Page 30 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 19

his privilege to pursue in�macy with Christ in a -’No man ever hated his own flesh’” (p. 30) The
life of prayer, fas�ng, obedience, and manual
labor in the new, obscure, and poor, monastery
at Cîteaux. Soon though he would leave the
peace he found here to be the founding abbot
of the monastery at Clairvaux.
The peace he found in Clairvaux would fre-
quently be interrupted--sacrificed really--as he
was drawn into the various ecclesias�c and
geo-poli�cal controversies of the Middle Ages.
Papal schisms, theological arguments, the cru-
sades, and the pe�y jealousy of his brother mo-
nas�cs would all at one �me or another intrude
upon his solitude. Each �me he is called to do
so, the abbot of Clairvaux sacrifices the quiet of
monas�c life and the fellowship of his brother
monks because love requires that we sacrifice
ourselves first to God and then for our neigh-
bor’s good. We “are bound to love God,” Ber-
nard writes, because “He first loved us” (p. 9).
This obliga�on is bound up not simply with Go-
d’s love for us. Created as we are in the image
of God Who is Himself love, our love for Him
and our neighbor is intrinsic to who we are as
Chris�ans and human beings. Failure, or worse
refusal, to love God or my neighbor is not only
a moral failing but to inflict a deep wound on
my iden�ty.
Let’s turn now to the text of On Loving God and
see what we might see.
Four Degrees of Love
I Love Myself, for the Sake of Myself
As was men�oned a moment ago, human na-
ture is weak and frail. This is not simply a
ma�er of moral failing because of sin or the vul-
nerability of the body to depriva�on, injury, or
illness. All of these are certainly true even as
they are all secondary. For Bernard, we are first
of all ontologically weak. Such weakness is in-
herent in being a creature. I am, in an absolute
sense, dependent on God for my existence
even as, in a rela�ve sense, I am dependent
upon my neighbor--first my parents and then
everyone else. (1) Far from being a nega�ve re-
ality, our ontological weakness is the source of
love and so our greatest strength.
The web of ontological, material and social de-
pendence that characterizes my life as a crea-
ture is why I “love first by nature, not precept-
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problem is that I tend to narrow my own flesh
to simply my own body or (worse) bodily de-
sire. Doing so means I reduce my existence to
only a few things. What these things are speci-
fically doesn’t ma�er over much.
What does ma�er is that this reduc�onis�c
view of self hides the awareness that I am de-
pendent on both God and my neighbor.
Built on this narrow and superficially view of
my own iden�ty, self-love “increase(s) too
much.” It becomes “like a river” that “over-
flow(s) and flood(s) the lands about it.” It is
only the command to love my neighbor as my-
self Bernard says that can serve as the “dyke”
that keeps the love of self from causing great
harm to self and others; he calls this harmful
desire “voluptuousness” (p. 31)
While this sounds all rather stern, he also says
that we should think our ourselves “as much as
ever [we] will, if only [we] take care to think
equally of [our] neighbor.” Again, this is not a
life hack or a u�litarian scheme that offers the
“form of godliness” while “denying its power”
(2 Timothy 3:5). It is rather “the just limit impo-
sed upon [us] by … [our] own being and by …
conscience” so that we are “not carried away
by … selfishness to … destruc�on” and le� “at
the mercy of the enemies of [our] soul(s)” the
powers of sin and death (p. 31).
Thanks to the superabundance of grace “which
always heals that which is infirm and completes
that which is lacking,” (Orthodox prayer of Or-
dina�on) “Selfishness becomes benevolence
by taking a wider range” (p. 31). Though we
are, Bernard concludes, “by nature animal and
carnal, with no love but for [ourselves],” grace
brings us “through self-love to love of God.” It
is this first degree of love that sets the stage for
the next two as we slowly come to recognize
that “all [our] ability, ... for good, [we have]
from God, and without Him [we are] able to do
nothing” (p. 32).
Loving God for What He Does and Who He Is
The no�on of divine simplicity (Vallicella, 2019)
highlights that there is no division between
Who God is and what He does. In other words