About Love

„In all love there is a love begetting, a love begotten, and a love proceeding. Which though they are one in essence subsist nevertheless in three several manners. For love is benevolent affection to another: Which is of itself, and by itself relateth to its object. It floweth from itself and resteth in its object. (…) For love communicateth itself: and therefore love in the fountain is the very love communicated to its object. (…) Though it streameth to its object it abideth in the lover, and is the love of the lover.
Where Love is the Lover, Love streaming from the Lover, is the Lover: the Lover streaming from himself, and existing in another Person. (…) This Person is the Son of God: (…) This Person differs in nothing from the Father, but only in this that he is begotten of Him. (…)
For love is so amiable and desirable to the Soul that it cannot be resisted. Love is the Spirit of God. In Himself it is the Father, or else the Son, for the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father: In us it is the Holy Ghost. The Love of God being seen, being God in us: Purifying, strengthening, and comforting the soul of the seer. (…) And thus the world serveth you as it is a mirror wherein you contemplate the Blessed Trinity. (…) In all Love there is some Producer, some Means, and some End: all these being internal in the thing itself. Love loving is the Producer, and that is the Father: Love produced is the Means, and that is the Son: For Love is the means by which a lover loveth. The End of these Means is Love: for it is love by loving: and that is the Holy Ghost. The End and the Producer being both the same, by the Means attained. For by loving Love attaineth itself and being. (…)
Because it is impossible there should be a higher end, or a better proposed. What can be more desirable than the most delightful operation; what more eligible, than the most glorious being; what further can be proposed than the most blessed and perfect life? Since God therefore chooseth the most perfect life, what can be more perfect than that life and that Being which is at once the Fountain, and the End of all things? There being in it the perpetual joy of giving and receiving infinite treasures. (…) And by being Love God is the Fountain of all worlds. (…) By being what He is, which is Love unto all, He enjoyeth all. (…)
By Loving a Soul does propagate and beget itself. By Loving it does dilate and magnify itself. (…) Till we become therefore all Act as God is, we can never rest, nor ever be satisfied. (…)
So that whosoever loveth all mankind, he enjoyeth all the goodness of God to the whole world: and endeavoureth the benefit of Kingdoms and Ages, with all whom He is present by Love, which is the best manner of presence that is possible.
God is present by Love alone.
(…) The Soul is shrivelled up and buried in a grave that does not Love. (the Unconscious; collector’s note) But that which does love wisely and truly is the joy and end of all the world, the King of Heaven, and the Friend of God, the shining Light and Temple of Eternity: The Brother of Christ Jesus, and one Spirit with the Holy Ghost.
Love is a far more glorious Being than flesh and bones. If thou wilt it is endless, and infinitely more sweet than thy body can be to thee and others. (…) It was given thee to be a lantern only to the candle of Love that shineth in thy Soul; (…) Thy Love is infinitely profitable to thyself and others. To thyself, for thereby mayest thou receive infinite good things: To others, for thereby thou art prone to do infinite good to all. (…) Thy Love can feed upon all: take into itself all worlds, and all Eternities above all worlds and all the joys of God before and after. (…) Feel thy Spirit, awaken thy Soul, be an enlarged Seraphim, an infinite Good, or like unto Him. (…)
We shall love Him infinitely more than ourselves, and therefore live infinitely more in Him than in ourselves; (…) All worlds, all Angels, all men, all kingdoms, all creatures will be more ours in Him than in ourselves: so will His Essence and Eternal Godhead. Oh Love what hast thou done!
(…) We being so united to each other by living in each other that nothing can divide us for evermore.
Love is infinitely delightful to its object, and the more violent the more glorious. (…)
Excess is its true moderation: Activity its rest: and burning fervency its only refreshment. Nothing is more glorious, yet nothing more humble. Nothing more precious, yet nothing more cheap. Nothing more familiar, yet nothing so inaccessible. Nothing more nice, yet nothing more laborious. Nothing more liberal, yet nothing more covetous. It doth all things for its object’s sake, yet it is the most self-ended thing in the whole world; (…) Since therefore it containeth so many miracles it may well contain this one more, that it maketh every one greatest, and among every one is supreme and sovereign.
God by Love wholly ministereth to others, and yet wholly ministereth to Himself, Love having this wonder in it also, that among innumerable millions, it maketh every one the sole and single end of all things: It attaineth all unattainables; and achieveth impossibles, (…) For indeed it maketh every one more than the end of all things: and infinitely more than the sole supreme and sovereign of all. For it maketh him so first in himself; and then in all. (Meditation; collector’s note) For while all things in Heaven and Earth fall out after my desire, I am the end and sovereign of all: which conspiring always to crown my friends with glory and happiness, and pleasing all in the same manner whom I love as myself: I am in every one of them the end of all things again: being as much concerned in their happiness as my own.“
(T. Traherne, „Centuries of Meditation“)