Page 31 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 19
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and unlike us, God is wholly present in all His How does this unfold?
ac�ons. This is why for Bernard the next two Loving God for my own sake, I can’t but “feel
degrees of love are discussed together. To come the limits” of my own life. I want to succeed not
to love God because of my great need for Him in loving God but in my myriad plans and pro-
is to come to love Him for what He does for me jects. To do so I at least intui�vely “know … [I]
as well as Who He has revealed Himself to be cannot do [so] without the help of God.”
not only in crea�on and redemp�on. And Who
God is as Creator and Redeemer is also Who He But, let a train of disasters befall and oblige
is for me (pro me). [me] perpetually to have recourse to God … [to]
get the aid [I need] … [and only a heart] of brass
Reflec�ng on my need for Him and the mani- or marble [would] not at last be touched by the
fold expressions of His grace, I come--or should goodness [of God and] … begin to love Him for
come anyway--to an enduring sense of gra�tu- Himself (Bernard, p. 33).
de for all that God has given me. Or to return to
what we said earlier, it is in the next two de- It is, however, not simply suffering that moves
grees of love that I begin to see the wisdom in us to love God.
Job’s words and make them my own even if “Let the frequency of trials bring us o�en to the
only do so by fits and starts. feet of God,” he says, and “surely it is impossi-
Bernard builds here on the difference in the di- ble” that we not “begin to know Him, and, kno-
vine effort displayed in crea�on and redemp�- wing Him, ... discern His sweetness.” This know-
on. Crea�on, he says, is effortless--a word spo- ledge of divine goodness born from an awaren-
ken--while the la�er is characterized by divine ess of our need soon brings us “to love Him
“hardship” (McCabe, pp. 36-44). It is the con- rightly, far more for the sweetness and beauty
trast between crea�on and redemp�on that that we find in Him than for our own self-inte-
leads the soul to come to love God not simply rest” (p. 33)
for His ac�ons but for Himself:
If I owe my whole self to my Creator, what do I We mustn’t allow the real but transitory cha-
not owe to my Redeemer, and to such a Redee- racter of pain and suffering to obscure the
mer! It was a far less work to create, than to re- wholly posi�ve if fallen character crea�on has
deem; for God had but to speak the word and here for Bernard. Again to be creatures means
all things were made; but to repair the fall of we are dependent not only on God but each
that, which one word had created, what won- other. While I may at first resist one or both of
ders had He ... to perform, what cruel�es, nay, its forms, it is this dual dependency that is the
what humilia�ons, had He ... to suffer! (Ber- source of my iden�ty and so of my freedom, ra-
nard, p. 24) �onality, and goodness that “makes [me] seek
ardently” (p. 11) Him Who is our Creator and
It is here, nestled between his theology of crea- Redeemer.
�on and redemp�on, that Bernard’s spirituality
of love flowers. In crea�on God gives me my- Suffering also reveals a new facet of our depen-
self; in redemp�on, I am restored to myself but dence upon the Creator and the crea�on. “The
now because God has given Himself to me. necessi�es of this life,” we read “are a kind of
language proclaiming in transports of joy and
As I come to understand that I have been given thanksgiving the blessings of which they have
not just the gi� of self but the Gi� of the Giver, taught us the value.” It is through our depen-
I become able and willing to respond in love, dence on the material world (i.e., the “necessi-
with the desire to give myself to God. It is only �es of life”) that we come to the bodily know-
in giving myself to God (devo�o; see McCabe, ledge of God. It is this knowledge, especially as
pp. 38, 43), that I find myself. “For whoever de- embodied in the sacraments, that is the source
sires to save his life will lose it, but whoever lo- of the Chris�an’s gra�tude to God for the gi� of
ses his life for My sake will find it” (Ma�hew our lives in all their social and material comple-
16:25, NKJV). xity. Having tasted for ourselves divine joy, it
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