila Ilae, q.8, a. 7.
80 Chap. 26.

358

THE LOVE OF GOD

climb to the first step of the Bridge of Christ crucified, they do not
arrive at the second step of his heart.31
These weak ones of whom I speak relax their energy, impa­
tiently turning backwards, and sometimes abandon, under colour
of virtue, many of their exercises, saying to themselves, “This la­
bour does not profit me.” All this they do because they feel them­
selves deprived of mental consolation.32
The soul who has climbed this step with servile fear and merce­
nary love alone, falls into many troubles. Such souls should arise
and become sons, and serve me, irrespective of themselves. . . .
While they remain in the state of mercenary love I do not manifest
myself to them. If they, through displeasure at their imperfection,
and love of virtue, dig up, with hatred, the root of spiritual selflove . . . they will be so pleasing to me that they will attain to
the love of the friend. And I will manifest myself to them, as my
Truth said in these words: “He who loves me shall be one thing
with me and I with him, and I will manifest myself to him and
we will dwell together.” This is the state of two dear friends, for
though they are two in body, yet they are one in soul through
the affection of love, because love transforms the lover into the ob­
ject loved, and where two friends have one soul, there can be no
secret between them, wherefore my Truth said: “I will come and
we will dwell together,” and this is the truth.33
Where did the soul know of this her dignity, in being kneaded
and united with the blood of the Lamb, receiving the grace in holy
baptism, in virtue of the blood? In the side, where she knew the
fire of divine charity. . . . Because ... I had finished the actual
work of bearing pain and torment, and yet I had not been able to
show, by finite things, because my love was infinite, how much
more love I had, I wished thee to see the secret of the heart, show81 Chap. 59.
82 Chap. 60.
88 Ibid.

CONSECRATED VIRGINITY

359

ing it to thee open, so that thou mightest see how much more I
loved than I could show thee by finite pain.34
Such as arrive at the mouth show it by taking the office of the
mouth. The mouth speaks . . . and tastes. . . . The soul does
likewise. First she speaks to me with the tongue of holy and con­
tinual prayer . . . offering to me sweet and amorous desires for
the salvation of souls, and actually announcing the doctrine of my
Truth, admonishing, counselling, confessing . . . taking the food
of souls, for my honour, on the table of the cross . . . swallowing,
for the sake of the salvation of souls, insults, villainies, reproofs and
persecutions. . . . She then tastes the relish of the fruit of toil and
the delight of the food of souls, on fire with my love and that of her
neighbour. . . .
The death of the sensitive will, after the soul has eaten of the
affection of my charity, is the sign by which it is known, in truth,
that the soul has arrived at the third step, that is the mouth. And
in the mouth she finds peace and quiet, and nothing can disturb
her peace and quiet, because her sensual will is dead. They who
have arrived at this step, bring forth the virtues upon their neigh­
bor without pain, not because pain is no longer painful to them,
but because, their sensitive will being dead, they voluntarily bear
pain for my sake. They run without negligence, by the doctrine of
Christ crucified, and slacken not their pace on account of persecu­
tions, injuries or pleasures of the world. They pass by all these
things with fortitude and perseverance, their affection clothed in
the affection of charity, and eating the food of souls with true and
perfect patience, which patience is a sign that the soul is in perfect
love, loving without any consideration of self. For did she love me
and her neighbour for her own profit, she would, in impatience,
slacken her steps, but loving me, who am the Supreme Being and
worthy to be loved, she loves herself and her neighbour through
84 Chap. 75.

36o

THE LOVE OF GOD

me alone, caring only for the glory and praise of my name, which
causes her to be patient and strong to suffer, and persevering.35
Such as these follow the Immaculate Lamb, my only-begotten
Son, who was both blessed and sorrowful on the cross. He was sor­
rowful in that he bore the cross of the body, suffering pain and the
cross of desire, in order to satisfy for the guilt of the human race,
and he was blessed because the divine nature, though united with
the human, could suffer no pain, but always kept his soul in a state
of blessedness, being revealed without a veil to her, so that he was
both blessed and sorrowful, for, while the flesh endured, neither
the Deity nor the superior part of the soul, which is above the in­
tellect, could suffer.36
So these, my sons of delight, who have arrived at the third and
fourth states, are sorrowful, for they carry both a physical and a
mental cross—that is to say, they bear pain in their bodies accord­
ing to my permission, and in their mind the cross of desire, for
they are tortured by sorrow at the offence done to me, and the loss
of their neighbour. Yet I say to thee that they are blessed, because
the delight of charity which makes them so, cannot be taken away
from them. . . ,37
Souls, arising with anxious desire, run, with virtue, by the
Bridge of the doctrine of Christ crucified, and arrive at the gate,
lifting up their minds in me, and in the blood, and burning with
the fire of love they taste in me, the eternal Deity, who am to them
a sea pacific, with whom the soul has made so great a union, that
she has no movement except in me.38

These passages echo the song of St. Agnes: “It is Christ
whom I love, I am become the bride of him whose mother is
a virgin, and whose father knoweth not a woman, the instru85 Chap. 76.
88 The doctrine dictated by St. Catherine of Siena duplicates St. Thomas', as
discussed earlier, chap. 4, art. 2.
87 Chap. 78.
88 Chap. 79.

CONSECRATED VIRGINITY

361

ments of his music sound sweetly in mine ears: When I love
him I am chaste; when I touch him I am pure; when I possess
him I am a virgin.”
St. Paul was speaking to all the faithful when he wrote:
“For I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God. For I have
espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a
chaste virgin to Christ” (II Cor. 11:2). The faithful form one
body, the Church, the spouse of Christ, which must persevere
in faith and hope and love. Our insight into this supernat­
ural mystery grows as we see that the spiritual union of Christ
and the Church is fruitful and perfectly pure and that
it needs to be symbolized in its fecundity by the sacrament
of matrimony and in its absolute purity by the consecration
of virgins, who, like the Church, bear the name of spouses of
Jesus Christ.
When in heaven we shall see all the souls saved by the
prayers and sacrifices of those whom Christ has chosen for
close association in His inner life and the great redemptive
mission and mystery, then only shall we understand the value
and rich fruitfulness of this spiritual union.

PART III
The Laws
in

of

Progress

Love of God

CHAPTER XIII
St. Thomas’ Doctrine on the Increase of
Charity and Meritorious Acts

If there is one subject that is especially important for the
spiritual life, it is unquestionably the increase of charity. Being
the greatest of all virtues, charity ought to inspire and animate
all the others by making them direct their every act to God,
loved more than ever and above all things. No one can be
saved without this supernatural virtue, meant to grow in us
daily all our life long.
To insure giving an orderly treatment of the subject, we
shall follow the plan outlined in St. Thomas (Summa theolog­
ica) ? considering first how and why charity can increase in
us; secondly, whether every act of charity, no matter how im­
perfect, increases the virtue; thirdly, whether charity can go
on increasing indefinitely; and fourthly, what perfection char­
ity can achieve in this life. In the following chapters we shall
show how fervor falls away because of venial sin and grows
strong through daily Communion.

