Bernard of Clairvaux,
Unloving God The Fourth Degree of Love A person loves themselves for the sake of God.
Happy the person who has attained the fourth degree of love.
They no longer even love themselves except for God.
Oh God,
Your justice is like the mountains of God.
This love is a mountain,
God's towering peak.
Truly it is the fat,
Fertile mountain.
Who will climb this mountain of the Lord?
Who will give me the wings of a dove that I may fly away to find rest?
This peace is made peaceful,
A dwelling place in Zion.
Alas for me,
My exile has been lengthened.
When will flesh and blood,
This vessel of clay,
This earthly dwelling understand the fact?
When will this sort of affection be felt that,
Inebriated with this divine love,
The mind may forget itself and become in its own eyes like a broken dish,
Hastening towards God and clinging to him,
Becoming one with him in spirit?
Saying,
My flesh and my heart have wasted away,
O God of my heart.
O God,
My share for eternity.
I would say that man is blessed and holy to whom it is given to experience something of this sort,
So rare in life,
Even if it be but once and for the space of a moment.
To lose yourself as if you no longer existed,
To cease completely to experience yourself,
To reduce yourself to nothing is not a human sentiment,
But a divine experience.
If any mortal suddenly rapt,
That has been said,
And for a moment is admitted to this,
Immediately the world of sin envies him.
The evil of the day disturbs him,
The mortal body weighs him down,
And the needs of the flesh bother him.
The weakness of corruption offers no support,
And sometimes with greater violence than these,
Brotherly love calls him back.
Alas,
He has to come back to himself,
To descend again into his being,
And wretchedly cry out,
Lord,
I suffer violence,
Adding,
Unhappy man that I am,
Who will free from me from this body doomed to death?
All the same,
Since scripture says God made everything for his own purpose,
The day must come when the work will conform and agree with its maker.
It is therefore necessary for our souls to reach a similar state in which,
Just as God willed everything to exist for himself,
So we wish that neither ourselves nor other beings to have been nor to be except for his will alone,
Not for our pleasure.
The satisfaction of our wants,
Chance happiness,
Delights us less than to see his will done in and for us,
Which we implore every day in prayer,
Saying,
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
O pure and sacred love,
O sweet and pleasant affection,
O pure and sinless intention of the will,
All the more sinless and pure since it frees us from the taint of selfish vanity,
All the more sweet and pleasant,
For all that is found in it is divine.
It is deifying to go through such an experience,
As a drop of water seems to disappear completely in a large quantity of wine,
Even assuming the wine's taste and color,
Just as red,
Molten iron becomes so much like fire it seems to lose its primary state,
Just as the air on a sunny day seems transformed into sunshine instead of being lit up.
So it is necessary for the saints that all human feelings melt in a mysterious way and flow into the will of God.
Otherwise how will God be all in all,
If something human survives in man?
No doubt the substance remains through another form,
Another glory,
Another power.
When will this happen?
Who will see it?
Who will possess it?
When shall I come and when shall I appear in God's presence?
O Lord my God,
My heart said to you,
My face has sought you,
Lord.
I will seek your face.
Do you think I shall see your holy temple?
I do not think that can take place for sure until the word is fulfilled.
You will love the Lord your God with all your heart,
All your soul,
And all your strength,
Until the heart does not have to think of the body and the soul no longer has to give it life and feeling as in this life.
Freed from this bother,
Its strength is established in the power of God,
For it is impossible to assemble all these and turn them toward God's face,
As long as the care of this weak and wretched body keeps one busy to the point of distraction.
Hence it is in a spiritual and immortal body,
Calm and pleasant,
Subject to the spirit and everything that the soul hopes to attain to the fourth degree of love,
Or rather to be possessed by it,
For it is in God's hands to give it to whom he wishes,
It is not obtained by human efforts.
I mean he will easily reach the highest degree of love when he will no longer be held back by any desire of the flesh,
Or be upset by troubles as he hastens with the greatest speed and desire toward the joy of the Lord.
All the same,
Do we not think that the holy martyrs received this grace,
At least partially,
While they were still in their victorious bodies?
The strength of this love seized their souls so entirely that,
No doubt,
The feeling of intense pain could only upset their calm,
It could not overcome them.
