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You may easily discover this, Theotimus; for if this
mystical nightingale sing to please God, she will
sing the song which she knows to be most grateful to
the Divine Providence, but if she sing for the
delight which she herself takes in her melodious
song, she will not sing the canticle which is most
agreeable to the heavenly goodness, but that which
she herself likes best, and from which she expects to
draw the most contentment.
Of two canticles which are both divine, it may
well be that one may be sung because it is divine,
and the other because it is pleasing. Rachel and Lia
are equally wife of Jacob, but he loves one only in
the quality of wife, the other in quality of
beautiful. The canticle is divine, but the motive
which moves us to sing it is the spiritual
delectation which we expect from it.
Do you not see, we may say to a bishop, that God
wills you to sing the pastoral song of his love among
your flock, which, in virtue of holy love, he thrice
commands you (in the person of S. Peter, the first of
pastors) to feed? What is your answer? That at Rome
or Paris there are more spiritual pleasures, and that
there one may practise Divine love with more
sweetness. O God! it is not then to please thee that
this man desires to sing, it is for the pleasure he
takes in it; it is not thou he seeks in his love, but
the contentment which he receives in the exercises of
this holy love.
Religious men would sing the pastors' song, and
married people that of religious, in order, as they
say, to be able to love and serve God better. Ah! you
deceive yourselves my dear friends: do not say that
it is to love and serve God better: Oh no, no,
indeed! It is to serve your own satisfaction better,
you prefer this before God's. God's will is as much
in sickness as in health, and ordinarily almost more
so; wherefore if we love health better, let us never
say that this is in order to serve God the better,
for who sees not that it is health that we look for
in God's will, not God's will in health.
It is hard, I confess, to behold long together and
with delight the beauty of a mirror without casting
an eye upon ourself, yea, without taking a
complacency in ourself; yet there is a difference
between the pleasure which we take in beholding the
beauty of the mirror, and the complacency we take in
seeing ourself in it.
It is also without doubt very hard to love God and
not withal love the pleasure which we take in his
love, yet there is a notable difference between the
pleasure which we take in loving God because he is
beautiful, and that which we take in loving him
because his love is agreeable to us.
Now our task must be to seek in God only the love
of his beauty, not the pleasure which is in the
beauty of his love. He who in praying to God notices
that he is praying, is not perfectly attentive to his
prayer, for he diverts his attention from God to whom
he prays, and turns it upon the prayer by which he
prays. The very solicitude we have not to be
distracted causes oftentimes a very great
distraction; simplicity in spiritual actions is most
to be commended.
If you wish to contemplate God, contemplate him
then, and that attentively: if you reflect and bring
your eyes backwards upon yourself, to see how you
look when you look upon him, it is not now he that
you behold but your own behaviour - your self. He who
prays fervently knows not whether he prays or not,
for he is not thinking of the prayer which he makes
but of God to whom he makes it. He that is in the
heat of sacred love, does not turn his heart back
upon himself to see what he is doing, but keeps it
set and bent upon God to whom he applies his love.
The heavenly chaunter takes such pleasure in pleasing
God, that he has no pleasure in the melody of his
voice, except in so far as God is pleased by it.
Why, Theotimus, did Amnon the son of David love
Thamar so desperately that he even thought he should
die of love? Do you think that it was she herself
that he loved? You soon see it was not. Look at this
man who prays, apparently, with such great devotion,
and is so ardent in the practice of heavenly love.
But stay a little, and you will discover whether it
be God indeed whom he loves. Alas! as soon as the
delight and satisfaction which he took in love
departs, and dryness comes, he will stop short, and
only casually pray. If it had been God indeed whom he
loved, why should he cease loving him, since God is
ever God?
It was therefore the consolations of God that he
loved, not the God of consolation. In truth there are
many who take no delight in divine love unless it be
candied in the sugar of some sensible sweetness, and
they would willingly act like children, who, if they
have a little honey spread upon their bread, lick and
suck off the honey, casting the bread away; for if
the delight could be separated from the love, they
would reject love and take the sweetness only.
Wherefore as they follow love for the sake of its
sweetness, when they find not this they make no
account of love.
But such persons are exposed to a great danger of
either turning back as soon as they miss their relish
and consolations, or else of occupying themselves in
vain sweetnesses, far remote from true love, and of
mistaking the honey of Heraclea for that of Narbonne.
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