Three Ways of Loving God E-Book

Saint Augustine

• Herausgeber: Paraclete Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 233

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

This book is deceptively simple. It is a collection of three distinct but united voices on the subject of how to love God, and how to be loved by God. You will meet three of the most interesting Christians in the history of our faith: St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Francis de Sales.

Leseprobe

THREE WAYS OF LOVING GOD

Three Ways Of Loving God

ST. AUGUSTINE

ST. TERESA OF AVILA

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES

PARACLETE PRESS

BREWSTER, MASSACHUSETTS

2014 First printing

Three Ways of Loving God

The portions of this text taken from The Confessions of St. Augustine, including biographical material and notes, are copyright © 2014 by The Community of Jesus, Inc.

The portions of this text taken from St. Teresa of Avila’s The Way of Perfection, plus biographical material about the author, are copyright © 2014 by Paraclete Press, Inc.

The portions of this text taken from St. Francis de Sales’s Treatise on the Love of God, plus biographical material about the author, are copyright © 2014 by Bernard Bangley.

ISBN 978-1-61261-499-1

Consists of excerpts from material previously published by Paraclete Press, Inc.

In the portion taken from Treatise on the Love of God:

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, copyright © 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (TEV) are taken from Today’s English Version, Second Edition, Copyright © 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992 American Bible Society. Used by permission.

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete PressBrewster, Massachusettswww.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

1 “THE EXAMINED LIFE”

St. Augustine

from The Confessions

2 “THE WAY OF SPIRITUAL AFFECTION”

St. Teresa of Avila

from The Way of Perfection

3 “OUR NATURAL TENDENCY IS TO LOVE GOD”

St. Francis de Sales

from Treatise on the Love of God

BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF THE CONTRIBUTORS

St. Augustine, 354–430

St. Teresa of Avila, 1515–1582

St. Francis de Sales, 1567–1622

Notes

FOREWORD

This is a deceptively simple book, written by three experts on the Christian spiritual life. Each of them writes with clarity, and from a great depth of personal experience, and yet what they describe is something that is ultimately beyond description. That’s what we mean when we say the book is deceptively simple: you cannot obtain what they describe by simply reading.

This is a collection of three distinct but united voices on the subject of what it means to love God, and to know that you are loved by God. In these pages, you will meet three of the most interesting Christians in the history of our faith: St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Francis de Sales. Their viewpoints are presented chronologically. Short biographies of each may be found at the conclusion of the book.

ST. AUGUSTINE

From The Confessions

  “THE EXAMINED LIFE”  

From The Confessions

BOOK XThe Examined Life

ONE

Let me know you, Lord, who know me;1let me know you even as I am known. O Strength of my soul, enter it and make it fit for you, that you may enjoy it without spot or wrinkle. This is my hope; therefore I speak, and in this hope I rejoice when I rightly rejoice. The less other things of this life deserve our sorrow, the more we weep for them; and the more they ought to be sorrowed for, the less men weep for them. For behold, you love truth and he who knows the truth comes to the light. This I would do in my heart before you in this confession and in my writing before many witnesses.

TWO

What is there in me that could be hidden from you, O Lord, to whose eyes the depths of man’s conscience is bare, even though I did not confess it? I might hide you from myself, but not myself from you. But now my groanings bear witness that I am displeased with myself and that you shine brightly and are pleasing, beloved and desired. I am ashamed of myself and renounce myself, and choose you, for I can neither please you nor myself except in you. Therefore I am open to you, Lord, with all that I am, and whatever benefit may come from my confession to you, I have spoken. I do not confess merely with words and fleshly sounds, but with the words of my soul and the cry of my thoughts which your ear knows. For when I am wicked, confession to you is nothing more than to be displeased with myself. But when I am truly devout, it is to ascribe glory to you; because you, Lord, bless the godly, but first you justify him who is ungodly.2 My confession then, O my God, is made both silently and yet not silently, for in sound it is silent, but in affection, it cries aloud. For I neither utter any right thing to others which you have not already heard from me, nor do you hear any such things from me which you have not first said to me.

THREE

But what do I have to do with men that they should hear my confessions, as if they could heal all my infirmities? They are a race, curious to know the lives of others, slow to amend their own. Why do they seek to hear from me what I am, who will not hear from you what they themselves are? And how do they know, when from me they hear of myself, whether I speak the truth, since no man knows what is in man, but the spirit of man which is in him? But if they hear from you about themselves, they cannot say, “The Lord lies.” For what is it to hear from you of themselves, but to know themselves? And who knows and says, “It is false,” unless he lies to himself? But because charity believes all things—at least among those whom it knits together with itself as one—I, too, Lord, will confess to you in such a way that men may hear, though I cannot prove to them that my confession is true; yet those whose ears are opened to me by charity will believe me.

