i was recently reminded of how much i love the mystics and saints of old. i remember devouring the Catholicism shelf at half price books and this little hole in the wall bookstore i used to go to. i know i know, some of them can get strange, pretty “i worship mary”, but i always figured… we all can get a little strange sometimes.
in my early teen years i’ll admit, i kind of hit a strange patch. i became the hermit kid that read books written by very old, very smart, and very spiritual dead people. i was fascinated by their language, by their contemplative nature, but mostly… by the fact that they knew and spoke about the same God that i loved – but they spoke about him in a way that i had never heard or experienced for myself.
it makes me wonder if in another 900+ years… will people have the same fascination and awe with the writing that’s coming out, today?
i guess ill never know.
nevertheless, here is a favorite excerpt from a sermon by St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
“Love is sufficient of itself, it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. It’s profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it.
Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him.
It is true that the creature loves less because she is less. But if she loves with her whole being, nothing is lacking where everything is given.”
