on loving god · bernard of clairvaux

Bernard of Clairvaux, the twelfth-century Cistercian abbot and the most influential churchman of his age, wrote this short treatise on why and how God should be loved. Its answer is that God is loved because he is God and without measure, and it traces four degrees of love, from loving self for self's sake to loving self only for God's.

Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, translated by Robert Walton (Cistercian Publications, 1995). Read in Sophomore Fall at Torrey Honors: On Loving God, without the Analytical Commentary.