ARTICLE I
THE GROWTH OF CHARITY

Charity of any degree, however small, always loves God,
the author of salvation, above all things, even self, and neigh1 Summa, Ha Ilae, q. 24, a. 4-10.
365

366

THE LOVE OF GOD

bor as self for love of God. Charity excludes no one. Any exclusion would mean a sin so grave as to destroy charity.
r Granting that chanty extends to all, we next inquire in what
way it may be said to grow. We can have no doubt that it can
and must grow in our souls, for St. Paul tells the Ephesians:
“But doing the truth in charity, we may in all things grow up
in Him who is the head, even Christ.” 2 And to the Philippians
he writes: “And this I pray, that your charity may more and
more abound.” 3 And to the Thessalonians : “And may the
Lord multiply you and make you abound in charity towards
one another and towards all men: as we do also towards you,
to confirm your hearts without blame, in holiness, before God
and our Father.” 4 The words of the angel in the Apocalypse
add: “He that is just, let him be justified still: and he that is
holy, let him be sanctified still.” 5 Even in the Old Testament
in the Book of Proverbs the same idea finds expression: “But
the path of the just, as a shining light, goeth forwards and
increaseth even to perfect day.” 6 The Council of Trent7 sol­
emnly defined the truth found expressed in the Church’s
prayer, Da nobis fidei, spei et caritatis augmentum. “Increase
our faith, our hope, our charity.”
Theological reasoning 8 explains this infallible teaching by
reminding us that the Christian is called a traveler, a_ viator, _
since he is making his way toward God and heaven. It is_
not by steps of the body, by local motion, that we draw near
2 Eph. 4: 15.
’ Phil, i : 9.
* I Thess. 3:12.
6 Apoc. 22: ii.
®Prov. 4: 18.
7 Sess. VI, cap. io.
8 Cf. Summa, Da Ilae, q. 24, a. 4.

THE INCREASE OF CHARITY

367

te^God but by acts of increasingly perfect love, gressibus
amoris, steps ofloye, as St. Gregory pUtsit^SZe must conclude,
fhen.that in jhis-life charity can always be increased; if not,
the Christian would no longer be a traveler, he would have
stoppeffonTus journey before reachingKom^Jn this life he /
must push on along the road. It offers him nowhere to stop,
tp rest, no place to call his home,
The contrasting words found in St. Luke, “Woe to you
that are filled: for you shall hunger,” 8 and those recorded by
St. Matthew, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
justice: for they shall have their fill,” 10 remind us again that
our home is not here. Home is where the heart is, and the
heart is with its treasure, “If any man thirst, let him come to
Me, and drink. . . . Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water.” 11
Not only beginners and proficients but even those who have
already reached a higher degree of perfection should continue
growing in charity. Further, the perfect outpace the less gen­
erous because the nearer they come to God the more He -atftracts them,12 just as falling bodies move faster and faster as
they near the' earth owing to the increasing attraction it
exercises over them. The progressive acceleration of the soul
approaching God finds a most striking example in the Blessed
Virgin Mary for she was unhampered by the slightest venial
sin and continually drew nearer to God. In a lesser degree the
spiritual progress of the saints obeys the same law ; even wfo^ft·
weighed down by old age they understand and live the words I
9 Luke 6: 25.
10 Matt. 5: 6.
11 John 7: 37 f.
12 St. Thomas, In Ep. ad Hacbr. x, 25; Ia Hae, q.35, a.6; I De coelo, lect. 17.

368

Î

THE LOVE OF GOD

of the Psalmist: “Thy youth shall be renewed like the
eagle’5,” ».
Since even the lowest degree of charity requires that we love
God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves,^without
any exception^charity evidently cannot acquire any greater
extension. It can grow infntensityjbecomingmore and more
deeply rooted in the will and more and more determined by
increasingly generous actions to fly sin and to seek God.
lf charity grew by addition, like a pile of golden coins, it
twould multiply but not really inçreasç
14 since
1
it would not
become more intense, multiplication belonging to the order of
quantity not of quality, an entirely different thing.13 Charity
really increases in us through becoming more and more deeply
rooted in the will by informing it and determining it more
completely to supernatural goods and leading it farther and
farther from evil. The scholar offers us a parallel here. Even
if he sometimes fails to keep up to the minute on every new
discovery in his particular science, his knowledge deepens,
sharpens, and becomes more certain because, although he has
long known the principles and conclusions of his science, his
understanding of their relationship keeps growing and he
grasps more fully, intimately, and simply the formal object of
his study. So charity grows and deepens in us by cleaving more
and more closely to God for His own sake and to our neighbor
for the sake of God. Incidentally Thomistic teaching on this
point explains the necessity for the passive purification of the
spirit to rid the great virtues of every imperfection and bring

I

18 Ps. 102: 5.
14 Cf. Ila Ilae, q.24, a. 5.
15 A second degree of charity added to the first would either be equal to it or
greater than it. If it were equal, charity would simply be multiplied, not increased
or intensified; if it were greater, then the first degree would become useless.

THE INCREASE OF CHARITY

369

into strong relief their formal object, divine truth and good­
ness.16
The next question to be considered is whether acts of char­
ity themselves have the power to effect an increase of charity.
Q£. charity were a virtue acquired by repeated acts, it would
certainly increase in the same way. But charity is an infused
virtue, God-given at baptism. Since charity is a participation
in God’s own life,the uncreatedlove uniting the three divinepersons, only God can produce it in u^Sincé only God can
give itfonly He canincrease Tffry-makingTrs-furtheTgifts.ΎΤ
The same~must be saicToFall the infused virtùêFàndrhe gifts
of the Holy Ghost. “And he that ministereth seed to the sower,
will both give you bread to eat, and will multiply your seed,
and increase the growth of the fruits of your justice: that
being enriched in all things, you may abound unto all simplic­
ity, which worketh through us thanksgiving to God.” 18 God
indeed and God alone gives the increase, sanctifying and mak­
ing saints.
Nevertheless, although our acts of charity cannot of them­
selves effect an increase of the virtue of charity, they do concur
in its growth in two ways. hirst, they concur from a moral
point of view by meriting a right to a reward. The just really
merit an increase of charity by their supernatural good
works,19 as the Council of Trent defined.20 While waiting for
their heavenly reward, they receive from God a recompense
in this life, the growth of divine love within them so that
18 The view St. John of the Cross takes, that the spiritual life matures from one
age level to the next by progress in humility and the theological virtues, recommends
itself as a better way to express this truth.
17 Ila Ilae, q.24, a. 5, ad 3um.
18 II Cor. 9: 10 f.
18 Cf. la Ilae, q. 114, a. 8.
20 Sess. VI, can. 24, 32.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

they love God with greater strength and purity.21 The quietists forgot that the more disinterested a soul becomes, the more
it desires its reward—to love God more and more.
In the second place, our acts of charity physically dispose
the will to receive an increase of the divine life or infused
charity, just as, at the moment of conversion or justification,
our acts of faith, hope, and contrition dispose us to receive
sanctifying grace and charity.22 Acts of charity in some way
enlarge our higher faculties so that they are capable of holding
more ; or bptter^ they lift our powers up to new heights and _
make them ready to climb still higher.23 The infused virtues
and the gifts of the Holy Ghost received with sanctifying grace
grow along with g£a££^since they form, as it were, one supernatural organism?^-

ARTICLE II
THE ACTS AND GROWTH OF CHARITY

Having seen that charity can increase in us and that it grows
through the inpouring action of God and yet according to the
measure of our merits and dispositions, we next ask whether
charity grows with its every act, however imperfect. We know
that a man of ten taleqts who acts as if he had but five talents
acts imperfectly, because his action has less intensityjhan the
virtue from which it proceeds.25 The question, therefore, arises
21 la Ilac, q. 114, a. 8.
22 Ibid., q. 112, a. 2.
23 Ila Ilae, q.24, a. 7, c. et ad 2um.
24 la Ilae, q.68, a.5; q.66, a.2.
26 The term “imperfect act” is used in this sense throughout the present discus­
sion. "Remissus" may also be translated as sluggish, slack, feeble, without in­
tensity, not very generous.

