“Who loves all will be saved without doubt; but who is loved by men will not for that reason be saved.”
The unity of these Meditations lies in the absolute manner in which the meditating soul attaches itself to God as its whole and only good. Herein Guigo’s thoughts are Augustinian. One notes their clear intellectual tone. Nothing lures the thinker from his aim and goal of God. He abhors whatever might distract him; and as to all except God and God’s commands, he is indifferent. Guigo detests impermanence as keenly as did the Brahmin and Buddhist meditators of India. He has as high regard as any Indian or Greek philosopher for a life of thought. But there are differences between the Carthusian prior and the Greek or Indian sage. Guigo’s renunciation does not (from his standpoint) penetrate life as deeply as Gotama’s; for Guigo renounces only things comparatively insignificant, so utterly transient are they, so completely they pale before the light of his goal of God. Therein shall lie clearer attainment than lay at the end of any Indian chain of reasoning. So note well, that Guigo, like other Christians, is not essentially a renouncer, but one who attains and receives.
The difference between him and the Greek is also patent. The source of his blue lake of thought is not himself, but God. Although calm and sustained by reason, he is rationally the opposite of self-reliant, and so the opposite of the ideal Stoic or Aristotelian. God is his Creator, the source of his thoughts, the loadstar of his meditations, the all-comprehending object of his desire.
We find in Guigo further specific elements of Christian asceticism, which sharpen his repugnances for the world of transient phenomena. Those phenomena mostly contain elements of sin: all pleasure is temptation and a snare; adversity keeps the soul’s wings trimmed true. So the main content of passing mortal life, while not evil in itself, is so charged with temptation and allure, that it is worthy only of avoidance. The transient, the physical, the brutal, the diabolic—one shades into the next, and leads on to the last. Have none of them, O soul! They are snares all.
Of course, Guigo has the specific monkish horror of sexual lust, that chief of fleshly snares. But he goes further. With him all particular, disproportionate love is wrong; love no one, and desire not to be loved, out of the proportionment of the common love which God has for all His creatures: so love you, and not otherwise. Others, even women, attained this standard. In the legend, St. Elizabeth of Hungary gives thanks that she loves her own children no more than others’. She is no mother, but a saint. So Guigo will love all—love indeed? one queries. Thus also will he have others hold themselves toward him, lest he be a stumbling-block in their or his salvation.
Yea, salvation! If indeed this monk shall not have attained that, of a truth he would be of all men most miserable—save for the quiet, thought-filled calm which is his inner and his veritable life. It is a calm not riven by the storms which drove the soul of Peter Damiani. God was not less to Guigo; but the temperaments of the two men differed. Not beyond or out of one’s nature can one love or yearn, or even know the stress of storm.
CHAPTER XVII
THE QUALITY OF LOVE IN SAINT BERNARD