On Loving God by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

First transcribed:De amore Dei, c. 1126-1141 (English translation, 1909)

Edition(s) used:On Loving God. In Treatises II, vol. 5 in The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux. Washington, D.C.: Cistercian, 1974

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Meditation and contemplation; spiritual treatise

Core issue(s):Agape; God; love

Overview

Bernard was born of a noble family, one of seven sons and a daughter. He was prepared more for the clerical life than for the martial arts, and when he decided to enter the cloister he spent a year in preparation and recruited some thirty relatives and friends. He entered Citeaux in 1112 and three years later was sent to start the abbey of Clairvaux, where he served as abbot until his death. He founded some sixty monasteries and assisted in the founding of more than three hundred others. Though his desire was for a secluded life, his great abilities involved him in the politics of church and state. He ruined his health with excessive asceticism when young, but found a freedom to live a life of complete love for God and for his fellows. He left many rich writings, including a commentary on the Song of Songs.

On Loving God was written in response to some questions addressed to Bernard by Haimeric, cardinal deacon and chancellor of the See of Rome. It incorporates a letter earlier addressed to the monks of the Grande Chartreuse, epistle 11 in Bernard’s corpus.

Immediately Bernard sets forth his basic response and the basic principles of his whole treatment of love: The reason for loving God is God himself. The measure for such love is to love without measure. These principles contain everything, yet they are not enough; it is necessary to know what they contain.

What Bernard says is very simple. He starts with three elementary chapters about the reasons for loving God, which he sets forth in a very logical yet very suggestive way. (Books of meditation as such did not come into being among the Cistercians until the thirteenth century, but this book is in fact a method of meditation. In other words, it is not broken up into points of meditation, but if we follow the steps of Bernard we will see a clear, logical order.)

We should love God because of his gifts to us: first of all himself, then all the gifts of nature, and finally the gift of ourselves.

God gave himself to us in a wholly gratuitous love. To quote Saint John, “He first loved us.” Almost in the style of a newspaper report, Bernard asks: Who, to whom, how much? Who loves? He who has not need of his creatures loves with the love of majesty that does not seek its own. The whole of the spiritual life is a response to this gratuitous love. Whom does he love? His extreme opposite, the nefarious sinner, who has disobeyed him. How has he loved? To the fullest extent possible: He has given his very Son to be crucified for us.

When Bernard comes to speak about the gifts of God in nature in general, he is eloquent, but this section lacks the strength and insight of the preceding and following. Bernard has a rich existential understanding of humanity.

God deserves to be loved even by infidels who do not know God but know themselves. Bernard’s view of human nature is very optimistic, to the glory of God the creator. If we know ourselves, we are already on the way to God, because God created us in his own image. He has endowed us with supreme dignity of freedom and the ability to know our own dignity.

Our dignity lies in our freedom to love God, Bernard writes. If we are aware we can love God, then what keeps us from loving him? We do not use our freedom precisely because we are not aware of it. Our understanding has been obscured by sin and passion. We cannot see on our own; we need the grace of Christ, which has been given to us. So we are twice the beneficiaries: in creation and in re-creation. We need to look at the mysteries of Christ, the author of life, who submitted himself to death on the cross. The whole of creation comes back to life in the resurrection of Christ. Surrounded now by the fruits of the tree of the cross we can be nourished. We pick them and eat them by meditating on the mysteries of faith that make Christ present in our hearts. This develops into contemplation. His love prepares our love and then rewards it.

No one can seek God unless that person has first been found by God, Benedict states, and the seeker is led to find God in order that he or she might seek God more.

Love is natural and it is good. It is one of the four basic instincts in us: love, joy, fear, and sorrow (Bernard is following Boethius here), the roots of all our activities. Love is central. These instincts are given to us by God so that we can serve him with the help of his grace.

The most basic form of love is carnal and social love. Carnal love is that natural love we have to care for our own bodies, keeping them within the limits willed by God, which gives glory to him. We cannot just care for ourselves, however. We have to restrain our love of self in order to love others so that we can find our place among them and share all that God has given to us in common. To see and do this we need both self-denial and God’s grace. The first degree of love, the love of self, has to be understood in this fuller sense—loving self as a social person, disciplining oneself to be socially integrated.

