TO LOVE GOD MORE THAN ANYTHING IS COMMON TO ALL LOVERS
There are so many different degrees of love among true lovers. Yet there is only one commandment of love. It obliges each one in general and equally with a completely similar and totally equal obligation. This may be observed differently and with an infinite variety of perfections. There are perhaps no people on earth, as there are no Angels in Heaven, who are perfectly equal to one another in love. As star differs from star in brightness (1Cor 15:41), so will it be among the risen Blessed, when each one sings a canticle of glory and receives a name that no one knows except the one who receives it (Rev 2:17). But what is that degree of love to which the divine commandment obliges all of us equally, universally and always?
It is a mark of the providence of the Holy Spirit that in our ordinary version of the Scriptures, which God’s Divine Majesty has canonized and sanctified by the Council of Trent, the heavenly commandment to love is expressed by the word dilection rather than by the word love. Though dilection is a kind of love yet it is not a simple love. It is a love joined to choice and election. This meaning is conveyed by the word itself, as the most glorious St. Thomas [Aquinas] points out. This commandment binds us to a love chosen out of thousands (Song 5:10), just as the Beloved of this love is chosen out of thousands, as the beloved Sulamitess has noted in the Song of Songs. It is the love which must prevail over all our loves and reign over all our passions. This is what God requires of us: that among all our loves his be the dearest, holding the first place in our hearts; the warmest, filling our whole soul; the most general making use of all our powers; the highest filling our entire spirit; and the strongest, exercising all our strength and vigour. And as by this we choose and elect God as the supreme object of our spirit, it is a love of supreme election, or an election of supreme love.
You know, Theotimus, that there are several kinds of love, as for example fatherly love, filial love, brotherly love, nuptial love, love arising from society, from duty, from dependence and a hundred others. All these loves differ in their perfection and are so proportioned to their objects that they cannot be properly directed or appropriated to any other. One who loved his father with only a fraternal love would not love him enough. A man who loved his wife only as he does his father would not love her as he should. One who loved his servant with a filial love would commit an improper act.
Love is like honour. Just as honours are diversified according to the different good qualities we honour, so also loves differ according to the difference of the goodnesses for which we love. The highest honour belongs to the highest perfection, and supreme love to the supreme goodness. The love of God is a love without equal, because the goodness of God is a goodness without equal. Hear, O Israel, your God is the sole Lord, and therefore you shall love him with your whole heart, with your whole soul, with your whole mind, and with your whole strength (Deut 6:4-5). As God is the sole Lord and his goodness is infinitely high above all goodness, he is to be loved with a love that is eminent, excellent and mighty beyond all comparison. It is this supreme love which places God in such esteem in our souls and makes us prize so highly the good of being pleasing to him that we prefer him and love him above all things.
Now, Theotimus, do you not see that whoever loves God in this way has one’s whole soul and one’s whole strength dedicated to God? Always and forever and in every event he will prefer the good grace of God to all things. He will be ever ready to give up the whole world in order to preserve the love that he owes to the Divine Goodness. In a word, it is the love of excellence or the excellence of love which is commanded to the whole human race in general and to each one of them in particular as soon as they have the free use of reason: a love sufficient for the salvation of each one and necessary for salvation to all.