Quinquagesima: “Love is alone the worthy law of love.”

n her duo of poems for Quin­qua­ges­i­ma Sun­day (the first of them a son­net), Christi­na Ros­set­ti med­i­tates on what she calls “the law of love,” in con­trast to “all oth­er laws.”

 

Love is alone the wor­thy law of love:

All oth­er laws have pre­sup­posed a taint:

Love is the law from kin­dled saint to saint,

From lamb to lamb, from dove to answer­ing dove.

Love is the motive of all things that move

Har­mo­nious by free will with­out con­straint:

Love learns and teach­es: love shall man acquaint

With all he lacks, which all his lack is love.

Because Love is the foun­tain, I dis­cern

The stream as love: for what but love should flow

From foun­tain Love? not bit­ter from the sweet!

I igno­rant, have I laid claim to know?

Oh, teach me, Love, such knowl­edge as is meet

For one to know who is fain to love and learn.

•••

Piteous my rhyme is,

What while I muse of love and pain,

Of love mis­spent, of love in vain,

Of love that is not loved again:

And is this all then?

As long as time is,

Love loveth. Time is but a span,

The dal­liance space of dying man:

And is this all immor­tals can?

The gain were small then.

Love loves for ever,

And finds a sort of joy in pain,

And gives with nought to take again,

And loves too well to end in vain:

Is the gain small then?

Love laughs at Nev­er,

Out­lives our life, exceeds the span

Appoint­ed to mere mor­tal man:

All which love is and does and can

Is all in all then.

the worthy law of love.

Accord­ing to Peter Kreeft, in a talk he gave about C.S. Lewis’s Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, St. John the Apos­tle was often crit­i­cized by dis­ci­ples of his for being “too sim­ple.”

“All you talk about is love,” they would say.

His reply to them was: “That’s right. That’s all there is to talk about.”

Christi­na Ros­set­ti would agree. She is, in my esti­ma­tion, the great­est Vic­to­ri­an poet; and I real­ize that that puts her ahead of Lord Ten­nyson, Robert Brown­ing, and Matthew Arnold. Yet if you read her poems from cov­er to cover—all one thou­sand pages—you will soon dis­cov­er that, like St. John, all she talks about is God and love. The final cou­plet of her Quin­qua­ges­i­ma poems could be a fit­ting epi­taph to her work: “All which love is and does and can / Is all in all then.”

But there is a very decep­tive sim­plic­i­ty there. “Love is alone the wor­thy law of love,” Ros­set­ti begins. Here is why: “All oth­er laws have pre­sup­posed a taint.” The entire his­to­ry of God and man is writ­ten in that first cou­plet.

St. Paul says that very thing when he tells the Gala­tians the the law “was added because of trans­gres­sions” (Gal. 3:19) It is only because we are sin­ners that we need the law; it “presuppose[s] a taint”—in this case, the taint of orig­i­nal sin.

Paul con­tin­ues: “If there had been a law giv­en which could have giv­en life, ver­i­ly right­eous­ness should have been by the law” (v. 21). In oth­er words, the law can reveal to us our taint, but it can’t remove it. Only Christ can do that; “the law,” Paul con­cludes, “was our school­mas­ter to bring us to Christ” (v. 24). God, who is love (1 John 4:8), ful­fills the law (Rom. 10:4) and so removes our taint (Rom. 5:17).

“All our lack is love,” Ros­set­ti puts it; all we lacked was Christ. What St. John and St. Paul say in the lan­guage of the­ol­o­gy, Christi­na Ros­set­ti says in the lan­guage of poet­ry: “Love is alone the wor­thy law of love: / All oth­er laws have pre­sup­posed a taint.”

The rea­son that love is the ful­fill­ment of the law is because all sin comes from a fail­ure to love. Christ explains this to the lawyer who asks him, “Teacher, which is the great com­mand­ment in the law?” Christ answers:

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. On these two com­mand­ments hang all the law and the prophets.

It is here­in that we can under­stand the tra­di­tion­al Catholic divi­sion of the Ten Com­mand­ments into our duty toward God (the first of the two great com­mand­ments) and our duty toward our fel­low man (the sec­ond of the two great com­mand­ments). Our duty is love, and we sin to the extent that we with­hold any part of that love for what pride and self-regard—the orig­i­nal sin of Adam and Eve. Love is alone the wor­thy law of love.

And it is, as Christi­na Ros­set­ti con­tin­ues, “har­mo­nious by free will with­out con­straint.” It only has mean­ing to the extent that we choose it freely, uncon­strained by neces­si­ty. Ros­set­ti was no Calvin­ist.

