On Loving God (Peter Ojiaku)

Name: Ojiaku Peter Chiwendu ( 11049T)

Title of book chosen: On Loving God.

A short note about the author

The Title appealed to me!

St. Bernard of Clairvaux was born in Dijon, France in 1090, of Burgundian landowning aristocracy. He grew up in a devout family atmosphere. His mother, Aleth, was a devout woman and was influential in the religious life of Bernard. After the death of his mother, Bernard sought admission into the Cistercian Order (monastery). He gained admission and lived a life of solitude. Also, Bernard was influential in the church of France (11^th and 12^th century). He is a French abbot, the primary builder of the reforming Cistercian Order and the first Cistercian to be placed on the calendar of the saints.

My motivation.

What motivated me to read this book is primarily the title “On Loving God”. I was move to know what it means to love God. I seek to find out the burning zeal of bernard’s love of God being a classic and a monk. It is also noted that this piece of writing communicates the patristic teaching in the middle ages and into the cloister. In addition, what caught my attention is Bernard famous dictum: “what is the measure of the love of God? To love without measure”. Thus, this book presents a totally wholesome dedication and surrender in loving God.

Reflection  - Why love God? (27th October 2012)

Reading this classical spiritual literature, “on loving God” by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), one thing that strikes me is the very aspect of loving God. Reflecting about this raises questions in my mind: why should I love God and what shall be my gain in loving God? The undeniable answer that comes to my mind about these questions is that l love God not because of anything but because he is God himself and being God, he showed his love first to me. The greatest of this love he showed to me in excess is by laying down his life for my sake. As St. John writes: “God so LOVED the world (me) that he gave his only begotten son (to death for my sake), that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”(John3:16). Also, what greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”(John 15:13).Thus, there is no reason why God should not be loved. For life is a precious gift to mankind, and it is a sad occasions when one of our loved ones pass on. Consequently, I see nothing why I should not love God. If I have to be Christ-like and a person created in the image of God, I will have no excuse for not loving God because his is love himself and poured out his love as a libation for me to be redeemed on the cross. Hence, I should love God by the singular act of being created and redeemed by him

Reflection (what shall I render to the lord for all these gifts?)

“Reason and natural justice urge the infidel to surrender his whole being to him from whom he received it and to love him with all his might. Faith certainly bids me love him all the more whom I regard as that much greater than I, for he not only gives me myself, he also gives me himself.” This is a cause of great mindset to loving God. For I was not only given life, but I was given life in abundance by Christ’s resurrection. Thus, “in God’s first work he gave me myself; in his second work he gave me himself; when he gave me himself, he gave me back myself. Given and regiven, I owe myself twice over. What can I give God in return for himself? Even if I could give him myself a thousand times, what am I to God?”  Hence, loving surrender to God is the best I could ever offer in this life for all his gifts to me.

Refection 3
Charity is the law of loving God which is spotless and it converts the soul. For it alone can turn the mind away from loving one’s self and the world and fix it on loving God. Therefore, it is proper to God’s eternally just law that he who does not want to accept its sweet rule, will be the slave of his own will as penance; he who cast away the pleasant yoke and light load of charity, will have to bear unwillingly the unbearable burden of his own will. By loving God then through the law of charity, a person becomes selfless in caring for his neighbour in a good conscience and an unfeigned faith

Summary and Reflection

1.0 Introduction                                                                                                                                

This book “On Loving God” by Bernard of Clairvaux has fifteen chapters and I would like to make a summary and give a reflection of it in three outlines: chapters 1-6; chapters 7-11 and chapter 12-15.

2.0 Chapter 1-6 Loving God is an important key for human existence.

These chapters tell us about the meaning of loving God. what loving God is, is not just for love sake but loving God for him sake; God himself is love and he shows this aspect of love first by giving us his only begotten son for the sake of that love. Thus, we ought to reciprocate that same love shown to us. While admitting the fact that God’s love is to be reciprocated, we are bound therefore to love God. However, if the unbelievers will not grant it to love God, their ingratitude is at once confounded by God’s innumerable benefit lavished on human race, and plainly discerned by the sense.

Man has been endowed with three nobler gifts in his quest of loving God: dignity, knowledge and virtue. Man’s dignity is his free will by which he is superior to the beast and even dominates them. His knowledge is that by which he acknowledges that this dignity is in him but it is not of his own making. Virtue is that by which man seek continuously and eagerly for his maker and when he finds him, adheres to him with all his might. Consequently, each of these three gifts is important in loving God because, dignity without knowledge is quiet useless and knowledge without virtue is damnable. But the virtuous man, for whom knowledge is not harmful and dignity unfruitful, lift up his voice to God and frankly confesses: “not to us, O lord, not to us, but to your name give glory; meaning, “O lord, we attribute no part of our dignity or knowledge to ourselves: we ascribe it all to your name whence all good comes.”

