OUR BENEVOLENT LOVE LEADS US TO PRAISE GOD OUR WELL-BELOVED38
Honour, my dear Theotimus, is not in him whom we honour. But it is in him who pays honour. How often it happens that he whom we honour does not know anything about it. He has not even thought of it. How many times we praise those who do not know us or who sleep. Yet this is the usual opinion of people and their common way of thinking: It seems to them that it is doing good to someone when we honour him, give titles and praise. We have no difficulty in saying that a person is rich in honour, glory, fame and praise. In fact, we know well that all these are exterior to the person honoured. Very often, he receives no benefit whatsoever. This goes along with the words attributed to St. Augustine: “O, Poor Aristotle, you are praised where you are absent [read]. You are burnt where you are present." What good comes to Caesar or Alexander the Great, I pray you, by so many empty words which many frivolous persons use to praise them?
God is filled with goodness. He surpasses all praise and all honour. He receives no advantage whatever or increase of good for all the praises we lavish on him. Because of it, he is neither richer nor greater, neither more content nor more happy. For his joy, his contentment, his greatness and his riches are and can be nothing else but his infinite goodness. Yet generally we understand honour as the greatest result of our benevolence towards others. By this, we do not presume any need in those whom we honour. Rather, we declare that they are affluent in excellence. Hence we make use of this kind of benevolent love towards God. He is not only pleased with it but also demands it from us as fitting to our condition. It is very suitable to witness our respectful love which we owe him. Even he has ordered us to give him all honour and glory (1Cor 10:31; 1Tim 1:17; Rev 4:11).
Thus the soul takes delight in the infinite perfections of God. It realizes that it cannot wish him any increase of goodness. The reason is that God has goodness infinitely more than it is able to desire or think of. So the human spirit desires that at least his name be blessed, exalted, praised, honoured, adored more and more. The human spirit begins with its own heart. It does not cease to arouse itself to this holy practice. Like a sacred bee, it goes flying here and there on the flowers of divine works and perfections. The soul receives from them a sweet variety of delights. From them it gathers and makes the heavenly honey of blessings, praises and homage. By these, in so far as it is possible, it exalts and glorifies the name of its Beloved. In this the soul imitates the great Psalmist who went round and ran through the wonders of divine goodness in his spirit. He immolated on the altar of his heart the mystic sacrifice of his ecstatic voice singing canticles and psalms of admiration and praise:
My heart flies here and there,
On the wings of its thought.
Rapt in admiration,
With a voice soaring high
He offered a sacrifice
On a melodious harp
Singing praises
To the Lord God of Sion (Ps 27:6,8).
The desire to praise God which benevolent love intensifies in our hearts, Theotimus, is unquenchable. The soul, touched by it, wishes to give infinite praises to its Beloved as it sees that his perfections are more than infinite. It finds itself far away from being able to satisfy its desire. So it makes very great efforts [moved by] affection to praise to some extent [at least] this infinite praiseworthy goodness. Delight admirably increases these efforts of benevolent love. In the measure the soul finds God good, it relishes more and more his infinite sweetness. It delights in his infinite beauty. Hence the soul desires to raise evermore highly the praise and glory it gives. In proportion as the soul warms itself to praise the unfathomable loving kindness of its God, the soul increases and expands the delight it takes in it. By this increase, it enlivens itself to praise all the more strongly. Thus love of delight and that of praise receive great and constant increase by these mutual interactions and mutual stimulation they give to each other.
Nightingales, similarly, take so much delight in singing, narrates Pliny, that due to this delight they do not cease warbling for fifteen days and fifteen nights. They force themselves to sing better in competition with others. As they force themselves to sing better, they have greater delight. This increase in delight encourages them to make greater effort to chirp. They increase their delight to such an extent by their song and their song by their delight that many times we see them die. Their throat is shattered by force of their singing. These birds are worthy of the name Philomel, as they die in love and for love of melody.
O God, dear Theotimus, the human heart makes a thousand attempts to praise God. It falls far short. Then as the heart is earnestly urged by love to praise God, it experiences a very pleasant pain and a very painful sweetness. Alas, this little nightingale [the heart] always desires to sing its song and perfect its melody to sing better the praises of its Beloved! In proportion as it praises, it is delighted to praise. And in proportion as it is pleased to praise, it is unhappy that it is not able to praise still better. To satisfy itself as much as it can in this passion, it makes all sorts of efforts in the midst of which it experiences a failure of strength.[1] So it happened to the glorious St. Francis [of Assisi]. In the midst of the joys he took in praising God and singing canticles of love, he shed a great abundance of tears. Often it made him feeble and let fall what he was holding in his hand. He stayed like a sacred Philomel with a heart weakened [by love]. He often lost his breath while forcing himself in aspiring to praise him whom he could never sufficiently praise.
Hear an interesting example on this subject. It is taken from the name this holy lover [St. Francis of Assisi] gave to his religious. He called them cicadas because of the praises they were singing to God in the midst of the night. Theotimus, the cicadas have their chest full of little pipes as if they were natural organs. To sing better, they live only on dew. They do not take it by their mouth because they have none. They suck it with a little tongue which they have in the middle of their stomach. By their little tongues they produce such a noise that they seem to be nothing but voice.
The sacred lover is like this: All the powers of his soul are like so many pipes in his heart to resound the canticles and praises of his Beloved. According to St. Bernard, his devotion at the centre of all these is the tongue of his heart. By it he receives the dews of divine perfections. He sucks them and draws them to himself as his food by the most holy delight he takes in them. By this same tongue of devotion, he sings voices of prayer, praise, canticles, psalms, blessings. This is in accordance with one of the most famous spiritual cicadas which has ever been heard. He sang thus:
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name (Ps 103:1).
Is it not as if he said: I am a mystic cicada. My soul, my spirit, my thoughts and all my faculties gathered within me are organs. May all these bless his name and resound the praises of my God:
I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
let the humble hear and be glad (Ps 34:1,2).
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[1] Literally languor, mystical in character.