But still, the law of love is as absolute and strict as the Law of Moses. Indeed, the demands are often more severe. When was the last time you read the Ser­mon on the Mount? If it has been some time, per­haps it might be a good prac­tice this Lent to read it slow­ly and medi­ate upon its demands—possibly even to do so before the Blessed Sacra­ment. Jesus reminds us that the law is to be ful­filled, not relaxed:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to ful­fil. For ver­i­ly I say unto you, Till heav­en and earth pass, one jot or one tit­tle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be ful­filled. Whoso­ev­er there­fore shall break one of these least com­mand­ments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the king­dom of heav­en: but whoso­ev­er shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the king­dom of heav­en. For I say unto you, That except your right­eous­ness shall exceed the right­eous­ness of the scribes and Phar­isees, ye shall in no case enter into the king­dom of heav­en. (Matt. 5:17–20)

Christ goes on to remind us that “thou shalt not kill” has a much stricter appli­ca­tion than a mere sur­face-lev­el read­ing would sug­gest. The pro­hi­bi­tion against killing includes even a pro­hi­bi­tion against anger and insults—even a pro­hi­bi­tion against call­ing some­one a fool. If there is dis­cord between you and your broth­er, Christ says, the neces­si­ty of being rec­on­ciled is so impor­tant that you should even delay bring­ing your gift to the altar in order that you first make amends (Matt. 5:21–26).

The com­mand­ment “thou shalt not com­mit adul­tery” has a much stricter appli­ca­tion than not hav­ing sex out­side of mar­riage. It even includes “look[ing] on a woman to lust after her”; even the desire is sin­ful. And the com­mand­ment is so strict that Christ tells us—no doubt with some hyperbole—“if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee” (adul­tery includes voyeurism); He tells us, “if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee” (adul­tery includes mas­tur­ba­tion) (Matt. 5:27–30).

Christ con­tin­ues in the same spir­it for sev­er­al chap­ters, defin­ing with very strict bound­aries the law con­cern­ing oath-tak­ing, retal­i­a­tion, love for your fel­low-men (includ­ing ene­mies), alms­giv­ing, prayer, fast­ing, anx­i­ety, judg­ing, and pro­fa­na­tion. He makes them more, not less, strict.

One could say that his point is not that we could pos­si­bly keep such strict watch over our own thoughts and behav­iors, but rather to remind us of how help­less we are before the strict­ness of the law of love; and there is a point in that. But anoth­er point can be made, too, which is that Christ is show­ing us that the law is not mere­ly a set of arbi­trary pro­hi­bi­tions; it stems from a pos­i­tive and absolute com­mand to love both God and neigh­bor.

kindled saint to saint.

These are impor­tant thoughts to con­sid­er for the last Sun­day before Lent begins: Not just “what will I give up?” but “how have I failed?” Over the forty days to come, I will spend some time in med­i­ta­tion on all the ways in which I have failed the law of love. For the prac­tices of fast­ing and alms­giv­ing are, at their heart, meant to direct us away from self-love and toward love of God and love of neigh­bor. On Ash Wednes­day, when we receive the sign of the cross in ash­es on our head, the priest says, “Remem­ber, O man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Christi­na Ros­set­ti, in the sec­ond of her two poems for Quin­qua­ges­i­ma, puts it this way: “Time is but a span / The dal­liance space of dying man.”

There is only so much time, and then we stand at the par­tic­u­lar judg­ment. The Psalmist writes, “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flour­isheth. For the wind pas­seth over it, and it is gone; and the place there­of shall know it no more.” Then he adds, “But the [love and] mer­cy of the Lord is from ever­last­ing to ever­last­ing” (Psalm 103:15–17): a sen­ti­ment Ros­set­ti also echoes when she says that love “exceeds the span / Appoint­ed to mere mor­tal man.” In striv­ing to keep the law of love, we reach toward our eter­nal life, our own res­ur­rec­tion day, and at our par­tic­u­lar judg­ment hear the words, “Well done, thou good and faith­ful ser­vant” (Matt. 25:23). Through the law of love, we step beyond what Ros­set­ti calls our “piteous rhyme” into the very life of Christ.

My favorite line in these two poems—possibly my favorite line in all of Christi­na Ros­set­ti; pos­si­bly my favorite line in all the poet­ry I have read—is the third line of the son­net: “Love is the law from kin­dled saint to saint.” The imagery of being on fire appeals to me because of the allu­sion to the seraphim of Isa­iah chap­ter 6, whose love for God is so com­plete that they are lit­er­al­ly enkin­dled by it; the min­is­ters of God, as David says else­where, are a “flam­ing fire” (Psalm 104:4).

But it appeals to me more because of the—very purgatorial—concept of hav­ing one’s pride and self-love burned away for love of God. These are the saints: the ones who have over­come the self and its lusts and have giv­en every­thing up for love of God, even to the point (as with Padre Pio, or St. Cather­ine of Siena) of receiv­ing the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh in the stig­ma­ta; or even—as with St. Max­i­m­il­ian Kolbe—to the point of death.

As a lover of lan­guage and of poet­ry, I also love refrains; my refrain through­out Lent this year, as I strive to live more ful­ly the “wor­thy law of love,” will be that one: “Love is the law from kin­dled saint to saint.”