Love towards God and others

“Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things and our neighbour as ourselves for the love of God” (Compendium of the catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 388).

“Charity […] empties and annihilates the affections and appetites of the will of whatever is not God and centres them on him alone. Thus, charity prepares the will and unites it with God through love”(John of the Cross, The Dark Night, Book 2, Chapter 21, n.11).

Through this virtue, the person is attracted to Christ, relates with him, and consequently starts to imitate him, which happens due to the powerful influence of Christ himself. Through this influence of the divine model, the person further grows in the love towards God and others, and thus is attracted with more force to relate with Christ.

Through love,

the person is attracted

to Christ

In the Canticle that Saint John of the Cross gives a beautiful example of how God communicates his love to us.

“It should be noted that the soul does not say that there he will give her his love – although he really does – because she would thereby manifest only that God loves her. She states rather that there he will show her how to love him as perfectly as she desires. It is precisely by giving her his love there that he shows her how to love as she is loved by him. Besides teaching her to love purely, freely, and disinterestedly, as he loves us, God makes her love him with the very strength with which he loves her. Transforming her into his love, as we said, he gives her his own strength by which she can love him. As if he were to put an instrument in her hands and show her how it works by operating it jointly with her, he shows her how to love and gives her the ability to do so.”

John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 38 n.4.

meditation

This is because, as Saint John of the Cross continues to explain:

“what the soul usually passes through before reaching this state of spiritual marriage, which is the highest (which we will now speak of with divine help), it should be noted that before the soul reaches this state she first exercises herself in the trials and bitterness of mortification and in meditation on spiritual things. This is referred to from the first stanza until that which says: ‘Pouring out a thousand graces.’

contemplation

Afterward she enters the contemplative way. Here she passes through the paths and straits of love about which she sings in the sequence of the verses until the stanza that begins, ‘Withdraw them, Beloved,’ where the spiritual betrothal is wrought. Then she advances along the unitive way, in which she receives many remarkable communications, visits, gifts, and jewels from her Bridegroom, and, as one betrothed, learns of her Beloved and becomes perfect in loving him.

All of this she relates from the stanza in which the betrothal was made (‘Withdraw them, Beloved’) to the present one beginning with, ‘The bride has entered,’ where the spiritual marriage between this soul and the Son of God is effected.

spiritual marriage

This spiritual marriage is incomparably greater than the spiritual betrothal, for it is a total transformation in the Beloved, in which each surrenders the entire possession of self to the other with a certain consummation of the union of love. The soul thereby becomes divine, God through participation, insofar as is possible in this life. And thus I think that this state never occurs without the soul’s being confirmed in grace, for the faith of both is confirmed when God’s faith in the soul is here confirmed. It is accordingly the highest state attainable in this life.

spiritual union

Just as in the consummation of carnal marriage there are two in one flesh, as Sacred Scripture points out [Genesis 2:24], so also when the spiritual marriage between God and the soul is consummated, there are two natures in one spirit and love, as St. Paul says in making this same comparison: Whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him [1 Corinthians 6:17]. This union resembles the union of the light of a star or candle with the light of the sun, for what then sheds light is not the star or candle, but the sun, which has absorbed the other lights into its own.”

John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 22 n.3.

This creates a cycle of growth in love towards God and others. It is through this love that the person living God’s dream discovers the presence of God, within oneself.

“Oh, then, soul, [explains John of the Cross] most beautiful among all creatures, so anxious to know the dwelling place of your Beloved so you may go in search of him and be united with him, now we are telling you that you yourself are his dwelling and his secret inner room and hiding place. There is reason for you to be elated and joyful in seeing that all your good and hope is so close as to be within you, or better, that you cannot be without him. Behold, exclaims the Bridegroom, the kingdom of God is within you [Luke 17:21]. And his servant, the apostle St. Paul, declares: You are the temple of God [2 Corinthians 6:16]. It brings special happiness to a person to understand that God is never absent, not even from a soul in mortal sin (and how much less from one in the state of grace).”

John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 1, n.7-8.

It is through this love that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the person seeking God’s dream becomes a real child of God in the son Jesus, doing like him the will of the Father in everything.

It brings special happiness to a person to understand that God is never absent, not even from a soul in mortal sin

John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 1, n. 8