"Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours."
—St. Augustine, from “Confessions”.
This quote really resonated with me. The other night, I also read some of Thomas Merton's "New Seeds of Contemplation". Oddly enough, Chapter 4 - "Everything That Is, Is Holy" is about loving created things.
Is it possible, that Saint Augustine is not saying that the creaturely things are themselves actually unlovely, but that he loved them in an unlovely state? (i.e. not loving God with perfected Love?) He still calls the things "lovely things". He says they kept him from God but that if they didn't have their existence IN God, they had no existence at all. So these created things are also holy and exist in Him. Maybe it's not the "things" we need to detach ourselves from in order to attach to God, but from the self that we have made into an idol. When we use these created things for the sake of an egotistical false self, we corrupt these good things (though they may not be inherently evil) and increase the attachment to the illusory self. We can often treat the good things of God as if they are evils and pat ourselves on the back for denying them altogether.
As Thomas Merton points out, "It is not true that the saints and the great contemplatives never loved created things, and had no understanding or appreciation of the world, with its sights and sounds and the people living in it. They loved everything and everyone."
Can we ever love God perfectly and the way He deserves? No. I don't believe we actually can as broken humans, and most of us have no idea what Love really is. Love has become a socially acceptable ghost to the masses. If we can't ever love God perfectly, can we still love things for His sake and not the Self? Is it our trying to love God perfectly by trusting in His will that allows us to glorify him by his creations?
Merton says, "For until we love God perfectly His world is full of contradiction. The things He has created attract us to Him and yet keep us away from Him. … In all created things we, who do not yet perfectly love God, can find something that reflects the fulfillment of heaven and something that reflects the anguish of hell."
Merton thinks it childish to hate and revile created things to try to please God. Can we have the kind of morality where we love good things without having a perpetual duel with guilt?
We can’t ever love God with perfected Love, and so we cannot love his creations perfectly. Try we must, to Love him perfectly with our unlovely imperfect hearts and trust in His will so that we can love “things” for His sake, not for our illusory “Self” we’ve created as an idol.
Dear God, grant us your grace as we strive for perfected love of you and your holy creatures that are in and of you. ❤️
No comments:
Post a Comment