On love
From a Sermon by Saint Bernard, abbot (1090-1153)
Saint Bernard was born in 1090 near Dijon in France to devout parents of the highest nobility of Burgundy. After a religious upbringing, he joined the Cistercians in 1111 and later was chosen abbot of the monastery of Clairvaux. There he directed his companions in the practice of virtue by his own good example. Because of various schisms which had arisen in the Church, Bernard traveled throughout Europe restoring peace and unity. He wrote numerous theological and spiritual works. He had a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and it was said of him that no one spoke more sublimely of the Queen of Heaven. He developed close friendships with contemporaries and even popes. The passing of Pope Eugenius was one whom he considered his greatest friend and consoler. Bernard died n 1153 at the age of sixty-thee, after forty years spent in the cloister.
Bernard founded one hundred and sixty-three monasteries in different parts of Europe; at his death they numbered three hundred and forty-three. He was the first Cistercian monk placed on the calendar of saints and was canonized by Alexander III in 1174 and Pope Pius VIII declared him a Doctor of the Church.
I love because I love, I love that I may love
Love is sufficient of itself, it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of his.
The Bridegroom’s love, or rather the love which is the Bridegroom, asks in return nothing but faithful love. Let the beloved, then, love in return. Should not a bride love, and above all, Love’s bride? Could is be that Love not be loved?
Rightly then does she give up all other feelings and give herself wholly to love alone; in giving love back, all she can do is to respond to love. And when she has poured out her whole being in love, what is that in comparison with the unceasing torrent of that original source? Clearly, lover and Love, soul and Word, bride and Bridegroom, creature and Creator do not flow with the same volume; one might as well equate a thirsty man with the fountain.
What then of the bride’s hope, her aching desire, her passionate love, her confident assurance? Is all this to wilt just because she cannot match stride for stride with her giant, any more that she can vie with honey for sweetness, rival the lamb for gentleness, show herself as white as the lily, burn as bright as the sun, be equal in love with him who is Love? No. It is true that the creature loves less because she is less. But if she loves with her whole being, nothing is lacking where everything is given. To love so ardently then is to share the marriage bond; she cannot love so much and not be totally loved, and it is in the perfect union of two hearts that complete and perfected marriage consists. Or are we to doubt that the soul is loved by the Word first and with a greater love?
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings