1You would hear from me, then, why and how God is to be loved? I answer: the cause of loving God is God Himself; the measure is to love without measure.
2Is this not enough? Perhaps it is, for the wise. But I am debtor to the unwise also; a word to the wise is sufficient, but I must consider the others likewise.
3God is the cause of loving God. He is both the efficient and the final cause. He Himself provides the occasion; He Himself creates the affection; He consummates the desire.
4He is such that love to Him is a natural due; and so vast that nothing can be loved except in Him. He it is who gives us occasion for love, who creates the power to love, and who brings the longing to fulfilment.
5The first degree of love is when man loves himself for his own sake. He is flesh, and he has no taste for anything except in relation to himself.
6The second degree is when man loves God, not for God’s sake, but for his own. For when a man finds himself in some trouble or necessity, he turns to God and is nourished by Him.
7The third degree is when man loves God, not merely as a benefactor, but as God, solely for God’s own sake.
8Happy the man who has attained the fourth degree of love, wherein one loves himself only for God’s sake. Thy righteousness standeth like the strong mountains, O God. This love is a mountain, God’s own lofty mountain.
9I know not whether it is possible in this life to love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength, to the degree that the mind gives no thought to the body.
10But of this I am certain: when the soul shall have attained to this state, it shall be inebriated with divine love, and, forgetting itself and becoming to itself as a broken vessel, it shall rush headlong to God and, clinging to Him, shall be one spirit with Him.
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