What is the Love of God?
On today’s feast of St. Bernard
of Clairvaux, I took the time to read his treatise entitled On
Loving God in part as an act of reverence or homage toward this great
doctor of the faith, but also a bit by way of wanting to reassure myself once
again in the face of so many people who can’t do other than heap blame on his
head from preaching a crusade…
Bernard is timeless and can teach
us so much about loving God as we should:
“But it will be well to note what class of people takes comfort in the
thought of God. Surely not that perverse and crooked generation to whom it was
said, "Woe unto you that are rich; for ye have received your
consolation" (Luke 6:24). Rather, those who can say with truth, "My
soul refuseth comfort" (Psalm 77:2). For it is meet that those who are not
satisfied by the present should be sustained by the thought of the future, and
that the contemplation of eternal happiness should solace those who scorn to
drink from the river of transitory joys. That is the generation of them that
seek the Lord, even of them that seek, not their own, but the face of the God
of Jacob. To them that long for the presence of the living God, the thought of
Him is sweetest itself: but there is no satiety, rather an ever-increasing
appetite, even as the Scripture bears witness, "they that eat me shall yet
be hungry" (Ecclus.24:21); and if the one an-hungred spake, "When I
awake up after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it." Yea, blessed
even now are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they, and
they only, shall be filled.” (Kindle Highlight Loc. 168-77)
Watching World Youth Day 2011
from Madrid, Spain, I cannot help but pray, borrowing words from St. Bernard,
that our youth all over the world and throughout the Church might be that “generation”
which “…not satisfied by the present
should be sustained by the thought of the future, and that the contemplation of
eternal happiness should solace those who scorn to drink from the river of
transitory joys. May it be so, please God!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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