THE INCREASE OF CHARITY

371

whether an imperfect action of this kind can increase the
virtue of charity by an added talent or degree.
Theologians before and after St. Thomas have argued this
difficult question. As usual, some adopt either one of two ex­
treme opposing theses, between which we find a third, keeping
to the just mean and rising above the other two toward the
heights of truth, St. Thomas’ own thought, as we believe.
Some theologians, even some great theologians,26 say that
imperfect acts of charity~do not merit condignly or in justice
arunçrease of the virtue of charity. Others, like Suarez,27 take
the opposite view, holding that every act of charity, even when
imperfect, merits in justice an increase of the virtue and ob­
tains it immediately.
St. Thomas seems to find the proper mean and the point of
culmination when he says: “Every act of charity merits ever­
lasting life, which, however, is not to be bestowed then and
there, but at its proper time. In like manner every act of charity
merits an increase of charity; yet this increase does not take
place at once, but when we strive for that increase.” 28 He
adds: “Even vyhtfn an acquired virtue is being engendered,
each act does not complete the formation of the virtue, but
conduces toward that effect by disposing to it, while the last
act, which is the most perfect and which acts in virtue of all
those acts that preceded it, reduces the virtue into act, just as
when many drops hollow out a stone.” 28
St. Thomas demonstrates the truth of this doctrine as fol28 Outstandingly Durandus. Cf. Salmanticcnses, Curtus theol., de caritate, de
caritatis augmento, tr. 19, disp. V, vi.
27 Suarez, De gratia, Bk. VIII, chap. 3.
28 Ila Ilac, q.24, a.6, ad turn.
28 Ibid., ad 2um.

I

372

THE LOVE OF GOD

lows. Every act of charity, even when imperfect, merits in
justice an increase of charity because it fulfills all the condi­
tions for condign merit. It is a supernatural act done by a just
man, God’s friend, for God’s sake, and our Lord has promised
a reward for every least act of charity, even a cup of water
given in His name. Besides, the Council of Trent30 has de­
fined that by his own good works done through God’s grace
a just man truly merits an increase of grace. Now any act of
charity, even if markedly inferior to the degree of charity from
which it proceeds, is a good work, a supernatural act of love
for God, of divine friendship. It has not all the perfection re­
quired for generous progress; it contains imperfection, some­
thing formally not good, but the act itself is not bad, not a
venial sin, however slight; and, although less good than a
more intense act of charity, it is still intrinsically good and
meritorious.
St. Paul says: “He who soweth sparingly shall also reap
sparingly.” 31 He reaps something however. And if the hairs
of our head are all numbered and on judgment day we must
answer for every idle word of ours, the Lord also takes account
of every smallest act of charity; they are all written in die
book of life32 and will receive their reward.
Besides, if we refuse to admit this conclusion, we get into
serious difficulties. It would follow that imperfect acts per­
formed by a great saint would not merit an increase of charity,
whereas the generous, although inferior, acts of a beginner
would merit it. Anyone with ten talents who acted as if he had
but nine would not merit, while another of one talent who
used it to the full would merit. It seems, therefore, certain that
80 Sess. VI, can. 32.
81II Cor. 9: 6.
82 Cf. St. Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto, Bk. II.

THE INCREASE OF CHARITY

373

every act of charity, even if imperfect, merits an increase of
the virtue.
However, we hold with St. Thomas that imperfect acts of
charity do not immediately obtain the increase which they
merit,33 because34 God confers more sanctifying grace and
charity only when a man is ready, by his dispositions, to re­
ceive them, just as, at the moment of conversion or justifica­
tion, sanctifying grace is given according to the convert’s
dispositions, the fervor of his contrition.36
Speaking in the language of talents, certainly one who has
ten talents but acts as if he had only two, is not yet disposed
to receive another, for his action falls short of the virtue from
which it proceeds. In this we can see a certain analogy be­
tween the natural and the supernatural; for a man with in­
telligence above the average who barely applies himself to his
work, makes little progress in scientific studies while another,
despite the fact that he is not so gifted, gains an excellent grasp
of his subject because of his industry. In the natural order, too,
friendship grows stronger only through increasing generos­
ity; niggardly ways may keep it going but can never add to it.
It seems, then, that we must conclude with St. Thomas that,
although imperfect acts of charity are meritorious, they do
not immediately obtain their merited increase of grace.38
83 la Ilae, q.ri4, a.8, ad 311m; Ha Ilae, q.24, a.6, ad lum.
84 Suarez fails to appreciate this truth, maintaining that imperfect acts of
charity (actus remissi) obtain immediately the increase of charity which they merit.
85 la Dae, q.itz, a.2; Ila Ilae, q.24, a.3.
88 The objection has been made that whoever receives Communion with the
requisite dispositions, even if they are quite imperfect, immediately obtains some
slight increase of grace and charity and that, therefore, whoever performs a very
imperfect act of charity also obtains immediately the feeble increase of charity
merited. Evidently no such parity exists between the increase of grace produced
by the sacraments ex opere operato and that which is merited outside the sacraments
ex opere operantis. Cf. St. John of St. Thomas, the Carmelites of Salamanca, Gonet,
and Billuart, De caritate, de caritatis augmento.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

The question at once arises as to precisely when good men
do receive the increase of charity merited by their imperfect
acts. Some Thomists reply37 that as soon as a man makes a
fervent act of charity he thereby becomes disposed to receive
the increase of grace due his imperfect past actions and so
receives it. However, according to the same authorities, the
increase of grace given him would be just as great without
them. Other Thomists usually answer38 that this amounts
to saying that the meritorious but imperfect actions already
done are really deprived of the increase of grace they merit;
they have then no condign merit and by them die just cannot
really be said to grow in charity, contrary to the Council of
Trent’s declaration 39 that the just man grows in grace and
charity by good works.
Suppose a man with ten talents of charity lives for years as
if he had only eight but, when dying, makes an act of char­
ity of ten talents. Another man who is dying after having
spent his whole life in mortal sin makes an identical act.
Certainly the first man deserves a greater essential reward
than the second. His good but imperfect acts seem to merit
a special increase of grace, distinct from what is due to the
fervent act following them. And what is true for him is true
for all.
The question still remains, then, as to when the just will
receive the special increase of charity due their imperfect
but meritorious acts, so frequent in our lives. It would be
difficult to admit that this happens during a man’s lifetime
on the performance of a more fervent act, for then the in87 Bannez and Contenson.
88 John of St. Thomas, the Carmelites of Salamanca, Gonet, Billuart, and others.
89 Sess. VI, cap. io.

