Natural Love, Supernatural Love

“Natural reason and experience can tell us what love is not; only faith can reveal to us what it is. Ordinary reason and experience show us that our hearts here below are unable to find anything that can fully satisfy them. When we believe that we have found happiness in a created good, in a position that we have desired for a long time, in a new science, in a very intimate and elevated friendship, very soon we realize that it is a case of a limited good and, therefore, insufficient for a nature like ours that can conceive of an unlimited, total, absolute good which it naturally desires.

The profound boredom which worldly persons experience and drag with themselves to every part of the world is a sign that their heart was made for a good infinitely higher than anything they are seeking. The continual need of change that pushes them first toward one creature and then another, each of which they abandon in turn after having enjoyed its pleasure, is a sign that God alone can fill the infinite emptiness of their hearts.

According to a rigorous philosophic principle, our will possesses an infinite profundity, so that finite goods, incapable of reaching to its depths, are hardly even able to skim its surface. God alone can satisfy our needs and give us that fountain of living water about which Our Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman and which alone can truly quench our thirst. For this reason St. Catherine of Siena says to us: ‘Do you want a friendship that will be lasting? Do you wish to quench your thirst continually from this cup? Let it always be filled at the fountain of living water; otherwise you will soon empty it and it will no longer be able to satisfy your thirst.’

Common reason and experience show us the possibility and necessity of loving God. They even tell us that this love ought to be the principle of every human life, just as the love of art is the principle of the artist’s life, as love of science is the principle of the scientist’s life, as love of country is the principle of the soldier’s life, of his hard labor and of the sacrifices that he imposes on himself. But love of art, science, and country is not sufficient to satisfy the heart of man, who can conceive of the absolute good, aspire to it, and feel that he should subordinate his whole life to it.

Consequently there is a natural love of God which reason by itself can teach us and which was also extolled by the great pagan philosophers. But this natural love of God is infinitely far from Christian charity which is essentially supernatural. Supernatural love is a love of friendship for God which ordinary reason cannot grasp.”
~Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange