Because God is Substantial or Infinite Love, man has completely lost sight of any idea of Love ever since he turned his back on God; so much so that the very term love has been transformed into the word solidarity, whose exact meaning nobody has ever been able to explain. In addition, the very concept has been perverted to the point of corruption; hence today’s idiom: to make love; an expression which, when analyzed, would sound like a blasphemy, if only men would still remember the idea of Love. On the other hand, because man has been created to love and to be loved, what we have said signifies that he has also lost the meaning of his existence.

To speak nowadays to Christians about the Love of God, about God’s love for them, or about the possibility of maintaining an intimate and reciprocal relationship of love with Him, is tantamount to speaking to them about the caribou.[1] And yet, there is a remnant of the faithful who still believe in the love of God and that they are loved by Him.

Apropos of which, one needs to take into account that it is not the same thing for man to know that God is in love with him and for him to know simply that God loves him; they are not exactly the same. If man is not in love with God, even though he loves God in some way or other, he will never conceive the possibility that God can be in love with him. Man truly knows –one could say by experience—what divine love is only when he, in turn, has opted for God and loved Him: We, who have believed, know the love God has for us.[2] Here again we find the essential need for reciprocity in love. Man cannot know what it means to be loved by substantial Love in the manner of love proper to lovers unless he responds to that love: He who does not love does not know God; for God is Love.[3] In no sense is it the same for man to say: God loves me, as to say: God is in love with me. The consequences of these two distinct paths of knowledge (their effects on man’s feelings and behavior) are also different.

Thus the present situation of today’s world. That is why the bride’s proclamation in the Song of Songs, when she exclaims, deeply moved and referring to her Bridegroom, Kiss me with kisses of your mouth, does not have much to say to the frigid modern Christianity. And the same applies to the entire book of the Song of Songs. Truly speaking, there still are many believers who are convinced that God loves them, but only the Saints know what it means to be in love with God…, and that God, in turn, is in love with them.

It is clear, nevertheless, that falling in love means being captivated by the person one loves: To be captivated by love for a person… Indeed, to be captured, also means being seized by the will of another. As we can see, the idea of theft (or of capture, in this case, of the other person’s will) is not absent from the concept of love. What we have here is an instance of theft consented to (even wished for and desired) by the one who suffers it. As Saint John of the Cross said: Since you have wounded my heart//wherefore did you not heal it?//And wherefore, having robbed me of it,//have you left it thus//and take not the prey that you have spoiled?

The man in love feels himself as if abducted by the loved one and totally his captive. Speaking of his final victory, Saint Paul says: Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, ‘wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus.’[4] This capture or abduction (of which the loved one is the passive subject) does not cause him to feel victimized: in fact it fills him with happiness. Once again, we find here the idea –basic to love—of being possessed or owned by someone, which is precisely the first thing a person who is truly in love desires. In this sense, Love here is cast in the role of a veritable thief or abductor who overpowers the heart of the lover, in order to give it to the loved one. Perhaps it might be more exact to say, though, that what Love in fact does is induce (or perhaps even seduce) the lover to give his heart fully and freely to the person he loves. Things having reached this point, there is no doubt that a soul in love who finds herself free and without master would feel deprived and unfortunate: The fading of day is fleet,//Dulcet brown goldfinch, your songs dwindle faster;//As in a dream bittersweet, //Night comes, we both sorrows meet//You without freedom, me without my master.

(Extracted from the book Commentaries on the Song of Songs, Vol. I, pp.64 and ff.)