THE INCREASE OF CHARITY

375

crease received would correspond only to the disposition
realized by this last act.40
Some excellent Thomists41 consider that the just who pass
through purgatory receive there the merited increase of grace
on making an intense act of charity. Such acts are no longer
meritorious, since the hour for merit is past, but they dis­
pose the soul to receive the increase of charity already merited
but not yet obtained for lack of proper dispositions. This
would explain how the souls in purgatory grow, in a sense,
in charity, their love of God intensifying as they become
purified; for, although they can no longer merit, purgatory,
like the passive purifications undergone in this life, makes
them more capable of loving God.
According to the same theologians, when a just man dies
and goes directly to heaven, the increase of charity due to
his imperfect meritorious acts is accorded to him at the mo­
ment he enters into glory and is given the immediate vision
of God. On entering heaven, the separated soul, although no
longer able to merit, loves God to the full of its capacity and
in the measure of all its past merits.42
This opinion conforms to the general principle that the last
disposition of a form or perfection is realized at the instant
when the perfection itself comes into being. For example,
the last disposition for sanctifying grace is an act of charity
produced under God’s inflowing action at the very moment
of justification.43 And in the first moment of heaven the soul
makes an act of love so intense that it disposes the soul to re­
ceive the increase of charity due to all its imperfect but
40 Salmanticenses, De carilate, disp. V, dub. Ill, 2.
41 Those referred to in footnote 38.
42 Summa, suppl., q.93, a.3.
48 la Ilae, q. 113, a. 7, 8.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

meritorious acts.44 Thus participation in the beatific vision
would correspond in intensity to the soul’s charity and all its
merits on earth.45
Theology can say nothing further about things so high
and mysterious ; it has done much to arrive at statements that
have the exactness and serious probability of these.
St. Thomas’ doctrine that imperfect acts of charity do not
immediately obtain their merited increase of charity invites
us to a greater generosity than Suarez’ contrary view. To
Suarez, the Christian of ten talents who is content to act
for a long time as if he had but two seems less abnormal than
he does to St. Thomas. According to the Angelic Doctor,
perseverance in fervor demands intense acts of charity, and
normally acts even more intense than those preceding them,
actus non remissos, sed intensiores. There should be a real
ascent, a growing progress, an ever-increasing development
of all die infused virtues and the gifts connected with charity.
We should not be surprised that normal progress is like
this, that really interior and generous souls usually receive
the grace of infused contemplation and the divine union re­
sulting from it. In fact, the Holy Ghost generally moves
souls so far as, through the infused virtues and the gifts, they
are habitually docile to Him. We cannot see why He would,
without reason, move souls to imperfect acts, for they would
then have received a high degree of infused virtues and gifts
in vain. A just man who places no obstacle in the way of
divine action will normally receive greater and greater vir44 This intense act of charity at the first instant of glory presupposes the beatific
vision in the order of efficient causality and disposes the soul for it in the order
of material causality. There is reciprocal action between causes of different orders.
The bird carries its wings, and the wings carry the bird. St. Thomas gives us the
principles governing the interaction of causes. Cf. la Ilae, q. 113, a. 8.
45 la, q. 12, a. 6.

THE INCREASE OF CHARITY

377

tues so that he may go forward courageously to God, in the
light of that divine wisdom which is contemplation.
Obviously then, as the Carmelites of Salamanca observe,48
God is more glorified by a single act of charity of ten talents
than by ten acts of charity of one talent each, or again one
perfect man alone is more pleasing to God than many me­
diocre and lukewarm followers. Quality matters more than
quantity. At the first moment of her life Mary’s fullness of
grace surpassed all the graces of all the saints. She is the
diamond of greater worth than all the rest of God’s jewels
put together. And the conversion of one sinner like Magdalen
or Saul to great sanctity gives more glory to God than the
preservation of many sinners arrested at the first stages of
the spiritual life.
In developing these inferences at length in their treatise
on charity, the Carmelites of Salamanca have given us new
insight into the normal progress of the infused virtues and
the gifts and they have added a further confirmation to the
teaching to be found in Christian Perfection and Contem­
plation 47 on the relationship between infused contemplation
and perfect charity in the normal life of sanctity.

The growth of charity during life
To the question whether we should look on charity as a line
stretching into infinity or, on the contrary, as something
akin to the human body in having bounds beyond which its
development cannot go, St. Thomas answers48 that we can
put no stopping place to the progress of charity in this life.
46 De caritate, disp. V, dub. ΠΙ, vii, nos. 76, 80, 85, 93, 117.
47 Christian Perfection anti Contemplation, chap. 3, arts. 3, 4; chap. 4, arts. 4, 5;
chap. 5, art. 2.
48 Ila Ilae, q.24, a. 7.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Indeed, St. Paul’s words to the Philippians reveal this truth
to us: “Not as though I had already attained, or were already
perfect; but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend,
wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus.”49 And in
the Apocalypse more advanced souls are told: “He that is
just, let him be justified still.” 80 In this life no one dares
say: “Now I love God enough.” To set limits to love would
mean leaving the way that leads to God or, at least, stopping
on the way before the journey’s end.
Theological reasoning explains this truth by considering
the possible ways in which charity might be limited and by
rejecting them all.81 In itself charity finds no limiting prin­
ciple, for it is a participation in uncreated and infinite char­
ity, just as sanctifying grace is a participation in the divine
nature. In God who gives it, charity finds nodiing to set
bounds to it, for God has infinite power and can always in­
crease our charity. Even the finiteness of our souls which re­
ceive charity places no limitations on its growth, since charity
develops our capacity for more charity;82 by love the spiritual
heart is enlarged, as it were, that it may hold more love. “I
have run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou didst
enlarge my heart.”83 “Our mouth is open to you, O ye
Corinthians; our heart is enlarged,” says St. Paul. “You are
not straitened in us; but in your own bowels you are straitened.
« Pha. 3:12.
50 Apoc. 22: it.
61 Ila llae, q. 24, a. 7.
52 Ibid.: “Whenever charity increases, there is a corresponding increased ability
to receive a further increase.” Ibid., ad 2um: “The capacity of the rational creature
is increased by charity, because the heart is enlarged thereby, according to II Cor. 6: 2:
‘Our heart is enlarged’: so that it still remains capable of receiving a further increase.”
“Ps. 118:32.

THE INCREASE OF CHARITY

379

But having the same recompense (I speak as to my children),
be you also enlarged.” 84
Even if we were to grow continually in charity, none of us
could ever overtake Mary, the mother of God, for by God’s
predestination the initial fullness of graces she received at
the moment of her immaculate conception surpassed even
then the graces of all the saints, and it never stopped growing
during her whole life. There is all the more reason why our
charity could never equal Christ’s because, from the first mo­
ment of His conception, He had an absolute fullness of char­
ity proportionate to the uncreated grace uniting His sacred
soul to the person of the Word.88
A just man cannot attain in this life to the degree of char­
ity he will have at home with God in heaven, for on entering
into glory all will receive a last increase of the virtue. But,
in line with what has just been said, it certainly seems, as
many Thomists teach, that a great saint, even while living,
may have a degree of charity equal or superior to that pos­
sessed in heaven by the soul of an infant who died im­
mediately after baptism. We can hardly doubt this in the case
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or even of St. Paul and St. John.
Nevertheless in heaven charity is more perfect than it is
on earth from two points of view: first, it can never be lost,
for the beatific vision of God’s infinite goodness makes sin
impossible; secondly, it is continually and completely oc­
cupied with God, suffering no interruptions from sleep and
the other necessities of life on earth.
All these considerations lead us to ask whether men can
64II Cor. 6: 11.
6S St. Thomas, Illa, q.7, a.i; a.9-13.

3 8o

THE LOVE OF GOD

have perfect charity in this life. St. Thomas answers86 by
making two distinctions. We cannot now or ever love God
as much as He deserves to be loved. Our return of love to His
infinite lovableness must be finite. God alone, by His un­
created charity, can give Himself a love commensurate with
His own lovableness. Further, in this life our charity cannot
always be concerned with God; that is possible only in
heaven.
However, our charity can be perfect in this world by avoid­
ing not only everything contrary to it (mortal sin) but what­
ever would, of its nature, slow its ascent to God. Those who
have the true spirit of the evangelical counsels and practice
more and more perfectly the first commandment of divine
love do love God perfectly in this life.
On the way of perfection, beginners are concerned prin­
cipally with their battle against sin, proficients practice the
virtues and grow in love of God and of neighbor, and the
perfect seek above all to act only out of love of God, to cleave
to Him, to enjoy Him and, like St. Paul, they desire to do so
that they may die with Christ.87
80 Ila Ilae, q. 24, a. 8.
8T Ibid., a. 9.

