We are all Begging to have God
It is natural to look for beauty and to love it, even though the idea of what is beautiful varies between one person and another.
Now, what is more marvelous than the divine beauty? What can you think of that is more likely to give pleasure than the magnificence of God? What desire could be more ardent, more irresistible than the thirst which God inspires in the soul when once it has been purified of every vice and cries out: ‘I am sick with love.’ [S. of S. 2:5]
The divine beauty is beyond description in words. We could compare its brilliance to the light of the morning star or the moon or the sun. But we should be as far from a true description as midday is from the dead of night.
This beauty is invisible to the eyes of the body; only the soul and the mind can perceive it. Every time it illumines the saints, it leaves in them a sting, a nostalgia so strong as to wring from them the cry: ‘Woe is me, that I am in exile still.’ [cf. Ps. 120:5]
By our nature we human beings aspire to what is beautiful and love it. But what is beautiful is also good. God is good. Everyone looks for the good, therefore everyone looks for God.
Basil the Great
The Greater Rules, 2 (PG3r, 909)
We Cannot but Love God
The love of God is not taught. No one has taught us to enjoy the light or to be attached to life more than anything else. And no one has taught us to love the two people who brought us into the world and educated us. Which is all the more reason to believe that we did not learn to love God as a result of outside instruction.
In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love. You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God’s commandments with the help of his grace.
In fact, the virtue of love despite being only a single quality embraces with its power all the commandments. The Lord says: ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.’ [John 14:23] And again: ‘You shall love the Lord your God … and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.’ [Matt. 22:40]
You and I have received from God the natural tendency to follow his commandments. In consequence, on the one hand, we cannot raise objections as if he were demanding something extraordinary from us, and, on the other hand, we cannot boast as if we had done something greater than the powers given to us.
If that is how things stand, we ought to say the same about love. God would not have given us the commandment to love him without also giving us the natural faculty for loving him.
Basil the Great
The Greater Rules, 2 (PG31, 908ff.)
~ Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain, A Patristic Breviary: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
