Of the Christian's debt of love, how great it is
From the contemplation of what has been said, we see plainly that God is to be loved, and that He has a just claim upon our love. But the infidel does not acknowledge the Son of God, and so he can know neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit; for he that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which sent Him, nor the Spirit whom He hath sent (John 5.23). He knows less of God than we; no wonder that he loves God less.
Or, to put it in a positive way, the degree to which one truly loves is dependent upon the degree to which one truly knows the object of love. For Bernard, loving God more fully involves knowing God more fully - as Father, Son & Spirit. Now I tend to agree with Bernard on this point. We use the word "love" in such a variety of ways, but my suspicion is that for many it has a modern-romantic connotation which reduces it to a certain kind of feeling. In this case we are talking about Bernard's first degree of love, in which we love for what we can get out of it. This is not necessarily a bad beginning point, but it is only a beginning point.
I am reminded of the variety of young couples with whom I've discussed marriage. In many ways, such a venture is really committing yourself to an "unknown"; you can only more fully love as you more fully come to know the beloved. It is at this beginning stage, this first degree, that there is plenty of opportunity for "errors in loving", if I can use the phrase. For I might love partly the real beloved, and partly my illusion or impression or constructed version of the beloved. It is as true of human beloveds as of the Divine Beloved. I may love God in part, and then in part I may love my mistaken understanding of God, or my illusion or impression of who God is. Growth in love is tied to knowing - truly - the Beloved.
It is this sort of thing which is meant in the promise that we will know fully, even as we are fully known. This deeper knowing which is part of deeper loving is not a modernist "knowledge", in the sense of information about a subject. Bernard uses extensive imagery from the Song of Solomon in this treatise; this is an intimate knowing.
all posts in lenten series: Bernard of Clairvaux here
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