LOVE & INEBRIATION

Brief Preface:

There are a few books that are inexhaustible to me. Call them what you will: desert island books, etc. There is one, however, that is absolutely lovely. The Roots of Christian Mysticism by Oliver Clement is by far the most beautiful compilation of Christian ideas I’ve ever encountered. Clement was a French Eastern Orthodox theologian. This book was a part of our curriculum at SSU, and it immediately became a gift that has never left my side since. Venerated by a broad spectrum of contemplatives, theologians, and writers, it serves as a calibration - returning the imagination to the roots of Christian thought.

So many friends and folks I’ve met in and out of church are contending for a good God and a faith that reflects that goodness. These individuals have not left the faith altogether; instead, they feel unsettled by a co-opted Christianity, a religion desperately disconnected from its roots. Clement not only recollects through ancient voices but lovingly companions with the reader, often adding commentary that flourishes to an even higher and brilliant note, a greater joy.

I found the following passage to be stunning. It moves like a river in my heart, rushing waters that weave together currents of Eucharistic love and inebriation. He finishes with a sermon from Augustine on loving God through God, an idea that Weil echoes, “Only God can love God.” At the end of reading this, my soul was glad and there was much joy.

That’s what I feel when I read Clement’s work: joy. In other words, I find it infused with the Spirit. And I hope you do as well.

Olivier Clement, Love and Inebriation

The spiritual person is drunk with the wine of love and that wine is the Spirit, the wine of power and life. It is to comprehend at last, without any sentimentality, the great Johannine declaration: 'God is love'. It is the internalizing of the Eucharist; it is to become Eucharist. It is the breathing, beyond space and time, of the air of the resurrection.

One who has found love feeds on Christ every day and at every hour and he becomes immortal thereby. For Jesus said: 'Whoever eats this bread that I shall give him shall never see death' (cf. John 6.58). Blessed is he who eats the bread of love that is Jesus. For whoever feeds on love feeds on Christ . . . as John bears witness saying: 'God is love' (I John 4.8). Therefore one who lives in love receives from God the fruit of life. He breathes, even in this world, the air of the resurrection . . . Love is the Kingdom . . . Such is the 'wine to gladden the heart of man' (Psalm ro4.15) Blessed is he who drinks of this wine . . . the sick have drunk of it and become strong; the ignorant have drunk of it and become wise. Isaac of Nineveh Ascetic Treatises, 72 (Spanos, p. 282)

It is a matter of unity between the Lord and the 'heart that is aware' - the heart like a chariot of fire goes up to the Lord and the Lord comes down into it and absorbs it, as the Eucharist absorbs the communicant. Meister Eckhart's words come to mind: 'The eye with which I see God and the eye with which God sees me are one and the same eye.'

In union with God,
the heart absorbs the Lord and the Lord the heart,
and the two become one.
Quotation attributed to St John Chrysostom by Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos, 52 (Philokalia IV,252)

If we are capable of loving, it is because we are responding to God's love: God first loves us. Love becomes incarnate and comes to us in Jesus. The Holy Spirit is this love that is poured out in our hearts. Thus we are loving God by means of God; the Spirit enables us to share in the love with which the Father loves the Son and the Son the Father. Love casts us into the Trinitarian realms; the Trinitarian realms are those of love.

Augustine, almost brutally, cites the example of erotic passion. If no personal love enters into it the passion subsides. Yet the body of the other is just as desirable. For that which is loved, and that by which it is loved, is love, invisible love. Invisible, but the only thing that enables one to see.

To love God, Augustine says finally, is to sing his glory; or better, it is to become, ourselves, a song of glory.

He teaches us in this way to understand God as the life of our life, the soul of our soul, the love of our love.

We only love if we have first been loved. Hear what the apostle John has to say. He it was who leant on the Master's heart and resting there drank in heavenly secrets . . . Among the other secrets which the great seer drew from that source he showed us this: 'We love him because he first loved us' (r John 4.ro). Ask how anyone can love God and you will find no other answer than this: God first loved us. He whom we love has given himself first. He has given himself so that we may love him. What was his gift? The apostle Paul states it more clearly: 'God's love has been poured into our hearts'. By what means? Through us perhaps? No. Through whom then? 'Through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us' (Romans 5.5).
Full of this testimony let us love God through God . . .

The conclusion imposes itself on us and John states it for us still more succinctly: 'God is love and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him' (r John 4.16). It is not much to say, 'Love comes from God'. But who among us would dare to repeat these words: 'God is love'? They were spoken by someone from experience. Why does the human imagination with its superficial attitude represent God to itself? Why do human beings fashion an idol according to their desire? . . . God is love . . . We see nothing of him and yet we love him . . . Let us seek below what we shall discover on high. Love that is attached only to physical beauty does none the less move us to more profound feelings. A sensual and lecherous man loves a woman of rare beauty. He is carried away by the loveliness of her body, yet he seeks in her, beyond her body, a response to his tender feelings for her. Suppose he learns that this woman hates him. All the fever, all the raptures that those lovely features aroused in him subside. In the presence of that being who fascinated him he experiences a revulsion of feeling. He goes away and the object of his affections now inspires him with hatred. Yet has her body changed in any way? Has her charm disappeared? No. But while burning with desire for the object that he could see, his heart was waiting for a feeling that he could not see. Suppose, on the contrary, he perceives that he is loved. How his ardour redoubles! She looks at him; he looks at her; no one sees their love. And yet it is that which is loved, although it remains invisible . . .

You do not see God. Love and you possess him . . . for God offers himself to us at once. Love me, he cries to us, and you shall possess me. You cannot love me without possessing me.

O brethren, O children, O catholic seedlings, holy and heavenly plants, you who have been regenerated in Christ and born in heaven, listen to me or rather listen through me: 'Sing to the Lord a new song!' (Psalm 149.1) . . . and let not your life bear witness against your tongue. Sing with your voice, sing with your heart, sing with your mouth, sing with your life, 'sing to the Lord a new song'. But how ought you to love him whom you are praising? Without any doubt the one whom you love is the one whom you are seeking to praise. You want to be aware of his glory in order to praise him . . . You all want to be aware of his glory. 'His praise in the assembly of the faithful' (Psalm 149.1). The glory of him who is praised is no other than the singer of the praise. Do you want to sing glory to God? Be yourselves what you sing.
 Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 34 on Psalm 149,2-6 (PL 38,210)