But, O my inmost Physician, make plain to me what benefit I may gain by doing it. You have forgiven and covered my past sins that you might make me happy in you, changing my soul by faith and your sacrament. When my confessions of them are read and heard, they stir up the heart. No longer does it sleep in despair and say, “I cannot,” but it awakes in the love of your mercy and the sweetness of your grace, by which whoever is weak is made strong, when he becomes conscious of his own weakness by it. And the good delight to hear of the past evils of those who are now freed from them—not because they are evils, but because they were and no longer are.

What does it profit me, O Lord my God, what does this book gain me, to confess to men in your presence what I now am? My conscience confesses daily to you, trusting more in the hope of your mercy than in its own innocence. For I have seen and spoken of the fruit of knowing what I have been, but what I now am, at the very time of making these confessions, various people want to know, both those who have known me and those who have not, who have heard from me or of me. But their ear is not at my heart, where I am whatever I am. They wish to hear me confess what I am within, where neither their eye, nor ear, nor understanding can read. They wish it and are ready to believe it—but will they know? For charity, which makes them good, tells them that I do not lie in my confessions, and charity in them believes me.

FOUR

But for what good purpose do they wish to hear this? Do they want to rejoice with me when they hear how near by your grace I approach to you? Do they wish to pray for me when they hear how much I am held back by my own weight? To such I will disclose myself.3 For it is no little gain, O Lord my God, that thanks should be given to you on our behalf, and that you should be entreated for us. Let the brotherly soul love in me what you teach is to be loved, and lament in me what you teach is to be lamented. Let it be a brotherly, not an alien soul—not one of those strange children, whose mouth speaks vanity, and whose right hand is the hand of falsehood. But let it be the soul of my brethren who, when they approve, rejoice for me, and when they disapprove, are sorry for me; because whether they approve or disapprove, they love me. To such I will disclose myself; they will breathe freely at my good deeds, sigh for my ill. My good deeds are your appointments and your gifts. My evil ones are my offenses and your judgments. Let them breathe freely at the one and sigh at the other. Let hymns and weeping go up into your sight from the hearts of my brethren, your censers.4 And be pleased, O Lord, with the incense of your holy temple; have mercy on me according to your great mercy for your own name’s sake. And do not on any account leave what you have begun in me, but perfect my imperfections.

This is the fruit, the profit of my confession of what I am, not of what I have been: to confess this, not only before you, in a secret exultation with trembling, and a secret sorrow with hope, but in the ears of the believing sons of men, sharers of my joy, partners in my mortality, my fellow citizens and fellow pilgrims, who have gone before me, and are to follow on—companions of my way. These are your servants, my brethren, who are your sons by your will. They are my masters, whom you command me to serve if I would live with you and in you. But this, your Word, would mean little to me if it only commanded by speaking, without going before in action. This then I do in deed and word. This I do under your wings, for it would be too great a peril if my soul were not subjected to you under your wings and my infirmities known to you. I am but a little one, but my Father ever lives, and my Guardian is sufficient for me. For he is the same who gave me life and defends me, and you yourself are all my good. You, Almighty One, are with me, yes, even before I am with you. To those then whom you command me to serve I will show, not what I have been, but what I now am, and what I continue to be. But I do not judge myself. Thus, therefore would I be heard.

FIVE

You, Lord, are my Judge, because, although no man knows the things of a man but the spirit of a man that is in him, yet there is something of man that the spirit of man that is in him, itself, does not know. But you, Lord, know him completely, for you made him. And although I despise myself in your sight and account myself dust and ashes, I know something of you that I do not know of myself. Truly, now we see through a glass darkly, not face to face as yet. As long, then, as I am absent from you, I am more present with myself than with you. And I know that you cannot be violated, but I do not know which temptations I can resist and which I cannot. There is hope, because you are faithful, who will not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, so that we may be able to bear it. I will confess then what I know of myself; I will confess also what I do not know of myself. What I know of myself I know by your light shining upon me; and what I do not know of myself, I continue not to know until my darkness becomes as the noonday in the light of your countenance.

SIX

I love you, Lord, without any doubt, but with assured certainty. You have stricken my heart with your Word, and I love you. Yes, also, heaven and earth and all that is in them on every side bid me to love you. They will not cease to say so to everyone, so that they are without excuse. But more profoundly, you will have mercy on whom you will have mercy, and compassion on whom you will have compassion. Otherwise, the heaven and the earth speak your praises to deaf ears.

