“Happy is he who attains to the fourth grade, where man loves himself only on account of God. Thy righteousness, O God, is as the mountain of God; love is that mountain, that high mountain of God. Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord? Who will give me the wings of a dove and I will fly away and be at rest. Alas! for my long-drawn sojourning! When shall I gain that habitation in Zion, and my soul become one spirit with God? Blessed and holy will I call him to whom in this mortal life such has been given though but once. For to be lost to self and not to feel thyself, and to be emptied of thyself and almost to be made nothing, that pertains to heavenly intercourse, not to human affection. And if any one among mortals here gain admission for an instant, at once the wicked world is envious, the day’s evil disturbs, the body of death drags down, fleshly necessity solicits, corruption’s debility does not sustain, and, fiercest of all, brotherly love calls back! Alas! he is dragged back to himself, and forced to cry: ‘O Lord, I suffer violence, answer thou for me’ (Isa. xxxviii. 14); ‘Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ (Rom. vii. 24).
“Yet Scripture says that God made all things for His own sake; that will come to pass when the creation is in full accord with its Author. Therefore we must sometime pass into that state wherein we do not wish to be ourselves or anything else, except for His sake and by reason of His will, not ours. Then not our need or happiness, but His will, will be fulfilled in us. O holy love and chaste! O sweet affection! O pure and purged intention of the will, in which nothing of its own is mingled! This is it to be made God (deificari). As the drop of water is diffused in a jar of wine, taking its taste and colour, and as molten iron becomes like to fire and casts off its form, and as the air transfused with sunlight is transformed into that same brightness of light, so that it seems not illumined, but itself to be the light, thus in the saints every human affection must in some ineffable mode be liquefied of itself and transfused into the will of God. How could God be all in all if in man anything of man remained? A certain substance will remain, but in another form, another glory, another power.”
Hereupon St. Bernard considers how this fourth grade of love will be attained in the resurrection, and “perpetually possessed, when God only is loved and we love ourselves only for His sake, that He may be the recompense and aim (praemium) of those who love themselves, the eternal recompense of those who love eternally.”
Christ is the universal Mediator between God and man, not only because reconciling them, but as forming the intervening term, the concrete instance of the One suited to the comprehension of the other. Such thoughts and sentiments as commonly apply to man, when they are applied to Christ become fit to apply to God. Herein especially may be perceived the continuing identity of love, whether relating to human beings or to God. The soul’s love of Christ is mediatorial, and symbolic of its love of God. All of which Bernard has demonstrated with conjoined power of argument and feeling in his famous Sermons on Canticles.[502]
The human personality of Christ draws men to love Him, till their love is purged of carnality and exalted to a perfect love of God:
“Observe that the heart’s love is partly carnal; it is affected through the flesh of Christ and what He said and did while in the flesh. Filled with this love, the heart is readily touched by discourse upon His words and acts. It hears of nothing more willingly, reads nothing more carefully, recalls nothing more frequently, and meditates upon nothing more sweetly. When man prays, the sacred image of the God-man is with him, as He was born or suckled, as He taught or died, rose from the dead or ascended to heaven. This image never fails to nerve man’s mind with the love of virtue, cast out the vices of the flesh and quell its lusts. I deem the principal reason why the invisible God wished to be seen in the flesh, and, as man, hold intercourse with men, was that He might draw the affections of carnal men, who could only love carnally, to a salutary love of His flesh, and then on to a spiritual love.”
Conversely, the Saviour’s example teaches men how they should love Him:
“He loved sweetly, wisely, and bravely: sweetly, in that He put on flesh; wisely, in that He avoided fault; bravely, in that He bore death. Those, however, with whom He sojourned in the flesh, He did not love carnally, but in prudence of spirit. Learn then, Christian, from Christ how to love Christ.”
Bernard shows how even the Apostles failed sometimes to love Him according to His perfect teaching and example:
“Good, indeed, is this carnal love,” he concludes, “through which a carnal life is shut out; and the world is despised and conquered. This love progresses as it becomes rational, and perfected as it becomes spiritual.”[503]