Bernard sets forth four degrees of love. His division is not so much psychological as philosophical or theological, coming from the nature of the human person. Still, Bernard constantly brings in our experience of these and this is psychological. Bernard’s four degrees of love can be stated as follows: We love ourselves for our own sake. We love God for our own sake. We love God for his sake. We love ourselves for God’s sake.

This clear ordering of things is typical of Bernard, the order of his mind perceiving the order in things. What is most interesting is the way in which Bernard moves from one to the other in developing these degrees of love. What is basic throughout is an obedience to the will or plan of God.

That God wants us to love ourselves is expressed in the needs of our nature. Fundamental to all spiritual life is this: that we start with what is. We ourselves are a gift of God. However, we ourselves share a common human nature with our neighbor; therefore our neighbor is our other self, equally to be cared for. If there is a conflict between our needs and those of our neighbor, nature calls upon us to provide first for our fellow creature. This is Bernard’s high sense of human nature. His argument is cogent—we all expect a parent to sacrifice for a child; we honor one who lays down life for another.

Bernard moves on. When we sacrifice ourselves for our brother or sister, reaching out to the other, God will reach out to us, and we will move to the second degree of love. We will know God’s help and care and love him for it. As we experience God’s help we are able to help others more with his help. In this experience we come to know God’s loving care for all. God himself is perceived as good and we love him for his goodness, for himself. As we come to love God in himself, we love because we love. Our love grows constantly. We are now free from any why. Our love, like God’s, becomes wholly gratuitous, and in this we begin to love ourselves as God does. Bernard declares that this degree of love is not possible on earth. We still have to care for ourselves. However, if we do this for God’s sake, we are approximating the divine love.

In the included letter to the Carthusians, Bernard makes an important contribution to one of the theological controversies of the time. Some argued that charity in us is but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Bernard comes out for what became the commonly accepted doctrine. Charity is God; it is the divine substance, but it is also the gift of God. Where charity signifies the Giver, it is of the substance; where it is gift, it is a quality.

Christian Themes

Bernard’s message in On Loving God can be summarized briefly as follows:

•The reason for loving God is God himself.

•The measure for such love is to love without measure.

•We should love God because of his gifts to us: first of all himself, then all the gifts of nature, and finally the gift of ourselves.

•The whole of the spiritual life is a response to God’s gratuitous love.

•If we know ourselves, we are already on the way to God, because God created us in his own image.

•No one can seek God unless one has first been found by God and is led to find God in order that one might seek him more.

•We love ourselves for our own sake; we love God for our own sake; we love God for his sake; we love ourselves for God’s sake.

Sources for Further Study

Butler, Cuthbert. Western Mysticism. London: Constable, 1922. Reprint. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. This classic excellently places Bernard of Clairvaux and his contribution in its historical context in the development of spiritual theology.

Evans, G. R. Bernard of Clairvaux. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Includes chapters on Bernard’s life, monastic theology, academic theology, exegesis and theology, positive theology, negative theology, moral theology, and political theology. Bibliography, index.

Gilson, Étienne. The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard. Translated by A. H. C. Downers. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1939. The most insightful study of Bernard of Clairvaux available in English, written by an eminent medieval scholar. Gilson also includes a masterful study of Bernard’s sources.

Leclercq, Jean. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian Spirit. Translated by Claire Lavoie. Cistercian Studies 16. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1976. Leclercq, who did the critical edition of Bernard’s writings and one of the more important biographical studies, here offers an updated and somewhat popularized presentation of the monk and his milieu.

Pennington, M. Basil. “Two Treatises on Love.” In The Last of the Fathers. Still River, Mass.: St. Bede’s, 1983. A comparative study of Bernard’s On Loving God and the study on love of his friend, William of Saint Thierry, who was both disciple and mentor.

Sommerfeldt, John R. Bernard of Clairvaux on the Spirituality of Relationship. New York: Newman Press, 2004. Includes chapters headed “Bernard, Society, and the Church,” “The Monastic Order of Daniel,” “The Clerical Order of Noah,” “Noah’s Many Virtues,” “The Lay Order of Job,” “Job’s Ministry of Governance,” “The Dissidents,” and “Daniel, Noah, and Job: A Hierarchy?” Bibliography, index.