CHAPTER XIV
Charity

and

Venial Sin

Having discussed why and how charity can increase, having
explained that acts of charity, although unable directly to
produce an increase of the virtue, do merit it and even
physically dispose our will to receive it, we then took up the
question of imperfect acts of charity. These, we said, are
meritorious, even though they do not immediately obtain the
increase of charity they merit.
The next subject to be considered is the effect of venial sin
upon charity. The question whether charity is directly and
intrinsically impaired by venial sin, just as it is entirely de­
stroyed by mortal sin, concerns habitual charity, the virtue
itself, not its acts. These certainly can become less fervent.
St. Thomas1 and other theologians explain that habitual
charity is not lessened intrinsically and directly but only in­
directly by venial sin; for, being a spiritual fire, charity by
nature mounts upward as long as it keeps burning.
Venial sin cannot directly subtract from charity because
venial sin is a disorder relative not to our last end, the object
of charity, but only to the means to our end; it causes no
direct loss, therefore, to the virtue by which we love God,
our ultimate end, above all things. A sick man longs for health
no less because he fails to keep faithfully to his diet. A scholar
who makes an error in drawing deductions from an evident
1 Summa, Ila Ilae, q.24, a. io.

381

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THE LOVE OF GOD

principle experiences no lessening of certitude in regard to
the principle itself.
If God punished venial sin by a decrease of charity, the
punishment would in a sense be graver than the offense, since
venial sin does not turn us away from our last end, but a de­
crease of charity would rob us of strength to reach it.
This is a consoling point of doctrine, since it follows that,
if anyone has had great charity and then afterward allowed
himself to become lukewarm without, however, falling into
mortal sin, he does not go back to being a beginner again. He
keeps his place as a proficient, even if his growth has stopped,
and when he has done penance he should take up his spiritual
life where he left off.2
In two ways the virtue of charity is, nevertheless, indirectly
injured by venial sin. First, venial sin, at the time when com­
mitted, prevents the application of charity, which cannot
order to God the matter of inordinate acts of this kind. More­
over, if a just man has a habitual affection for any venial sin,
the fervor of his charity becomes habitually weakened ; that
is, the infused virtue, without suffering any direct loss in it­
self, loses its radiant liberty of action. Tie up a man’s arms for
some time, and they will not lose their strength but they will
lose their liberty of action. Let the light of a lantern burn as
brightly as ever; but if the glass enclosing it gets dirtier and
dirtier, the lantern will give less and less light. A spring may
give as much water as before, but when it becomes smothered
with weeds, its clear jet is dissipated and muddied.
The evil inclinations engendered by repeated venial sins
make the exercise of love for God more difficult, merit as
2 The same can be said of the man of great charity who falls into mortal sin but
gets up again at once with such fervent contrition that he recovers the degree of
charity he lost and the merits of his past life.

CHARITY AND VENIAL SIN

383

punishment the withholding of certain actual graces, and even
serve to dispose a man for mortal sin. Love of pleasure, for
example, although at first a venial sin, leads to grave falls.
Repeated sins of vanity, pride, jealousy, and sloth bind, as
it were, die infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost. Father
Lallemant remarks3 that it seems astonishing that so many
religious who have lived in the state of grace for forty or
fifty years, said Mass daily, and followed all the exercises of
the religious life, and consequently have the gifts of the Holy
Ghost to a physically high degree, should yet make so few
acts of the gifts and reach no intimacy with God. We need not
be surprised, he adds; venial sins committed in great number,
eagerness for recognition and praise and for whatever else
flatters self-love, little jealousies and sharp words, and love of
ease, have all kept the infused virtues and the gifts in bond­
age, and barred die actual graces necessary to produce their
acts.
The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena4 gives us a good
account of the way charity cools in many souls:
Some there are who have become faithful servants, serving me
with fidelity, without servile fear of punishment, but rather with
love. This very love, however, if they serve me with a view to their
own profit, or the delight and pleasure which they find in me, is
imperfect. Dost thou know what proves the imperfect character of
this love? The withdrawal of the consolations which they found in
me, and the insufficiency and short duration of their love for their
neighbour, which grows weak by degrees and oftimes disappears.
Towards me their love grows weak when, on occasion, in order
to exercise them in virtue and raise them above their imperfection,
8 Cf. Lallemant, Spiritual Doctrine, ed. McDougall (Westminster, Md.: Newman
Book Shop, 1946), IV Principle, chap. 3, art. 3.
4 Chap. 60.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

I withdraw from their minds my consolation and allow them to
fall into battles and perplexities.® This I do so that, coming to
perfect self-knowledge, they may know that of themselves they
are nothing and have no grace, and, accordingly in time of battle
fly to me as their benefactor, seeking me alone, with true humility,
for which purpose I treat them thus, withdrawing from them con­
solation indeed, but not grace. At such a time these weak ones . . .
sometimes abandon, under colour of virtue, many of their exer­
cises, saying to themselves, This labour does not profit me. . . .
This happens because their love was originally impure, for they
gave to their neighbour the same imperfect love which they gave
to me, that is to say, a love based only on desire for their own ad­
vantage. . . .
For those who desire eternal life, a pure love, prescinding from
themselves, is necessary, for it is not enough for eternal life to fly
sin from fear of punishment, or to embrace virtue from the motive
of one’s own advantage. Sin should be abandoned because it is dis­
pleasing to me, and virtue should be loved for my sake.

The bonds which the soul has made for itself must be cut
away, for a single thread, as long as it remains unbroken, is
enough to keep it from taking wing. Many such bonds hold us
back without our clearly realizing it. To break them we must
generously practice both exterior and interior mortification.
We need, too, passive purification of the senses and the spirit
so that, in the light of the gifts of understanding and knowl­
edge, we may become conscious of the depth of our misery
and the infinite greatness of God that we may be delivered
from all our flaws and those defects in the inmost core of our
faculties which hold back our upreaching faith, hope, and
love.
5 Here we have an excellent explanation of the passive purifications, to be discussed later at greater length under the guidance of St. John of the Cross.

CHARITY AND VENIAL SIN

385

If the soul allows itself to be purified, the Holy Ghost will
not fail to enlighten it more and more according to the de­
gree of its habitual docility, by leading it on to a greater and
greater generosity. St. John of the Cross tells us: “Hence the
more the soul dispossesses the memory of forms and things
which may be recalled by it, which are not God, the more
will it set its memory upon God, and the emptier will its
memory become, so that it may hope for Him who shall fill
it.” 6 St. Catherine of Siena7 and all the great spiritual writers
speak in the same way.
In heaven, faith gives way to vision, and hope to possession ;
but charity remains for all eternity. The blessed can never
lose it, because the immediate vision of infinite Goodness
will make mortal and venial sin absolutely impossible;
nothing can anymore destroy charity, or lessen it in any way.
It is impossible for anyone seeing the divine essence, to wish not
to see it. . . . The vision of the divine essence fills the soul with all
good things, since it unites it to the source of all goodness; hence it
is written (Ps. 16:15) : “I shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall
appear”; and (Wisd. 7:11) : “All good things came to me together
with her,” i.e., with the contemplation of wisdom. In like manner
neither has it any inconvenience attached to it: because it is written
of the contemplation of wisdom (Wisd. 8:16) : “Her conversation
hath no bitterness, nor her company any tediousness.” It is thus
evident that the happy man cannot forsake happiness of his own
accord [i.e., he cannot turn from God seen face to face, or ever love
Him less]. Moreover, neither can he lose happiness, through God
taking it away from him. Because, since the withdrawal of happi­
ness is a punishment, it cannot be inflicted by God, the just Judge,
except for some fault; and he that sees God cannot fall into a fault,
6 Ascent oj Mount Carmel, Bk. Ill, chap. 15.
T Dialogue, chaps. 100 f.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

