Divine Love

Baldwin Bishop of Canterbury

Love is as Strong as Death

from a treatise by Baldwin, Bishop of Canterbury

Death is strong, for it can rob us of the gift of life.  Love too is strong, for it can restore us to a better life. 

Death is strong, for it can strip us of this robe of flesh.  Love too is strong, for it an take death's spoils away and give them back o us.

Death is strong, for no man can withstand it.  Love too is strong, for it can conquer death itself, soothe its sting, calm its violence, and bring its victory to naught.  The time will come when death is reviled and taunted.  O death, where is your sting?  O death, where is your victory?

Love is as strong as death because Christ's love is the very death of death.  Hence it is said: I will be your death, O death! I will be your sting, O hell! Our love for Christ is also as strong as death, because it is itself a kind of death: destroying the old life, rooting out vice, and laying aside dead works.

Our love for Christ is a return, though very unequal for His love for us, and it is a likeness modeled on His.  For He loved us and, through the example of love He gave us, He became a seal upon us by which we are made like Him.  We lay aside the likeness of the earthly man and put on the likeness of the heavenly man; we love him as he has loved us.  For in this matter he has left us as an example so that we might follow in His steps.

That is why He says: Set me as a seal upon your heart.  It is as if He were saying: 

"Love Me as I love you.  

Keep Me in your mind and memory, 

in your desires and yearnings, 

in your groans and sobs.  

Remember, man, the kind of being I made you; how far I set you above other creatures; the dignity I conferred upon you; how I made you only a little less than the angels and set all things under your feet.  Remember not only how much I have done for you.  Yet look and see: Do you not wrong Me?  Do you not fail to love Me?  Who loves you as I do?  Who created and redeemed you but I?"

Lord, take away my heart of stone, a heart so bitter and uncircumcised, and give me a new heart, a heart of flesh, a pure heart.  You cleanse the heart and love the clean heart.  Take possession of my heart and dwell in it, contain it and fill it, you who are higher than the heights of my spirit and closer to me than my innermost self!  

You are the pattern of all beauty and the seal of all holiness.  Set the seal of your likeness upon my heart!  In Your Mercy set Your seal upon my heart, God of my heart and the God who is my portion for ever! Amen.