glorycloud's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "O taste and see that the LORD is sweet: blessed is the man that hopes in him" Psalm 34:9 "O taste and see that the LORD is sweet: blessed is the man that hopes in him" Psalm 34:9 "verse 9 O taste and see, that is, live in such a fashion, adhere to God with such holiness, purity, and integrity, so that he might give you such great grace, by which with certainty and experientially you will know that which follows in this verse: that the Lord is sweet. For all know God to be sweet by their intellect, but not all taste it through their affections. By natural reason one can recognize the sweetness of God, but it is tasted only by grace. But nothing tastes sweet unless it is loved: and so love is the cause of relish. Therefore, for man to experience divine sweetness, it is necessary that he love God fervidly; and that is not possible unless he excludes from himself those things which diminish charity. For cupidity or an inordinately self-regarding private love is the poison and diminution of charity. But the increase or the progress of charity is the total expulsion of private love: when, namely a man loves himself purely in God, desiring nothing and loving nothing except God because of [God] himself, and himself in relation to God, and all else insofar as by them he may be led to God. He, therefore, who loves God spurns and flees all bodily delights, all carnal pleasures, all temporal honors, and all fleeting and vain things, because by such things he is kept distant from God. Moreover, he loves mortification of the flesh, the derision and contempt of the world, adversities and difficulties, holy vigils, continual prayers, and such similar things because by such things he is united to God. And so he who is like this is able to taste that the Lord is sweet. For truly sweet is the LORD, and he is the fountain of all sweetness, from which all sweet things obtain their sweetness: and the most high and blessed God himself is essentially sweetness, and so no creature [of its natural powers] has experience with this wholly separate, immense, supersubstanial, and fountainlike sweetness in its fulness. And it is truly entirely most worthy, that he who desires to taste this sweetness of the divine goodness, should abhor all unworthy and vile and transitory delights, so that he might serve God with complete custody of his mind, with charity, and with reverence. For this tasting is a certain and supernatural foretaste of the future beatitude, which none of the philosophers or proud theologians have ever tasted; but those with meek and humble heart, who with all their devotion they affix themselves upon that one who alone is necessary, are deserving to taste it. The most holy Isaiah tasted this sweetness when he said those words sweeter than honey and the honeycomb: Your name, and your remembrance are the desire of the soul. My soul has desired you in the night: yea, and with my spirit within me in the morning early I will watch for you. And so also Jeremiah, when he said: There came in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was wearied, not being able to bear it. When also in another place it is written: O how good and sweet is your spirit, O Lord, all all things!" Denis The Carthusian Commentary on the Psalms: Volume 2 11:53 a.m. - 2022-07-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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