The three loves of God and the birth of the Son in the soul

Mandatum novum do vobis etc. (John 13:34) A new commandment I give you. In the Gospel of John we find our Lord's words to his disciples: 'A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.'

We know of three kinds of love that our Lord had, and in this we must be like him. One is natural, the second is gracious, and the third is divine. In God there is nothing that is not God; in ourselves, however, we may think of these three as an ascending scale, from good to better and from better to perfect. But in God there is neither more nor less, he is simply the simple, pure, inmost truth.

The first love of God is this: through it we learn how his divine goodness compelled him to create all creatures, with which he has been eternally pregnant in his ideal foreknowledge, intending them to enjoy his goodness along with him. (See also Wackernagel, No. 66.) Among all his creatures he bears no more love for one than for another: he pours his love into each according to what it is able to receive. If my soul were as spacious, as roomy, as a Seraph's, which has nothing else in it, God would pour into me exactly what he pours into that angel. Picture a circle, a ring of dots with one point in the middle: from that point all the dots are equally distant. For one dot to get closer it would have to move, since the middle point stays fixed at the center. It is the same with divine being: it is not searching around outside itself but rests entirely within itself. In order to receive from it, a creature must necessarily be moved out of itself. And when we speak of man we are speaking of all creatures, for Christ himself told his disciples, 'Go out and preach the gospel to all creatures,' since all creatures find their fulfillment in man. Still, as being, God is pouring himself into all creatures, giving each as much as it can hold. This teaches us to love all creatures equally with what we have received from God, even though some are closer to us by kinship or natural friendship, since we are all favored equally with the gift of divine love. I sometimes seem to like one person better than another, and yet I hold the same goodwill toward someone I have never met. It is only that this other person, by asking more of me, lets me give more of myself to him. God loves all creatures alike and fills them with his being. We too should pour ourselves out in love upon all creatures. We often find that the pagans arrive at this same generous state through their natural understanding alone. As the pagan philosopher observes, man is by nature a kindly animal.

The second love of God is the spiritual love with which he flows into the soul and into the angels, and it is through this supernatural light that, as I was saying, the creature is carried out of itself. Creatures are so taken with their own natural light that it takes a strong pull to draw them out of it into the light of grace. In his natural light man enjoys himself, but the light of grace, which is far more powerful, takes away his self-enjoyment and draws him into itself. As the soul says in the Book of Love, 'Draw me after you, by the sweetness of your perfume.'

Now we cannot love God without first knowing him, but the innermost point of God is at the center, equally far from and near to every creature, and the only way to get closer to it is for my natural intellect to be displaced by a light more intense than itself. Suppose, for example, that my eye were itself a light, strong enough to bear the sun's glory and unite with it. Its inner state would then come not from itself alone but from the sunlight as well. It is the same with the mind. The intellect is a light, and if I turn it fully away from things and toward God, then, since God is endlessly flowing with grace, my mind is lit up and united with love, and in that love it knows and loves God as he is in himself. This is how God flows out into rational creatures in his light of grace, and how we, with our intellect drawing near this gracious light, are carried out of ourselves and rise up into the light of God himself.

The third love of God is this: in it we are allowed to learn how God has been begetting his only-begotten Son, and is giving birth to him, as the Doctor says, now and eternally, he, like any woman in labor, being brought to bed in every virtuous soul who has entered the inner life. This birth is his understanding, endlessly springing up in his fatherly heart, where he has found all his bliss. Everything he has to give he spends on understanding: it is his offspring, his only pride. His whole happiness is centered in his Son; he loves nothing but his Son and all that he finds in him; his Son is the light that has burned forever in his fatherly heart.

To enter there we must climb, by way of natural light, into the light of grace, and there grow into the light that is the Son himself. There in the Son we are loved by the Father with his love, his Holy Spirit, which has its eternal source in him, and which, having blossomed into his eternal birth, the second Person, is carried by the Son back to the Father as the love of them both. The Doctor says, I sometimes think of what the angel said to Mary, 'Hail, full of grace!' What good does it do me that Mary is full of grace, if I am not full of it too? What does it profit me that the Father gives birth to his Son, unless I bear him too? God begets his Son in the perfect soul and is brought to bed there, so that the soul may bring him forth in all her works. So we, through the love of the Holy Spirit, being made one with his Son, will know the Father with the Son and love ourselves in him and him in us, with the love that is between them.

Whoever wants to reach this threefold love needs four things. The first is real detachment from creatures. The second is the true life of Leah, that is, the active life which is stirred up in the ground of the soul by the action of the Holy Spirit. The third is the true life of Rachel, the contemplative life. The fourth is a soul that reaches upward. A master was once asked by his student about the order of angels. He answered and said, 'Go now and withdraw into yourself until you understand: give your whole self to it, then look, refusing to see anything but what you find there. At first it will seem to you as though you are the angels, with them, and as you give yourself over to their shared being, you will think yourself to be the angels as a whole, with the whole company of angels.' The student went away and withdrew into himself until he found all of this to be true in his own ground. Then, returning to his master, he thanked him and said, 'It was just as you said. When I gave my whole mind to the matter of the angels and reached for their state, at first it seemed to me that I was all the angels, together with the angels.' 'You see then,' said the master, 'that as you draw a little closer to the source, wonder after wonder is worked on the soul. For while a person is still climbing and receiving by way of creatures, he has not yet come to rest. But once he has climbed up into God, there in the Son he will receive, together with the Son, the whole of what God has to give.' May we, rising in this way from one love to another, be united into God and there dwell in bliss forever. So help us God. Amen.