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What’s something about you that you love?
This question inspired by the teaching of today’s saint, Bernard of Clairvaux, on salutary love of self (more in a moment).
I’ll go first: I’m a good teacher—good at explaining, at helping people understand things (as I hope to show…).
This question inspired by the teaching of today’s saint, Bernard of Clairvaux, on salutary love of self (more in a moment).
I’ll go first: I’m a good teacher—good at explaining, at helping people understand things (as I hope to show…).
St. Bernard is one of the most important and influential churchmen who ever lived. His teaching on the four degrees of love is wise, gentle, and kind of startling. (#4 will shock you!) To summarize…
Bernard’s FIRST DEGREE OF LOVE is “loving yourself for your own sake (selfish love).” This is the lowest and easiest kind of love. Bernard says this love “does not come as a precept; it comes naturally, for ‘no one ever yet hated their own flesh’ (Ephesians 5:29).”
Notably, Bernard doesn’t condemn self-love, even of this first-level, selfish sort. Rather, he says we must restrain it from growing disordered and excessive, disproportionate to our other loves, so that we fail in love of neighbor.
So long as we love our neighbor as ourselves, even selfish self-love is not wrong. Bernard goes so far as to say that you can be “as indulgent as you like about yourself, provided you shows the same indulgence with your neighbors.”
The SECOND DEGREE OF LOVE is “loving God for your own blessing (dependence on God).” Although this love of God is self-oriented, Bernard says “it is wisdom to know what you can do by yourself and what you can only do with God’s help to keep you from offending God by sin.”
The THIRD DEGREE OF LOVE is “loving God for God’s own sake (intimacy with God).”
I confess I was startled, the first time I read Bernard’s teaching on this subject, to find loving God for his own sake listed third and not fourth. What could possibly be fourth? Wait for it…
I confess I was startled, the first time I read Bernard’s teaching on this subject, to find loving God for his own sake listed third and not fourth. What could possibly be fourth? Wait for it…
The FOURTH DEGREE OF LOVE is: “self-love for God's sake (being united with God’s love.”
Toldja! Didn’t see *that* coming, did you?
Here, truly, is the end of selfishness: Not only do we lose ourselves in love of God, but even self-love is swallowed up in God's love of us.
Toldja! Didn’t see *that* coming, did you?
Here, truly, is the end of selfishness: Not only do we lose ourselves in love of God, but even self-love is swallowed up in God's love of us.
Some Christians have the idea that godliness means ceasing to love the self. But how can it be right to love not what is loved by God?
Even selfish self-love isn't wrong in itself, except insofar as it is disordered and disproportionate to our other loves.
Even selfish self-love isn't wrong in itself, except insofar as it is disordered and disproportionate to our other loves.
Once we’ve learned to love God for his own sake and to love others for God’s sake, then we may dare to invert the great command of Jesus—not only loving our neighbor as ourselves, but loving ourselves as our neighbor, i.e., for the sake of the beloved Lord who loves us both.
Of this love of self for God’s sake Bernard writes, “Blessed are those who can attain the fourth degree of love. Then they will love themselves only in God!…Blessed and holy is the one who has been privileged, even if only momentarily in this life, to taste of this love.”
Which brings me back to my opening question: What’s something about yourself that you love?
Saying good things about ourselves makes many of us uncomfortable. But whatever is good about you is, one way or another, God’s gift to you. Would you lack gratitude?
There is no true happiness without gratitude—and we are created for true happiness.
Own your gift. What is it?
There is no true happiness without gratitude—and we are created for true happiness.
Own your gift. What is it?
