THE LOVE IN HOPE IS VERY GOOD THOUGH IMPERFECT
The love we practise in hope, Theotimus, is certainly directed to God. But it comes back to us. It has its gaze fixed on divine goodness but it has some concern for our own advantage. It tends to this supreme perfection but it seeks our own satisfaction. It means that it does not lead us to God because God is supremely good in himself but because he is supremely good to us. In this, you can see that there is something of “ours" and of “us." Hence this love is genuine love but a love of selfish desire and of self-interest. I do not say that it always comes back to us in such a way that it makes us love God only for love of us. My God! Not at all! The human spirit that loves God directs the aim of love which it has for God to its own advantage. Alas! It will become a grievous sacrilege, if a wife loves her husband only for the love of his servant. She will love her husband as the servant and his servant as her husband. So also the person that loves God only for the love of itself loves itself as it should love God and it loves God as it should love itself.
There is a real difference between the two following expressions: I love God for the good that I expect from him. The next is: I love God solely for the good I expect from him. Likewise, it is quite different to say: I love God for my sake, and to say: I love God for the love of myself. When I say, I love God for my sake, it is as if I were to say: I love to have God. I love that God be my possession. This is a holy emotion of the heavenly spouse. She repeats it a hundred times because of the abundance of delight: My Beloved is wholly mine and I am his entirely, he is mine and I am his (Song 2:16; 6:3; 7:10). But to say: I love God for the love of myself is similar to saying: The love I bear myself is the end for which I love God. Consequently love of God is dependent on, subordinate to and inferior to self-love which we have towards ourselves. This is unparalleled impiety, godlessness.
This love which we call hope is a love of desire.[1] But it is a holy, well-regulated love of desire. By it, we do not drag down God to us or to our advantage. Instead, we unite ourselves to him as our eternal happiness. By this love, we love ourselves together with God. But we do not prefer ourselves to him nor do we make ourselves equal to him in this love. Love of ourselves is mingled with that of God, but love of God soars above. Our self-love truly enters in as a simple motive but not as the principal aim. Our interest has some place there, but God holds the first rank. Yes, doubtless, Theotimus, when we love God as our supreme good, we love him for a quality. By that quality, we do not relate him to us, but we to him. We are not his end, nor his expectation nor his perfection but he is ours. He does not belong to us but we belong to him. He does not at all depend on us but we on him. In short, we love him because of his quality as supreme good. For this he receives nothing from us. Instead, we receive from him. He offers his abundance and goodness to us and we offer him our need and poverty. Thus to love God as our supreme good is to love him for an honourable and respectful motive. By this we acknowledge that he is our perfection, our rest, our last end. In enjoying him consists our happiness.
We make use of some goods in order to serve ourselves. Such are our slaves, our servants, our horses, our dress. The love we bear them is purely a selfish love of desire. We love them only for our own benefit. There are goods which we possess with a reciprocal, mutual and equal possession like our friends. The love we have for them in so far as they give us satisfaction is, indeed, a love of desire by which they are ours and we are equally theirs. They belong to us and we belong to them. But there are goods which we possess with a possession of dependence, participation and subjection. These we receive from the good will of our pastors, princes, father, mother or from their presence and favour. The love we have for them is also, for certain, a love of desire. We love them as they are our princes, our pastors, our fathers, our mothers. It is not the quality of the pastor, prince, father or mother that makes us love them. But we love them because they are such in our case and in our relationship to them. This love of desire is a love of respect, of reverence and of honour. For instance, we love our fathers not because they are ours but because we belong to them. It is thus that we love God with a love of desire in hope. It is not that he may become our good but because he is our good. It is not that he may become ours but because we are his. It is not that he exists for us but we exist for him.
In this love, notice Theotimus, that the motive for which we love and apply our heart to the love of the good we desire is our good. But the reason for the measure and quantity of this love depends on the excellence and the dignity of the good we love. We love our benefactors because they are such towards us. We love them more or less in so far as they are greater or lesser benefactors to us. Why, then Theotimus, do we love God with this love of desire? Because he is our good. Why do we love him supremely? Because he is our supreme good.
When I say that we love God supremely, I do not mean that we love him with supreme love. Supreme love exists only in charity. In hope, love is imperfect. For this love does not tend to his infinite goodness as it is in itself but only as it is such to us. Nevertheless, in this kind of love, there is no motive more excellent than that which comes from reflection on the supreme good. So we say that by it we love supremely. In fact, no one can keep the commandments of God and have eternal life by this love alone. This is because it is a love that gives more affection than real effect, when it is not accompanied by charity.
---------------------------------
[1] un amour de convoitise difficult to translate. Kerns: Self-regarding love, Dom Mackey & Ryan-Cupidity: It is a form of love of self in the positive sense in which love of God remains supreme.