Saturday, February 14, 2009

To Love God

A person first loves himself because he is carnal and sensitive to nothing but himself. Then, when he sees he cannot exist by himself, he begins to seek God by faith. . . .So in the second degree of love, man loves God for his own sake and not for God's own sake. . . .When man tastes how sweet God is, he passes to the third degree of love in which he loves God not because of his own needs, but because of God.

- St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God