Faith Matters 29: For The Gardner News, February 10, 2007
On Loving God
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” This simple commandment lies at the heart of our Christian faith. And yet for most of us, putting it into practice remains the work of an entire lifetime. Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the founders of the Cistertian Order in the twelfth century, offers us food for thought about this commandment in a short work called “On Loving God.”
Bernard talks of degrees or stages in coming to love God. First, he notes, we humans learn to love ourselves for our own sake. Perhaps the developmental psychologists among us might say that we first come to claim who we are as human beings, growing into a strong sense of ourselves and confidence in our abilities to master the world as we know it. If we pray at all, we are probably just repeating prayers we have committed to memory. Next, Bernard says, we learn to love God not for God’s sake, but selfishly, for what God can do for us. We see God primarily as a source of strength and help for us. Our prayers are pleas for help and assistance, whether for desire or gain, escape from immanent danger, or perhaps to escape some future punishment.
But then comes a third degree or stage in our relationship with God. Slowly we begin to love God simply because of who God is. Our eyes start to open and see God in a new way: God as creator of the world we live in; God as caring parent, healer, source of what is good; God as redeemer and friend; God as Holy Mystery beyond all human understanding. Our prayer becomes increasingly filled with praise, our humble acknowledgment of who God is.
Finally, according to Bernard, comes the fourth stage, a stage he questioned if many ever achieved--coming to love ourselves for God’s sake: accepting that we are created in the image of God, called by name, redeemed in love, and claimed as beloved sons and daughters of God. If we truly accepted this, how would that be reflected in our lives? If we began to live the reality of it, might that open us to seeing all those around us as likewise created in God’s image, beloved sons and daughters of our Creator? Think how powerful this might be!
I’m always suspicious of those who divide life into neat and ordered stages; life and people are too messy and complex for that! But perhaps it might be worth reflecting on our own relationship with God and exploring where we find ourselves in Bernard’s framework. From moment to moment we move from one stage to another as we move through our day or our week. For most of us there are moments when we are primarily focused on ourselves, and others when we cling to God like a cosmic life-preserver. There are times when we simply stand in awe and wonder at the God who is beyond all our human attempts at understanding. And occasionally most of us get glimpses of what it means to live into the reality of being God’s beloved son or daughter.
The spiritual life is a journey of opening ourselves more and more to the reality of God’s love for us as we learn to love God in return. It is a journey of a lifetime, made step by step, day by day. But as we journey towards God, as more and more of our hearts and our souls and our strength are directed towards God, we realize that God is with us on the journey. And the goal of our journey is simply to be wherever we find ourselves, living into the reality of God’s loving embrace and mirroring God’s love to the world around us.