My Weight Is My Love

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. PROVERBS 4:23

Near the end of the Confessions, reflecting on the Spirit who moved upon the waters at creation, Augustine pauses on an image from the physics of his day. Every body, the ancients believed, is drawn by its weight towards its proper place. A stone falls; fire rises. Oil poured under water rises to the top; water poured on oil sinks beneath it. “They are urged by their own weights to seek their own places,” he writes. “When out of their order, they are restless; restored to order, they are at rest.” And then he turns the image on himself: “My weight, is my love; thereby am I borne, whithersoever I am borne.”

We are what we love

It is one of his most important insights. Human beings are not chiefly defined by what we think, or even by what we do, but by what we love. Love is the weight of the soul. It pulls us, and we move where it pulls. Two people may hold the same opinions and live utterly different lives, because their loves are different. And two people may disagree about many things and yet be heading in the same direction, because at bottom they love the same God.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. MATTHEW 6:21

This means that the Christian life cannot be reduced to right belief, necessary as that is, or to right behaviour, necessary as that is. It is a matter of the heart’s direction. The question God asks of each of us is the question the risen Christ asked Peter: lovest thou me? Augustine says the same in the Enchiridion. When we ask whether a man is good, “one does not ask what he believes, or what he hopes, but what he loves.”

Love set in order

But Augustine did not think that the problem with sinners is that they love too much. The problem is that they love in the wrong order. God made a world full of good things, and every one of them is worth loving in its place. The trouble begins when we love a lesser good more than a greater one — when we love money more than people, people more than God, ourselves more than all. In The City of God he gives a brief definition of virtue that has become famous: it is the right ordering of love. A good life is one in which each thing is loved as much as it deserves, no more and no less, and God above all.

He found this, as he read it, in the Song of Songs, where the bride prays that the Lord would set love in order within her. The King James Version renders the verse differently, but the thought is everywhere in Scripture, and nowhere more plainly than in the words of Christ.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. MATTHEW 22:37–39

Notice the order. God first, with everything. Then the neighbour, as oneself. A love for family that crowds out God is disordered, however admirable it looks. So is a love for God that has no room for the neighbour.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. MATTHEW 10:37

Enjoying and using

In On Christian Doctrine Augustine develops this through a distinction that has sometimes been misunderstood. Some things, he says, are to be enjoyed — loved for their own sake, rested in. Other things are to be used — loved for the sake of something beyond them. Only God is to be enjoyed in the full sense; everything else is to be loved in relation to Him. It can sound cold, as though our friends and families were mere instruments. That is not what he meant. He meant that we love people best when we love them in God and for God, wanting for them what God wants, and not asking them to be what only God can be. A husband who demands that his wife be his heaven will crush her. A husband who loves her in God can love her without idolatry.

Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. 1 TIMOTHY 6:17

It must be admitted that the language of using people can mislead a modern reader, and it should never be taken as permission to treat anyone as a means to an end. The heart of his point stands: all things find their right place only when God has His.

Love, and do what you will

This is the setting for the saying from his homilies on the First Epistle of John for which he is often quoted: love, and do what you will. It is frequently misread as a licence. He meant the opposite. If the root of your life is the love of God, then what grows from it will be good; whether you speak or keep silent, correct or spare, let it all come from love. The saying is not a loosening of the law but a going to its root.

Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. ROMANS 13:10

The Gift that reorders love

Here we come back to grace. If love is the weight of the soul, we cannot change it by an act of will, any more than a stone can decide to rise. Our loves must be changed from outside. That is why Augustine, reflecting on his weight, speaks immediately of God’s Gift. “We are inflamed, by Thy Gift we are kindled; and are carried upwards,” he writes. The Gift is the Holy Spirit, who pours the love of God into our hearts and gives the soul a new weight, pulling it upward towards home.

Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. ROMANS 5:5

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Look at how you spent your time, money and attention last week. What do they reveal about the actual order of your loves?

2. Name one good thing you love more than it deserves. Pray that God would put it back in its place without taking it from you.

3. Is there someone you are asking to be your heaven? Release them from that weight by asking God to be your first love.

4. Before a difficult conversation this week, examine whether what you intend to say comes from love. If not, wait.

5. Pray daily for the Holy Spirit to shed the love of God abroad in your heart, since you cannot reorder your loves yourself.

A PRAYER

Lord, my love is my weight, and I have been carried by it into many places far from You.

I have loved good things in the wrong order, and asked creatures to be what only You can be.

Set love in order within me. Be first in my heart, and let every other love find its right place beneath You.

Kindle me with Your Gift, the Holy Spirit, and carry me upward to You. Amen.