12. From Self-Love to God-Love: The Reordering of Charity in the Converted Soul

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart." - Matthew 22:37

The death of the old man and the hatred of sin prepare the soul for something greater: the reordering of love. The Christian life is not sustained by negation alone. God does not empty the heart merely to leave it vacant. He reorders it so that He Himself becomes first.

St. Augustine is a master here. The deepest division in human life is not between refined men and coarse men, or between religious men and irreligious men, but between two loves: the love of self unto contempt of God, and the love of God unto forgetfulness of self.[1] Conversion therefore means that the heart receives a new center.

Augustine's wisdom is severe because it is simple. A man is not finally governed by what he says he admires, but by what he actually loves most. If comfort rules, comfort is his lord. If reputation rules, reputation is his lord. If family is loved out of order, family has begun to rival God. If being right is loved more than being holy, even orthodoxy can be turned into self-love.

This is why conversion must reach charity itself. It is not enough that the soul stop doing certain sins. It must learn to prefer God above every creature, every mood, every possession, every plan, every human respect, and every version of itself.

This does not mean that all created loves are destroyed. Catholic conversion is not a freezing of the heart. It is a healing of order. When God is first, other loves become truer:

• family is loved without idolatry,
• truth is loved without pride,
• beauty is loved without enslavement,
• work is loved without ambition becoming god,
• rest is loved without softness ruling the soul.

St. Francis de Sales is gentle and exact here. He does not ask the soul to become inhuman. He asks it to love every created good in God and for God, so that love is made more stable, not less.

The remnant especially needs this doctrine because it is possible to leave false religion and still remain organized around the self. A soul may prefer:

• the pleasure of being among the "few who see,"
• the relief of belonging to the right side,
• the vanity of appearing austere,
• the emotional safety of controlled households,
• the satisfaction of winning arguments.

None of these can sustain Christian life. The soul must learn to ask a harder question than Where do I stand? It must ask Whom do I love first?

The soul begins to live as a new man when God becomes not merely its highest idea, but its first love. Then charity is reordered, and all lesser loves begin to fall into place under grace.

For the next movement in this deeper line, continue with The Battle of Thoughts, Memory, and Imagination: Guarding the Interior Life Under Grace.