Passion (religious concept)

“ Unholy passion, that burns and sears with vice the hearts of men, has oft been mistaken for that holy flame. Love, sacred love will elevate, will cleanse from all impurities, will awake ambition, will be an incentive to noble deeds, to a noble life. ”

“ The joys of the flesh are finite, and soon run through. Objects of passion are the dolls wherewith we learn to use our higher faculties, and through all our life the joy of religion, the delight in God, becomes more and more. All that ancient saints ever had thereof, the peace which the world could not give, the rest unto the soul, which Jesus spoke of,—all these are for you and me, here and now and to-day, if we will. ”

“ Sacrifice everything to it, and love it with passion—not with the passion breathing with earthly desire, but a peaceful, heavenly passion. It cannot plant discord in the spirit, but ascends, like a resounding prayer, eternally to God. ”

“ I speak of such men and women as for God's love hate sin and dispose themselves to do God's will: then by our spiritual blindness and bodily heaviness we are most inclining to these. And therefore [Pg 179] it is God's will that they be known, for then we shall refuse them as we do other sins.
And for help of this, full meekly our Lord shewed the patience that He had in His Hard Passion; and also the joying and the satisfying that He hath of that Passion, for love. ”

“ Love is a valiant victorious passion. Holy love is so; the reigning love of God in the soul is constant and firm, and will not be drawn off from him either by fair means or foul, by life or death, Rom. ”

“ How is it possible to reconcile this ideal of life, still more the hope of everlasting life, with the acknowledged vanity of desire? It is accomplished through the medium of an emotion which more than any I have touched upon reveals the character of the religious sentiment—Love. ”

“ Is vice alone captivating, and morality such an everyday, humdrum affair that we are sick of excess of it? Is love the thing they present to us?—love, the great passion, the pure divine flame that God has set in our hearts to link together and perpetuate the generations, and finally lead us up to him? ”

“ Even in the life of the rudest savage, religious belief is associated with intense emotion, with awful reverence, with agonizing terror, with rapt ecstasy when sense and thought utterly transcend the common level of daily life. How much the more in faiths where not only does the believer experience such enthusiasm, but where his utmost feelings of love and hope, of justice and mercy, of fortitude and tenderness and self-sacrificing devotion, of unutterable misery and dazzling happiness, twine and clasp round the fabric of religion. ”

“ This is a love passion, a passion of love. And love itself is the master passion both of the human heart and of God's heart. Nothing can grip and fill and sway the heart either of man or God like that. ”

“ That marvelous tender passion—the love of God—heightless, depthless, shoreless, shall flood our hearts, making us as gentle and tender-hearted and self-sacrificing and gracious as He. Every phase of life will become a phase of love. Peace is love resting. Bible study is love reading its lover's letters. Prayer is love keeping tryst. Conflict with sin is love jealously fighting for its Lover. Hatred of sin is love shrinking from that which separates from its lover. Sympathy is love tenderly feeling. Enthusiasm is love burning. ”

“ Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form strengthened my passion,—a passion that was always overshadowed by the maddening conviction, that, although I could gaze on her at will, she never, never could behold me! ”

“ We are not discussing divine omnipotence, but divine compassion and love toward a race of sinful men. We are contemplating an act of infinite condescension, a manifestation of God's love in sacrifice. The appeal of the doctrine is to our hearts, not to our heads; to our affection, not to our intellect. ”

“ And His way is always and altogether the way of love—love that can tame the brute in us and make it a servant—love that can transform passion into a holy fire—love that makes men patient and women generous—that takes the common things of life and makes them sacred— and above all love that can hate sin with fierce sincerity, and yet love and forgive sinners. ”

“ As a divine affection, charity or love springs out of union with God, or being made a “partaker of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lusts.” Such being the height of its bed-rock, it is said, “Every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.” ”

“ We shall see how infinitely passionate a thing religion at its highest flights can be. Like love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible from anything else. ”

“ Love is a divine-inspired passion of the soul, planted there by God, to grow and flourish in its great, pure, single strength. They have cut it, and hacked and torn it to shreds, and left nothing of divinity in it. ”