In part, the following chapter describes the ignominy and suffering and passion of Christ for his people (church) out of love. By Christ passion and resurrection, we who were once dead are being brought to life. In his death he displayed his mercy. In his resurrection his power; both combined to manifest his glory. Thus, for love of us, Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification. He ascended into heaven for our protection, sent the spirit for our consolation, and will someday return for our fulfillment. Therefore, those who long for the presence of the living God cannot be satisfied in this present life until they behold the beatific vision of God, then would their soul find consolation.

Loving God stems from our being created in his image and likeness and being redeemed by him. Thus, we are being made and remade, given and regiven. Admittedly, God deserves our love unlimitedly because love offered to God has for object the one who is immeasurable and infinite. We can never love God exceedingly, for our love is less than is his due, yet not less than we are able. For even if we cannot love him as much as we should, still we cannot love him more than we can.

3.0 Chapters 7-11 Reward of those who love and the perfection of love in God alone.

A reward is offered him who does not yet love; it is due him who loves; it is given to him who perseveres. This is why the apostles say, “… run, then to win…”(Mt7:13). There is always a reward which prompts the soul to love. It is a reward of the future life. There is never a person who does something without a reward. Thus, for a devout soul that loves God seeks no other reward than God whom it loves. Were the soul to demand anything else, then, it would certainly love that other thing and not God.

Love is one of the four natural passions. Man can do everything that is good only by yielding to this natural passion. Therefore, in other to love everything (especially our neighbour) with perfect justice, one must have regard to God. This is to say that, one cannot love anything with purity if the person does not love that thing in God. Thus, it is impossible to love in God unless one loves God. Consequently, it is something for a person to know how much little he can do by himself and how much he can do by God’s grace. In this knowledge and by realizing that it is God grace which frees him and comes to love God not for his own advantage but for the sake of God; then, in it God is already loved for his own sake.

For God to be loved for his own sake (which is the highest degree of love) demands a total surrender. It entails to lose oneself as if one no longer existed, to cease completely to experience oneself because God cannot be all in all if something human survives in a person. Attaining this level of love is through divine experience. Hence, it is therefore necessary for one’s soul to reach a similar state in which, just as God willed everything to exist for himself, so the person wish that neither himself nor other beings to have been nor to be except for God’s will alone. Then, it is in loving God alone and seeing that his will be done absolutely that we share in the wonderful vision of heaven where we will be invited to the heavenly banquet. This banquet is in three phase for those who love God: shared in life through eating; in death through drinking and inebriated after resurrection.

4.0 Chapter 12-15 Living under the law of charity in God’s love.

Charity is the law of loving God which is spotless and it converts the soul. For it alone can turn the mind away from loving one’s self and the world and fix it on loving God. consequently, it is proper to God’s eternally just law that he who does not want to accept its sweet rule, will be the slave of his own will as penance; he who cast away the pleasant yoke and light load of charity, will have to bear unwillingly the unbearable burden of his own will.

5.0 Reflection.

Reading through this classical spiritual literature, it is very important to me and I have come to the realization that loving God is a sine qua non for our existence here on earth and the life thereafter. Loving God is in gratitude, first for being created in his image and likeness; secondly because we are redeemed from our weakness and fallen nature to share in the resurrection and triumph of Christ.

By loving God, we love everything in him. The reciprocation of God’s love in us is being translated to loving our neighbours and every creature around us (vertical and horizontal relationship). It is only in realizing how much we need God that we can love. This acknowledgement is prompted through divine grace which acts in us. God deserve our love for so many things and benefits we receive that are uncountable. However, man’s selfish nature is so narrow-minded that it tends always to that which will immediately satisfy his wants and desires. And sometimes it is very easy for us to indulge in self-glorification or vain glory for all our achievements without minding that it is God who gives every good thing to us.

This book is a call for us faithful (even unfaithful) to fame into flame the seed that is implanted in us(conscience), to nurture it and make it bear fruit that will last. In doing so, we can be sure that we are on a positive side in the words of St. Augustine: “love God and do whatever you like.” Accordingly, the soul which loves God can do whatever it likes because loving God is being Christ-like i.e. following the example of Christ. For a heart which is in-love with God, makes a total surrender to God; he decreases that God may increase and thus, he uses his dignity, knowledge and virtue in fulfilling God’s will of love.

There is always an incentive to love God for he loved us first and redeemed us in offering his son, who suffered, died and is raised for our sanctification and justification. Hence, it is very proper that we love God if not for any reason but for this very fact (passion, death and resurrection). We are indebted to God for having shown us his love first. What human being is there that would after being shown love would not love? If there is such a human being, then there is a need to question. It is very natural to be in-love but the question is, being in-love with what and who? As earthly beings, we can be in-love with so many things and persons but the craving of this love is never satisfied. The simple reason is that, love is not an earthly virtue and we hear St. Paul say, “there are three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of them is love.”

Therefore, to satisfy our craving for love, we must then look to and upon the origin of love (God himself). St. Augustine fully acknowledged this by famously saying that, “our hearts are restless until they rest in you (God).” Thus, our loving can only find consolation in, through and with God. Mindfully then, we are to love God not as a law (even though it is natural), but as an act of charity, willingly and ungrudgingly for so great a benefit we have received