since the rectitude of the will, of necessity, results from that
vision.8

The summit of the life of charity is a love of divine friend­
ship without end. To give us an idea of its duration, it is not
enough to say that it will last for always, or to multiply mil­
lions of years by millions more; its span lies far beyond every
multiplication of hours, or years, or centuries, beyond all
time, however long we may imagine it, even above angelic
time, measured by the succession of angelic thought. Charity,
like tire beatific vision, must be measured by eternity itself,
the measure of the being of God, of His ever immutable
drought and uncreated love. Even if time had no beginning
and no end, it would not be at all like eternity, for time is al­
ways flying, and past, present, and future follow one after the
other. Eternity is absolutely immutable, without any suc­
cession; it is a nunc stans, a changeless now and not a nunc
fluens, a changing now, a present following on no past, pre­
ceding no future, an unmoving not a fugitive moment, an
endless dawn encompassing perfectly and all at once the in­
terminable life of God, without beginning or end. We are told
that musical geniuses hear the melodies they compose all at
once, just as great philosophers have a synthesis of their sub­
ject that is like a single glance. These serve as dim analogies
of the immediate vision of God and the love flowing from it;
both will be in the most exact sense of the term life eternal,
measured as God’s own.® So great a goal is worth much suf­
fering, demands deep purification, and has as its normal
prelude in this world charity and contemplation.
8Cf. la Ilae, q.5, a. 4.
9 la, q. 10, a.5, ad lum.

CHAPTER XV
Normal Spiritual Progress and Daily Communion

As has already been so often said, traditional doctrine as
explained by St. Thomas tells us that normal spiritual prog­
ress should not only continue but should become greater and
greater as the soul draws nearer to God and is more attracted
by Him, just as falling bodies fall faster and faster as they
near the earth and are more drawn to it. The just man, then,
in his journey to eternity, ought to push on by steps of love,
gressibus amoris, as St. Gregory said, going ahead more and
more generously as he approaches God. Normally those in the
unitive way make more rapid progress than beginners, those
in the purgative way. In their last years, the saints, despite
the weight of age, go forward more swiftly along the upward
way to God than they did at first, although then the attrac­
tion of newness helped to carry them along. We have a strik­
ing example of this truth in St. Thomas’ last years, for he
became so occupied with contemplating God that he could no
longer continue dictating the Summa theologica and left it
unfinished.
St. Thomas knew that, unlike violent movements, that is,
movements contrary to the natural tendency of the mover,
all natural movement, like that of falling bodies, is more
rapid when approaching the term or end naturally fitting for
it.1 He adds, as we have seen, that the same is true in the
1Cf. St. Thomas, Comm, in lib. I De coelo, lect. 17; Summa, la Ilae, q.36, a.6.
Cf. supra, chap. 2, art. 4.
387

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THE LOVE OF GOD

order of grace: "Qui sunt in gratia, quanto plus accedunt
ad finem, plus debent crescere!’2 Those in the state of grace
ought to grow spiritually in proportion to their nearness to
their last end, according to the words of St. Paul to the
Hebrew, “comforting one another, and so much the more
as you see the day approaching.”s
The progress of souls attracted by God ought to follow
the same law of accelerating motion in the spiritual realm as
a movement of bodies drawn by the force of gravity in the
material universe. St. Augustine’s words express this thought:
“Wherever I go, love is the weight that draws me.” 4
But, as a matter of fact, spiritual growth often resembles
the slowing motion of a stone thrown into die air: its speed
falls off until the stone comes to a standstill and then begins
to fall earthward. Granted that this frequently happens to
souls, we need not for that reason look upon it as normal,
since it is an abnormality resulting from negligence and sin,
which weigh the soul down and finally smother the fiery up­
thrust of grace.
If we consider the nature of charity, we realize that it is
2 St. Thomas, in Ep. ad Hebraeos, io: 25.
2 Hcb. 10: 25.
4 In his Confessions, XIII, 9, St. Augustine develops this analogy: “The body
by its own weight tends toward its own place. Weight tends not only downward,
but toward its own place. Fire tends upward, a stone downward. They are urged
by their own weight, they seek their own places. Oil poured below water, is
raised above the water; water poured upon oil, sinks below the oil. They are urged
by their own weights to seek their own places. When out of their order, they are
restless; restored to order, they are at rest. My weight, is my love; thereby am I
borne, whithersoever I am borne. We are inflamed, by Thy gift we are kindled;
and arc carried upwards; we glow inwardly, and go forwards. We ascend Thy
ways that be in our heart, and sing a song of degrees; we glow inwardly with Thy
fire, with Thy good fire, and we go; because we go upwards to tile peace of
Jerusalem; for gladdened was I in those who said unto me, We will go up to the
house of the Lord. There hath Thy good pleasure placed us, that we may desire
nothing else, but to abide there for ever.”

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389

an infused virtue tending to unite us more and more com­
pletely to God, to respond ever more perfectly to the first com­
mandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy
whole heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength
and with all dry mind : and thy neighbor as thyself.” 5 The
more our love of God grows, the greater becomes our super­
natural capacity for loving Him; love empties itself more
and more, as it were, that it may be filled with the fullness of
the sovereign Good.®

Effects of fervent daily Communion

This doctrine about grace finds strong confirmation in
the Church’s teaching concerning the effects of daily Com­
munion. When we receive daily with the necessary dispo­
sitions and a right and pious intention, in a spirit of faith
and with the desire to overcome our inordinate inclinations
and to advance in God’s love, it produces in us ex opere operato
an increase of charity proportionate to the degree of our fer­
vor. Today’s Communion disposes us to receive tomorrow’s^
more worthily by increasing our charity and preparing us to
communicate, if not with more sengible^erypr, for that is
accidental, at least with greater readiness of will for God’s
service, a livelier substantial devotion, even in spite of any
aridity. In principle, or normally, then, if we remain generous,
each of our Communions ought to be not only as fervent as
the one preceding, but even more so and to produce in us an
increase of charity proportionate to our growing fervor. We
should make steadily increasing progress in loving God. If
we put no obstacle in the way and especially if we receive
0 Luke 10: 27.
• Cf. Ila Ilac, q. 24, a. 7.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

Communion every day with better dispositions, our love of
God becomes a stronger and stronger spiritual attraction
drawing us more and more powerfully to the Sovereign Good.
All this was verified in die life of the Blessed Virgin, for
no venial sin, no imperfection, choked up the wellspring of
her charity. The initial fullness of grace she received at the
moment of her immaculate conception surpassed the graces
of all the saints and angels together. She is the one perfect
diamond among God’s innumerable precious stones. And each
succeeding and growing act of charity increased her initial
spiritual treasure in a way too marvelous for our under­
standing.7
Mary_’s supernatural love grew particularly when she re­
ceived Holy Communion from St. John. She had within her
no result of original sin, no imperfection to abate the ardo£
.of her charity. The principal condition for a fervent Com-_
mun^Qoj§Jiunger^O£_the Eucharist Even the greatest saints
r have never ex'penencea*the~same^spiritualTiunger as the
~Îîessed Mother knew for her Eucharistic Lord. Yet St. Cath­
erine of Siena desired theEucharist so ardently that one day
when she had been refused Communion a piece of thélarge
Tiost jwhich the celebrant held in his hands detached itself
and came to her miraculously. The jgmg miracle took, place,
too, in the first Communion of Blessed Imelda, who died of
Jove_dprin<T jier thanksgiving.
Think, then, of the attractive force drawing Mary’s soul to
Christ really present in the Eucharist. With a heart at once
virginal and motherly she loved Him not only as a beloved
but as a really adorable Son. Entirely forgetting herself, she
relived during the Mass celebrated by St. John the sacrifice
T Cf. Hugon, O.P., Marie, mère de la divine grâce, pp. 112-24.

