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In the love which God exercises towards us he always
begins by benevolence, willing and effecting all the
good that is in us, in which afterwards he takes
complacency.
He made David according to his heart by
benevolence, then he found him according to his heart
by complacency. He first created the universe for
man, and man in the universe, giving to each thing
such a measure of goodness as was proportionable to
it, out of his pure benevolence, then he approved all
that he had done, finding that all was very good, and
by complacency rested in his work.
But, on the contrary, our love towards God begins
from the complacency which we have in the sovereign
goodness and infinite perfection which we know is in
the Divinity, then we come to the exercise of
benevolence; and as the complacency which God takes
in his creatures is no other thing than a
continuation of his benevolence towards them, so the
benevolence which we bear towards God is nothing else
but an approbation of and perseverance in the
complacency we have in him.
Now this love of benevolence towards God is
practised in this sort. We cannot, with a true
desire, wish any good to God, because his goodness is
infinitely more perfect than we can either wish or
think: desire is only of a future good, and no good
is future to God, since all good is so present to him
that the presence of good in his divine Majesty is
nothing else but the Divinity itself.
Not being able then to make any absolute desire
for God, we make imaginary and conditional ones, in
this manner: I have said to the Lord, thou art my
God, who being full of thine own infinite goodness,
hast no need of my goods,(1) nor of anything
whatever, but if, by imagination of a thing
impossible, I could think thou hadst need of
anything, I would never cease to wish it thee, even
with the loss of my life, of my being, and of all
that is in the world. And if, being what thou art,
and what thou canst not but still be, it were
possible that thou couldst receive any increase of
good, - O God! what a desire would I have that thou
shouldst have it! I would desire, O eternal Lord! to
see my heart converted into a wish, and my life into
a sigh, to desire thee such a good! Ah! yet would I
not for all this, O thou sacred well-beloved of my
soul, desire to be able to wish any good to thy
Majesty, yea I delight with all my heart in this
supreme degree of goodness which thou hast, to which
nothing can be added, either by desire or yet by
thought.
But if such a desire were possible, O infinite
Divinity, O divine Infinity! my soul would be that
desire and nothing else, so intensely would she be
desirous to desire for thee that which she is
infinitely pleased that she cannot desire; seeing
that her powerlessness to make this desire proceeds
from the infinite infinity of thy perfection, which
outstrips all desire and all thought.
Ah! O my God! how dearly I love the impossibility
of being able to desire thee any good, since this
comes from the incomprehensible immensity of thy
abundance. That is so sovereignly infinite, that if
there were an infinite desire it would be infinitely
satiated by the infinity of thy goodness, which would
convert it into an infinite complacency. This desire
then, by imagination of impossibilities, may be
sometimes profitably practised amidst great and
extraordinary feelings and fervours.
We are told that the great S. Augustine often made
such, pouring out in an excess of love these words:
"Ah! Lord, I am Augustine and thou art God, but
still, if that, which neither is nor can be, were,
that I were God and thou Augustine, I would, changing
my condition with thee, become Augustine to the end
that thou mightest be God!"
It is yet another kind of benevolence towards God,
when feeling we cannot exalt him in himself, we
strive to do it in ourselves, that is, still more and
more to increase the complacency we take in his
goodness.
And then, Theotimus, we desire not the complacency
for the pleasure it yields us, but purely because
this pleasure is in God. For as we desire not the
compassion for the pain it brings to our heart, but
because this sorrow unites and associates us to our
well-beloved, who is in pain; so we do not love the
complacency because it brings us pleasure, but
because this pleasure is taken in union with the
pleasure and good which is in God; to be more united
to which, we would desire to exercise a complacency
infinitely greater, in imitation of the most holy
Queen and Mother of love, whose sacred soul
continually magnified and exalted God. And that it
might be known that this magnifying was made by the
complacency which she took in the divine goodness,
she declares; My spirit hath exultingly rejoiced in
God my Saviour.(2)
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