Four stages of love: St. Bernard of Clairvaux
What is the highest degree of love according to this Catholic mystic? No kidding, it may shock you!
Today, August 20, is the memorial day of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, “the Mellifluous Doctor”: twelfth-century abbott, mystic, and spiritual writer known for the emotional and spiritual depth of his theology. Personal intimacy and friendship with Jesus and with the Virgin Mary were at the heart of Bernard’s thought as well as his life.
A foundational figure for the Cistercian Order and the Knights Templar, Bernard was an important and profoundly influential figure in his day. Among other things, he defended Pope Pope Innocent II vis-a-vis the schism led by Antipope Anacletus II, promoted the theology of the Early Fathers, supported the Second Crusade, and called for protection for European Jews from antisemitic violence. (This doesn’t mean, alas, that Bernard’s thought was free of the antisemitic tropes of his day. “The Jews are not to be persecuted, killed, or even put to flight,” he wrote, adding, “for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered. They are dispersed all over the world so by expiating their crime they may be everywhere the living witness of our redemption.”)
One of the most extraordinary ideas I’ve encountered in Bernard’s thought is his model of four stages or “degrees” of love in On The Love of God (no relation to the “four loves” model popularized by C.S. Lewis in his eponymous book). If you’re unfamiliar with the four degrees of love, they are well worth contemplating.
First degree of love: “Loving yourself for your own sake (selfish love)”
This is the lowest and easiest kind of love. “Nature is so frail and weak,” Bernard says, “that people are forced to love themselves first of all.” Such love “does not come as a precept; it comes naturally, for ‘no one ever yet hated their own flesh’ (Ephesians 5:29).”
Notably, Bernard does not condemn even this rudimentary, selfish self-love! Rather, he says we must learn to restrain it from growing disordered and excessive, disproportionate to our other loves, so that we fail in love of neighbor. So long as we love our neighbor as ourselves, even selfish self-love is not wrong. Bernard goes so far as to say that you can be “as indulgent as you like about yourself, provided you shows the same indulgence with your neighbors.”
Second degree of love: “Loving God for your own blessing (dependence on God)”
Although this love of God is self-oriented, Bernard says “it is wisdom to know what you can do by yourself and what you can only do with God’s help to keep you from offending God by sin.”
He even quotes the psalmist in defense of this kind of love of God: “‘O, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good’ (Psalm 118:1). This is not a confession of being good to the Lord, but of the Lord being good to us. It is the love of God for our benefits.”
Third degree of love: “Loving God for God’s own sake (intimacy with God)”
I confess I was startled, the first time I read Bernard’s teaching on this subject, to find loving God for his own sake listed third and not fourth! What could possibly be higher or more advanced than loving God for his own sake? Wait for it…
According to Bernard, the second stage of love tends toward the third. By turning to God in our needs, we discover how wonderful he is, and come to love him for his own sake and not just what he can do for us.
Fourth degree of love: “Self-love for God’s sake (being united with God’s love”
Didn’t see that coming, did you?
Here, truly, is the end of selfishness: Not only do we lose ourselves in love of God, ultimately even self-love is swallowed up in God’s love of us.
Of this love of self for God’s sake, Bernard writes, “Blessed are those who can attain the fourth degree of love. Then they will love themselves only in God! … Blessed and holy is the one who has been privileged, even if only momentarily in this life, to taste of this love.” (In passing, I’d like to contemplate how Bernard’s model might be expanded to include love of others for your own sake; love of others for their own sake; and love of others for God’s sake.)
Some devout souls have the idea that godliness means ceasing to love the self. But how can it be right not to love what is loved by God? Even selfish self-love isn’t wrong in itself, except insofar as it is disordered and disproportionate to our other loves. Once, however, we have learned to love God for his own sake (and to love others for God’s sake), then we may dare to hope to invert the great command of Jesus: not only to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, but to love ourselves as we love our neighbor, i.e., for the sake of the beloved Lord who loves us both.
This is love beyond commandment or precept: love that is possible only by inner transformation, by complete abandonment to divine love.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, ora pro nobis.
P.S. Read a longer online excerpt of On the Love of God or the original work at Internet Archive.
This is beautiful, logical, and to me, obviously true. But I feel concern for the people who lack even selfish self love. How can they begin?
Great insight, and I’m surprised it reads as new to me! Thank you. That last stage is such a deep one.
For your point about where love of others fits in, I wonder if it comes more at the penultimate stage or after the last, or is mixed in with the negotiation with self love. Here’s the saint on love of others, courtesy of an Instagram account (Totus Tuus Apostolate):
“It is not possible to love your neighbor unless you love God. If you love God first, then you can love your neighbor in God… If we really love God, we will love what belongs to God. We will love in the same manner as we have been loved. We care about others even as Christ cared. we love the Lord not because he has been good to us, but because the Lord is good.”