DAILY COMMUNION

39’

of the cross. Better than anyone else she understood in what
a profound sense these two sacrifices make but one, the same
Victim being offered and the same Priest offering, “idem
nunc offerens, ministerio sacerdotum,” as the Council of
Trent says. As she had on Calvary, Mary united herself daily
more closely with Christ’s sacrifice perpetuated on the altar
and she shared in it by an increasingly fervent Communion.
On His side, Christ had the greatest desire for Mary’s defin­
itive sanctification. He asks only to communicate to us the
treasure of grace overflowing from His heart. On earth He
suffered much on finding obstacles to His divine generosity.
In Mary no obstacle ever existed. Her communion with Christ
in the Eucharist was the closest possible fusion of their two
spiritual lives. He the Redeemer, she the coredemptrix, her­
self ransomed by an act of perfect preservative redemption,
the highest of all Christ’s works. When she received Com­
munion, Mary became again the living tabernacle of our
Savior’s sacred body, a pure tabernacle a thousand times more
precious than any golden ciborium, or tower of ivory, ark
of die covenant, vas insigne devotionis.
What St. Teresa says of transforming union in theacventl?
castlj gives us a little insight into the effects of Mary’s Com­
munion. St. Teresa tells us that this spiritual union is as close
as light to the crystal it passes through, as fire to the glowing
iron which has taken on its properties. The rays of super­
natural light and heat coming from Christ’s soul and divinity
more and more enlightened the intellect and strengthened the
will of His virgin Mother. These spiritual goods, her infused
wisdom and shining goodness, the humble Virgin could in no
way refer to herself; she never ceased giving glory to God
for them. In her was fully realized our Lord’s words as re­

THE LOVE OF GOD

392

corded by St. John: “As the living Father hath sent Me, and
I live by the Father; so he that eateth Me, the same also shall
live by Me.”8
During her life on earth, Mary our Mediatrix was, especially
at the time of Holy Communion, a pure mirror reflecting back
to Christ the supernatural rays received from Him while at
the same time in some way condensing them to diffuse them
into our souls.
In the case of the saints, venial sins of weakness, impossible
to avoid entirely, retard their progress in God’s love; however,
their growth in humility because of such slight offenses in
some way compensates for them, and that is why God permits
these negligences in His elect. At any rate, the saints go for% ward ever more quickly to Go<Tas they get older, despite the—
burden of age. The priest of eighty can, say with evernew,
fervor when begiqping Mass: "Introibo ad altare Dei, grfv Deum qui laetificat \uventutem meam’’ The Fncharist can
jdways reallv renew the spiritual youth of the priestly soul _
and of any interior soul. The tree of life in the garden of Para­
dise could never have kept us young in so marvelous a way.
Holy Communion and arrested progress
Nevertheless, even among daily communicants, we find
arrested souls, no longer making enough progress and con­
sequently not to be called either beginners or proficients or
perfect; for a dwarf is neither a perfect child, adolescent, nor
adult.
Retarded souls manifest an analogous deviation from the
spiritual norm. They are in the state of grace, and when they
communicate their Communions are not entirely ineffectual,
8 John 6: 58.

DAILY COMMUNION

393

really producing in them a slight increase of charity. But a
contrary growth of deliberate venial sins covers over this
minimum increase, and progress may become slower and
slower, like a stone thrown into the air.
Certainly St. Thomas0 and many other theologians agree
in saying that venial sins do not directly subtract from charity
considered in itself ; for, being an infused virtue, it cannot be
developed directly like the acquired virtues by the repetition
of virtuous acts and consequently cannot be intrinsically im­
paired by their cessation. Further, venial sin, being a disorder
relative not to our last end but to the means to our end, cannot
be punished by a direct lessening of charity, since charity con­
cerns our ultimate end, God to be loved above all things.
Mortal sin can indeed destroy charity as the two are incom­
patible, and mortal sin turns us away from our last end.
Venial sin, however, cannot impair charity in itself. Anyone
who had ten talents of charity two years ago and has not
sinned mortally since, still has ten talents of charity today
in spite of venial sins committed during that time.
Although this is true, as we have seen,10 venial sins in­
directly work harm to charity and even dispose the soul for
mortal sin. They diminish the fervor of charity extrinsically
by keeping it from applying itself to some object, by prevent­
ing it from radiating; they hedge it in with obstacles and rob
it of liberty of action, developing inordinate inclinations that
hamper the exercise of love of God and neighbor. Thus char­
ity gives less light though it burns as before; it goes in bondage
though no less strong.
It follows that if a soul has a habitual and growing attach8 Ila Ilae, q. 24, a. 10.
10 Ibid., and above, in the preceding chapter.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

ment to venial sin, the sacramental increase of charity is not
wholly lost but it grows less each day. Please God it may not
come to a complete halt. If it did, then Holy Communion
would indeed produce no effect whatever; it would no longer
be a good Communion; the attachment to venial sin would
have at last disposed the soul for mortal sin, directly or in­
directly willed.11 The old adage, “Not to go forward is to
go back,” would then be completely verified. No longer to
grow at all by daily Communion is to fall back as far as mortal
sin, a bad state to be in.12
Probably many who seem to make no progress in spite of
frequent Communion actually receive at least the grace to
avoid mortal sin, for which repeated venial sin disposes them.
If they did not receive Communion, they would fall into
grave sin ; the fact that they do not, that they resist temptation,
shows that they are still making progress and meriting. There­
fore, if they avoid mortal sin or at least, after having sinned,
do not make a bad confession, their Communions received
with the good intention to resist temptation produce at least
some feeble growth of charity though it may be hidden by
venial sins and their effects. Too often our increase of charity
11 To obtain absolution for all our serious sins, whether directly or indirectly
voluntary, let us, accusing ourselves of those we remember, have a sincere sorrow
proportionate to our culpability before God for those we cannot recall. Sins in­
directly voluntary are generally transgressions of omission, for example, missing
Mass on Sunday because we stayed up too late the night before, knowing that the
probable result would be our oversleeping the next morning. Cf. la Ilae, q.6, a.3;
a. 7, ad 3um.
12 Cf. Schram, O.S.B., Institutiones theologiae mysticae. Π, 125. His words may
sound severe to some. However, it must be remembered that indirectly voluntary
sins, the results of our negligence, must be taken into account. We are responsible
not only for the evil we do but for tire omission of good we should have done.
On indirect voluntariness, cf. St Thomas, Summa, la Ilae, q.6, a.3; q.7, ad 3um;
q.77, a.7; Ila Ilae, q.46, a.2, ad sum; q.64, a.8; q.79, a.3, ad 3um; De malo,
q.3, a.8.

