THOU SHALT LOVE
"Ye have
heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine
enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do
good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and
persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven:
for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the
just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have
ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only,
what do you more than others? Do not even
the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is
in Heaven is perfect." (Matt.
5:43-48)
A few bare, plain words! But they are
the Magna Charta of the new race, of the third race, of men not yet born. The
first race was that of the animalistic man without law, and its name was War;
the second were barbarians tamed by the Law, whose highest perfection was
justice. This is the race living now, and justice has not yet conquered War,
and the Law has not yet unseated animalism. The third is to be the race of real
men, not only upright but holy, not like beasts but like God.
Jesus had just one aim: to transform men from beasts to
saints by means of love. Circe, the enchantress, the satanic consort of the old
mythologies, converted heroes into beasts by means of animalistic pleasures.
Jesus is the anti-Satan, the anti-Circe, He who saves from animalism by a force
more powerful than pleasure. This undertaking, which seems hopeless to all brutes
barely risen above animalism and to beings just entering upon real humanity,
must be based on the imitation of God. To approximate sanctity one must look
toward divinity: "Be holy because
God is holy. Be perfect because God is perfect."
This is not the first time that this appeal has been made
to the heart of man. Satan said in the Garden: "You will be as gods." (Gen. 3:5) Jehovah said to His
judges: "Be gods, be just as God is
just." But now there is no question of being wise like God, nor is it
even enough to be just, like God. God is now more than wisdom and justice. With
Jesus, He reveals our Father, becomes love. His earth gives bread and flowers
even to the homicide; he who takes His name in vain sees the glorious sun every
morning, the same sun which warms the clasped hands of the laborer praying in
the field. A true father loves the son who turns from him as he loves the son
who seeks him out; a father cherishes the child who obeys him in his house, or
who spews him out with his wine. A father can be saddened, can suffer, can
mourn, but no sinning man is capable of making a father become like to himself.
No one can induce a father to take revenge.
And we who are so much lower than God, poor finite creatures, who are
scarcely capable of remembering yesterday, who do not know tomorrow, we
unfortunate, inferior creatures, have we not many more motives to feel for our
brothers in wretchedness what
God feels for us? God is the supreme substance of our ultimate. To draw away
from Him, not to be as we pray that He may be with us, is this not to draw away
from our unique destination, to keep perpetually and despairingly out of our
reach that happiness for which we are created, which we believe to be the aim
of our lives, imagined by us, dreamed of by us, longed-for, invoked and
followed in vain through all the false pleasures which are not of God? "Let us be Gods," cries
Bossuet. "Let us be Gods. He permits
it, that we may imitate His holiness."
Who will refuse to be like God? Dii estis. Divinity is in
us; animalism hampers and constricts it, stunting our growth. Who would not
wish to be God? Oh, men, are you in very truth content to be only men? Men as
you are today, half-men, half-beasts? Centaurs without robustness, sirens
without sweetness, demons with fauns' muzzles and goats' feet? Are you so
satisfied with your ridiculous and imperfect humanity, with your animalism
scarcely held in leash, taking no step to win holiness except to desire it?
Does it seem to you that the life of men as it has been in the past, as it is
today, is so dear, so happy, so contented that there should be no effort to
make it otherwise, entirely different, the opposite of what it is, more like
that which for thousands of years we have imagined in the future and in Heaven?
Is it not possible to make another life out of this life, to change this world
to a world more divine, at last to bring down Heaven and the laws of Heaven
upon earth?
This new life, this earthly but celestial world is the
Kingdom of Heaven, and to bring
about the Kingdom we must transfigure and deify ourselves; become like God,
imitate God. The secret of
the imitation of God is love, the certain way of the transfiguration is love,
love of man for man, love for friend and
enemy. If this love is impossible, our salvation is impossible. If it is repugnant, it is a
sign that happiness is offensive to us.
If it is absurd, our hopes of redemption are only
absurdity. Common sense tells us that to love our enemies is insanity, and to
count such love as a prerequisite of our salvation seems simple madness. Love
for enemies is like hatred for ourselves; hence it follows that we can only
earn beatitude by hating ourselves.
This conclusion should alarm no one, for
it has been proved; all the experiments have been tried. It is not true that
there has been no time
to test it. For thousands of years we have been proving and proving it, over
and over. We have tried the experiment of fierceness; and blood answered blood.
We have tried the experiment of lust; and lust has left in the mouth the odor
of corruption and a fiercer fever. We have forced the body into the most
refined and perverse pleasures and found ourselves worn out and heavy-hearted,
lying upon filth. We have tried the experiment of the Law, and we have not
obeyed the Law; we have changed it and disobeyed it again, and justice has not
satisfied our hearts. We have tried the experiment of intellectualism, we have
taken the census of creation, numbered the stars, described the plants, the
dead things and the living things, we have bound them together with the thin
threads of abstract ideas, we have transfigured them in the magic clouds of
metaphysics; and at the end of all this, things have remained the same,
eternally the same; they were not enough for us, they could not be renewed;
their names and their numbers did not quiet our hunger, and the most learned
men ended with weary confessions of ignorance. We have tried the experiment of
art and our feebleness has brought the strongest to despair, because the
Absolute cannot be fixed in any form; the Many overflow from the One; the
carefully wrought work of art cannot arrest the transient. We have tried the
experiment of wealth and have found ourselves poorer; the experiment of force
and have come to ourselves, weaker. In nothing has our soul found quiet. We
have found no welcoming shade, where our bodies can lie down and be at rest;
and our hearts, always seeking, always disappointed, are older, weaker, and
emptier because in nothing have they found peace, because no pleasure has
brought them joy, no conquest, happiness.
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