Author: Bernard, of Clairvaux, Saint (1090-1153)Description: What is love? In his text On Loving God, St. Bernard surveys the four types of love that Christians experience as they grow in their relationship with God: loving one's self, selfish love, loving God as God, and loving one's self in God. St. Bernard reminds us that not only did God give us life, but He gave us Himself. For indeed, "God deserves to be loved very much, yea, boundlessly, because He loved us first, He infinite and we nothing, loved us, miserable sinners, with a love so great and so free." St. Bernard reminds us that we are indebted to God for his love and His sacrifice. Not only should we love God because it is what He deserves, but also because loving God does not go without reward. Loving God is to our advantage. The Lord rewards those who love Him with the blessed state of the heavenly Fatherland, where sorrow and sadness cannot enter. St. Bernard's medieval prose is poetic and full of clever imagery. His work is as beautiful as it is knowledgeable. (Emmalon Davis, CCEL Staff Writer)
On Loving God (Audio: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21152/21152-index.html)
Table of Contents / Title Page / DEDICATION
Chapter I. Why we should love God and the measure of that love
Chapter II. On loving God. How much god deserves love from man in recognition of His gifts, both material and spiritual: and how these gifts should be cherished without neglect of the Giver
Chapter III. What greater incentives Christians have, more than the heathen, to love God
Chapter IV. Of those who find comfort in there collection of God, or are fittest for His love
Chapter V. Of the Christian's debt of love, how great it is
Chapter VI. A brief summary
Chapter VII. Of love toward God not without reward: and how the hunger of man's heart cannot be satisfied with earthly things
Chapter VIII. Of the first degree of love: wherein man loves God for self's sake
Chapter IX. Of the second and third degrees of love
Chapter X. Of the fourth degree of love: wherein man does not even love self save for God's sake
Chapter XI. Of the attainment of this perfection of love only at the resurrection
Chapter XII. Of love: out of a letter to the Carthusians
Chapter XIII. Of the law of self-will and desire, of slaves and hirelings
Chapter XIV. Of the law of the love of sons
Chapter XV. Of the four degrees of love, and of the blessed state of the heavenly fatherland
Indexes
Index of Scripture References
PDF Version
