Daily Reading for August 22
Humanity’s frequent needs make it necessary for us to call upon God often, and to taste by frequent contact, and to discover by tasting how sweet the Lord is. It is in this way that the taste of His own sweetness leads us to love God in purity more than our need alone would prompt us to do.
There is a need of the flesh which speaks out, and the body tells by its actions of the kindness it has experienced. And so it will not be difficult for the person who has had that experience to keep the commandment to love his [or her] neighbor. He truly loves God, and therefore he loves what is God’s. This love is acceptable because it is given freely. It is chaste because it is not made up of words or talk, but of truth and action. It is just because it gives back what it has received. For he who loves in this way loves as he is loved.
From “Four Degrees of Love” by Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).