But what do I love when I love you? Not the beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our eyes; not the sweet melodies of various songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices; not manna and honey; not the limbs that physical love likes to embrace. It is none of these that I love when I love my God. Yet I love a kind of light, a kind of melody, a kind of fragrance, a kind of food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God: the light, the melody, the fragrance, the food, and the embrace of the inner man, where there shines into my soul what space cannot contain, and there sounds what time cannot carry away. I breathe a fragrance that no breeze scatters, and I taste there what is not consumed by eating; and there I lie in the embrace that no satiety can ever separate. This is what I love when I love my God.

And what is it? I asked the earth, and it answered me, “I am not he.” And whatever is in the earth confessed the same. I asked the sea and its deeps, and the living, creeping things, and they answered, “We are not your God; seek him above us.” I asked the moving air; and the whole air with its inhabitants answered, “Anaximenes was deceived; I am not God.”5 I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars. “No,” say they, “we are not the God whom you seek.” And I replied to all the things that throng about the senses of my flesh, “You have told me of my God, that you are not he. Tell me something of him.” And they cried, “He made us.” My questioning of them was my thoughts about them, and their form of beauty gave the answer. And I turned myself to myself, and said to myself, “What are you?” And I answer, “A man.” And behold, in me there appear both soul and body, one outside and the other within. By which of these should I seek my God? I had sought him in the body from earth to heaven, as far as I could send my eyesight as messengers. But the better part is the inner, for to it, as to a ruler and judge, all the bodily messengers reported the answers of heaven and earth and all things in them, who said, “We are not God, but he made us.” These things my inner man knew by means of the outer. I, the inner man, knew them. I, the mind, knew them through the senses of my body. I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and it answered me, “I am not he, but he made me.”

Is not this outward appearance visible to all who have use of their senses? Why then does it not say the same thing to all? Animals small and great see it, but they cannot ask it anything, because their senses are not endowed with reason, so they cannot judge what they see. But men can ask, so that the invisible things of God may be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. But in loving them, they are brought into subjection to them, and subjects cannot judge.6 Nor do these things answer unless the questioners can judge. The creatures do not change their voice, they do not appear one way to this man, another to that; but appearing the same way to both, they are dumb to one and speak to the other. Rather, they speak to all, but only those understand who compare the voice received externally with the internal truth. For truth says to me, “Neither heaven nor earth nor any other body is your God.” This, their very nature says to him who sees them, “They are a mass; a mass is less in part than in the whole.” Now I speak to you, O my soul; you are my better part, for you quicken the whole mass of my body, giving it life. No body can give life to a body. But your God is the Life of your life.

SEVEN

What do I do, then, when I love my God? Who is he who is so high above my soul? By my very soul I will ascend to him. I will soar beyond that power by which I am united to my body, filling its whole frame with life. But I do not find God by that power, for then, so could horse and mule that have no understanding find him, for it is the same power by which their bodies live.7 But there is another power, not only that by which I am made alive, but that, too, by which I imbue my flesh with sense, which the Lord has made for me, commanding the eye not to hear and the ear not to see; but commanding the eye that I should see through it, and the ear that I should hear through it, and the several other senses, what is to each their own proper places and functions. Through these different senses, I, as a single mind, act. I will go beyond this power of mine, too, for the horse and mule also have this power, for they also perceive through their bodily senses.

EIGHT

I will move on, then, beyond this power of my nature, rising by degrees to him who made me. And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where the treasures of innumerable images are stored, brought there from all sorts of things perceived by the senses. Further, there is stored up in memory whatever thoughts we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or changing in any other way those things that the senses have brought in; and whatever else has been committed and stored up, which forgetfulness has not yet swallowed up and buried. When I enter there, I ask what I want brought forth, and some things appear instantly; others must be sought after longer, and are brought, as it were, out of some inner storage place. Still others rush out in crowds, and while only one thing is desired and asked for, they leap into view as if to say, “Do you perhaps want me?” I drive these away from the face of my remembrance with the hand of my heart until what I wanted is unveiled and appears in sight out of its secret place. Other things come up readily, in unbroken order, as they are called for—those in front giving way to those that follow; and as they make way, they are hidden from sight, ready to come back at my will. All of this takes place when I repeat something by heart.

And all these things are preserved distinctly and under general heads, each having entered my memory by its own particular avenue: light and colors and forms of bodies, by the eyes; all sorts of sounds by the ears; all smells by the avenue of the nostrils; all tastes by the mouth; and by the sensation of the whole body, what is hard or soft, hot or cold, smooth or rugged, heavy or light—either external or internal to the body. All these things the great recesses, the hidden and unknown caverns of memory, receive and store, to be retrieved and brought forth when needed, each entering by its own gate. Yet the things themselves do not enter, but only the images of the things perceived are there, ready to be recalled in thought. But how these images are formed, who can tell? It is plain, however, which sense brought each one in and stored it up. For even while I dwell in darkness and silence, I can produce colors in my memory if I choose, and I can discern between black and white. Sounds do not break in and alter the image brought in by my eyes which I am reviewing, though they also are there, lying dormant and stored, as it were, separately. I can call for these, too, and they immediately appear. And though my voice is still and my throat silent, I can sing as much as I will. Those images of colors do not intrude, even though they are there, when another memory is called for which came in by way of the ears. So it is with other things brought in and stored up by the other senses—I can recall them at my pleasure. Yes, I can tell the fragrance of lilies from violets, though I smell nothing; I prefer honey to sweet wine, smooth surfaces to rough ones—at the time neither tasting nor handling, but only remembering.