DAILY COMMUNION

395

is slight because, owing to lack of fervor, we do not approach
often enough the fire of grace, the Eucharist. And sometimes
tire growth of charity is not only feeble but continually more
feeble, a disorder consequent on persistent and progressive
attachment to venial sin. Notwithstanding, normally every
Communion ought to be more fervent and more fruitful than
the preceding, not in accidental, sensible devotion, but in the
substantial devotion of the will.
This doctrine leads good people to ask themselves whether
throughout years of daily Communion they are advancing
more quickly or more slowly. In our spiritual life there lies a
mystery known only to God and judged in many different
ways by men. Often saints, the Curé of Ars for example,
think they are slipping back, whereas in reality, by re­
ceiving Communion frequently and meriting, they are not
only journeying to God at a faster and faster pace but also
growing in insight into their own misery. On the other hand,
many who are making no progress at all have a false sense of
security springing from nothing less than carelessness and
neglect of sanctification or even, it may be, of salvation.
In reacting against the Jansenistic proscription of frequent
Communion, we must not fall into the other extreme as ex­
pressed in the laxist proposition that fréquentation of confes­
sion and Communion, even by those who live like pagans, is
a sign of predestination.13 This proposition was condemned
by Innocent XI.
Conditions for fervent Communion

For Holy Communion to produce its effects in us, we must
receive it with the right intentions. For fervent Communion,
13 Denzinger, no. 1206.

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THE LOVE OF GOD

we must have a living faith and that ardent desire called
hunger for the Eucharist. There is no question here of any
desire of the sensible order, like certain consolations sometimes
accorded to us by our Lord, but of spiritual aspiration, founded
on the absolute certitude of supernatural faith in the Eucharist
as the good and refreshment for our spiritual forces, fire for
our heart, light for our intellect, strength for our will, peace
for our passions.
If we wonder how it can happen that we do not experience
any spiritual hunger for the Eucharist, we ought to remember
that doctors advise people who have lost their appetite to take
exercise. The same can be said in regard to our spiritual life.
We lack exercise. At least one act of mortification a day is a
necessity for us; and little by little we should develop a spirit
of sacrifice. It will give us peace and joy by putting to death
our egoism, self-love, and pride, and by making room in our
souls for love of God and neighbor until they take first place
there. Then, by daily sacrifice and through the growth of
supernatural love, we shall indeed hunger for the Eucharist.
Before approaching the holy table, we do well to remember
how Mary received Communion and to ask her to obtain
grace for us that our hearts may be so purified that when our
Lord comes to us He will find no obstacle to His grace, but
only an ardent desire to receive Him. Then we shall allay
His burning thirst for our salvation and sanctification. Then
in Communion and thanksgiving, we shall truly find the
Eucharistic heart of Christ and grow in appreciation of that
supreme act of love by which it is given to us in the holy
sacrament. We shall see more clearly how the Eucharistic
heart is indeed a heart that loves us, that waits for us patiently,

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hears us eagerly, burns with new graces to give us and longs
to speak to listening hearts.
Blessed Grignon de Montfort14 advises us at Communion
time to ask Mary to share with us her own sentiments in re­
ceiving; to obtain for us a loving faith in the mystery of
redemption, and in the infinite value of the sacrifice of the
cross perpetuated on our altars; to give us a deeper under­
standing of how Holy Communion ought to be daily a more
intimate participation in that sacrifice, that is, in the senti­
ments our Lord Himself had when He offered Himself for
us on Calvary and in those ever living in His heart as He
continues to offer Himself through the ministry of His priests.
If we always had these dispositions, every Communion
would be more fervent than the one before, and our jour­
ney to God would, by the same token, be made at greater and
greater speed, like the saints’. This would be nothing extraor­
dinary, but merely the normal life of generosity, even as in the
life of grace the normal thing is never to sin mortally after bap­
tism. Frequent mortal sin in die baptized is an absolute dis­
order killing what was meant to last forever and flower forth
in glory—the life of grace. Not only should sanctifying grace
never be destroyed after baptism, but it ought to go on develop­
ing until deadi in proportion to our nearness to God and His
growing attractive force on our souls. In following this nor­
mal way generously, souls ordinarily arrive at loving con­
templation of the mysteries of faith, and particularly that
mystery daily renewed for us, die Mass. Certainly this is
the meaning of the quotation from St. Thomas cited at the
beginning of the chapter: “Qui sunt in gratia, quanto plus ac14 True Devotion to Mary, tr. Faber, cbap. 8.

39θ

THE LOVE OF GOD

cedunt ad finem, plus debent crescere.” Those who are in the
state of grace ought to grow spiritually all the more as they
near the end of their journey to eternity.

Charity and the gift of wisdom
That the virtues and the seven gifts grow together with
charity, is especially true of the gift of wisdom, the highest
gift of all, with a particular affinity for the great virtues.16
Therefore the apostle St. James teaches us to ask for the light of
wisdom: “But if any of you want wisdom, let him ask of God
. . . and it shall be given him.” 16 Blessed Grignon de Mont­
fort 17 tells us that we must ask for it with a firm and lively
faith 18 and without hesitation ; whoever wavers in his faith
cannot hope to obtain it.19 And we must ask for it with pure
faith, without grounding our prayer on sensible consolations,
visions, or personal revelations. Although all these may be
genuine and good, as they were in the lives of some of the
saints, it is always dangerous to depend on them, and faith
may become less pure and meritorious in the degree in which
it is based on extraordinary and sensible graces of this kind.
In what the Holy Ghost makes known of the wonders and
beauties of wisdom, of our need for it and God’s desire to
give it to us, we find powerful motives for desiring and asking
wisdom of God in all faith and eagerness.
The just man, the wise man, lives by faith without seeing, with­
out feeling, although he may be attacked by doubts and darkness
of mind, of illusions in the imagination, of disgust and boredom of
15 la Ilae, q.66, a.2; q.68, a.5; Ila Hac, q-45, a.4, 5.
18 Jas. 1: 5 f.
17 Amour de la divine sagesse. Part II, chap. 6.
18 Jas. 1:6.
19 Ibid., 1:7.

DAILY COMMUNION

I

399

heart, and sadness and anguish of soul. The wise do not ask to see
the extraordinary things saints have seen, nor to taste sweetness in
their prayers and devotions; they ask with faith for divine wisdom,
and it ought to be held as more certain that it will be given to them
(Jas. i : 5) than if an angel had come down from heaven to assure
them of it, because Wisdom Himself has said: “For every one that
asketh, receiveth” (Luke 11:10). “If you then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your
Father from heaven give the good Spirit to them that ask Him?”
(Luke it : 13.)
We must, moreover, ask for wisdom with perseverance, for if
we are to acquire this precious pearl and have this infinite treasure,
we must use a holy importunity with God, or we shall never re­
ceive it. Whoever would obtain wisdom, must ask for it day and
night, without growing weary or disheartened. Happy will he be
if he obtains it after ten, twenty, or thirty years of prayer, and even
an hour before death. . . .
The Holy Ghost Himself has composed a prayer to express our
plea for wisdom: “God of my fathers, and Lord of mercy, who
hast made all things with thy word, . . . give me wisdom, that
sitteth by thy throne, and cast me not off from among thy children.
. . . Send her out of thy holy heaven, and from the throne of thy
majesty, that she may be with me and may labour with me, that I
may know what is acceptable with thee. . . . For by wisdom they
were healed, whosoever have pleased thee, O Lord, from the begin­
ning” (Wisd., chap. 9).