Friday, May 14, 2010

The School of Love & Other Essays, May 14

THE SCHOOL OF LOVE

[continued from yesterday]

...Thirdly, love is a restless thing.

Idleness and love are incompatible; love cannot go to sleep. This does not necessarily mean the activity that men usually understand; it need not be doing anything; but it means that it is ever awake and on fire within the depths of its own heart.

What it can give it gives; it longs to give what it cannot; it bankrupts itself, and counts its bankruptcy gain; it glories in so having nothing, for the very having nothing proves that it is master of all.
"The kingdom of heaven is likened to a treasure hidden in a field. Which a man having found, hid it, and for joy thereof goeth, and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a merchant seeking good pearls. Who when he had found one pearl of great price, went his way, and sold all that he had ­and bought it."
Of course this does not mean that love leads inevitably to poverty.

Sometimes it does; sometimes it demands a surrender even of the things of earth. A husband gives all to his wife, a wife to her husband; many a man has beggared himself for love of a noble cause.

Still these are but the trappings of love, which may or may not be present; a millionaire can love as well as a pauper; where love leads a pauper can give as much as a millionaire.

For it is the gift of oneself that matters; the gift of a human heart, its homage, its reverence, its service, the out­pouring of itself, in whatever condition it may be placed, the giving of its life, whether that life is destined to live on or is demanded as a present sacrifice.

"Christ loved me, and gave Himself for me," says St. Paul dumb­founded at the holocaust; and he answers with an eloquence that will hardly find its match in literature: "I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

So does true love impel; love impels to love; love impelled to love has love for its reward; its beginning and its end is only love.

Is my love of this nature? For this is the third and final test.

[continued tomorrow]
___________
From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918

2 comments:

Maria said...

Thanks you for this splendid message. The role of us Joyful Catholics is to demonstrate by our love the treasure of our Faith.
Armiger Jagoe, J.C. editor
The Joyful Catholic
http://thejoyfulcatholic.wordpress.
com/

LS said...

Thank you so much for your comments. I found this to be another very good, older book written, it seems, to impart a deeper understanding of the faith in language which can be readily understood. I pray God allows us to do more in the future. Thanks again.