These things I do inside myself, in that vast hall of my memory. For present there with me are heaven, earth, sea, and whatever I could think on them, in addition to what I have forgotten. There also I meet with myself, and recall myself—what, when, and where I did a thing, and what my feelings were when I did it. All that I remember is there, either personal experiences or what I was told by others. Out of the same store I continually combine with the past fresh images of things experienced, or what I have believed from what I have experienced. From these I can project future actions, events, and hopes, and I can reflect on all these again in the present. I say to myself, in that great storehouse of my mind, filled with the images of so many and such great things, “I will do this or that, and this or that will follow.” “Oh, would that this or that might be!” “May God prevent this or that!” This is the way I talk to myself, and when I speak, the images of all I speak about are present, out of the same treasury of memory. I could not say anything at all about them if their images were not there.

Great is this power of memory, exceedingly great, O my God: a large and boundless chamber! Who has ever sounded the depths of it? Yet this is a power of mine, and it belongs to my nature. But I do not myself comprehend all that I am. Therefore the mind is too narrow to contain itself. But where can that part be which it does not itself contain? Is it outside it and not inside? How then does it not comprehend itself? A great wonder arises in me; I am stunned with amazement at this. And men go outside themselves to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the width of the ocean and the circuits of the stars, passing by themselves. They do not wonder at the fact that when I spoke of all these things, I did not see them with my eyes, yet I could not have spoken of them unless I then inwardly saw with my memory the mountains, waves, rivers, and stars that I have seen, and that ocean that I believe to exist, and with the same vast spaces between them as if I saw them outside myself. Yet I did not actually draw them into myself by seeing them, when I beheld them with my eyes, but only their images. And I know which sense of the body impressed each of them on me.

NINE

Yet these are not all that the immeasurable capacity of my memory retains. Here also is all that I have learned of the liberal sciences and have not yet forgotten—removed as it were to some inner place, which is yet no place. In this case it is not the images that are retained, but rather, the things themselves. For whatever literature, whatever art of debating, however many kinds of questions I know, they exist in my memory as they are—I have not taken in their image and left out the thing itself. It is not as though it had sounded and passed away like a voice retained in the ear, which can be recalled as if it still sounded when it no longer sounded. Nor is it like an odor that evaporates into the air as it passed, affecting the sense of smell, and from it carries an image of itself into the memory that we renew when we recall it. Nor is it like food, which verily has no taste in the belly, but yet is still tasted in some way in the memory; nor as anything that the body feels by touch and that the memory still conceives when removed from us. For those things themselves are not transmitted into the memory, but their images are caught up and stored, with an admirable swiftness, as it were, in wonderful cabinets, and from there wonderfully brought forth by the act of remembering.

TEN

But now when I hear that there are three kinds of questions—whether a thing is, what it is, of what kind it is—I do indeed hold the images of the sounds that make up these words, and I know that those sounds passed through the air with a noise and then ceased to be. But the questions themselves that are conveyed by these sounds, I never reached with any sense of my body, nor do I ever see them at all except by my mind. Yet I have not laid up their images in my memory, but these very questions themselves. How they entered into me, let them say if they can; for I have gone over all the avenues of my flesh, and cannot find how they entered. For the eyes say, “If those images were colored, we reported about them.” The ears say, “If they made a sound, we gave you knowledge of them.” The nostrils say, “If they have any smell, they passed by us.” The taste says, “Unless they have a flavor, do not ask me.” The touch says, “If it has no size, I did not handle it, and if I did not handle it, I have no account of it.”

How and from where did these things enter my memory? I do not know. For when I learned them, I gave no credit to another man’s mind, but recognized them in mine; and approving them as true, I commended them to my mind, laying them up as it were, where I could get at them again whenever I wished. There they were then [in my mind] before I stored them in my memory. Where then, or why, when they were spoken, did I acknowledge them and say, “So it is! It is true,” unless they were already in the memory, but so thrown back and buried as it were in deeper recesses, that if the suggestion of another had not drawn them forth, I may have been unable to conceive of them?8

ELEVEN

T