“ Human passion assumed a new significance in my mind, and the will and faith of a strong man suffering from its power, yet withstanding it to the very last gasp by the help of his trust in God, rose to such an exalted position in my mind, that I felt then, as I feel now whenever I remember this picture, that my whole moral nature had received, from its contemplation, an impetus towards religion and self-denial. ”

“ APPENDIX C. THE AUTO-EROTIC FACTOR IN RELIGION.
The intimate association between the emotions of love and religion is well known to all those who are habitually brought into close contact with the phenomena of the religious life. Love and religion are the two most volcanic emotions to which the human organism is liable, and it is not surprising that, when there is a disturbance in one of these spheres, the vibrations should readily extend to the other. ”

“ There are saints who have literally fed on the negative principle, on humiliation and privation, and the thought of suffering and death,—their souls growing in happiness just in proportion as their outward state grew more intolerable. No other emotion than religious emotion can bring a man to this peculiar pass. And it is for that reason that when we ask our question about the value of religion for human life, I think we ought to look for the answer among these violenter examples rather than among those of a more moderate hue. ”

“ Besides, in reducing this kind of love to the level of a natural feeling, it would be left as completely stripped of its character of morality as the other species is. But Christianity does not degrade this kind of love to the level of a passion, neither does it in this, or in any other case, inculcate an impracticable act or condition of humanity. ”

“ Neither do those whose passions are so inflamed that they appear, for a time, in ecstasies. When their passions subside, they grow cool, and their religion dies. If the great truths of religion, laid before men, as was done by Christ and his apostles, do not avail to render them rationally and sincerely religious, little value is to be put on those heats of imagination, which produce temporary raptures, and set some on fire in religion. ”

“ And since love is the essence of personality, it has thereby stripped preaching of the emotional energy, of the universal human interests and the prophetic insight which only love can bestow. Over against this depersonalization, we must find some way to return to expressing the religious view and utilizing the religious power of the human spirit. ”

“ We are largely governed by that which holds our affections, and love to that which is morally right, draws us into the path of righteousness—leads us to pursue a steady and undeviating line of conduct in obedience to the law of holiness, as revealed by God. But the joy which the ungodly man feels in sinful pursuits and habits draws him out of this good and true way, and allures him into a path where he meets with objects that call forth this unholy pleasure. Being governed by passion instead of by principle, his walk in life is unsteady and uncertain—destitute of fixed purpose. ”

“ These, then, are the affections on which, according to the subject-matter, thy mind should be exercised, and thy meditation seasoned upon the Life and Passion of Christ; the practice of which in the several points is exhibited in the following Rosary, and will be taught thee more fully by the unction of the Spirit. But the affections of contrition and imitation should be chiefly attended to, especially by beginners. For to derive from the consideration of the Passion the hatred of sin and the love of virtue is one of its principal fruits. ”

“ Such men are pre-eminently under the influence of lust in every department of their being—in the moral and religious as well as in the physical. The piety of such men may be ever so deep and earnest, yet its basis is in use. They see nothing in the Divine character or perfections which excites in them love or admiration any further than it is to bear upon their own well-being and happiness. Their love of God is a love of the instrument or means by which they are to become supremely blessed. ”

“ These are passion's vision-flights. But God himself points out the way by which the Soul that loves shall come to Him: she—the Soul—shall come, surmounting the need of penitence and penance, surmounting love of the world, conflicts with the devil, carnal appetite, and the promptings of her own will. ”

“ Such different ways of conceiving it ought of themselves to arouse doubt as to whether it possibly can be one specific thing; and the moment we are willing to treat the term 'religious sentiment' as a collective name for the many sentiments which religious objects may arouse in alternation, we see that it probably contains nothing whatever of a psychologically specific nature. There is religious fear, religious love, religious awe, religious joy, and so forth. But religious love is only man's natural emotion of love directed to a religious object ”

“ I apprehend that you don’t yet know what divine love is in itself, nor what is its nature and power in the soul of man. For divine love brings perfect peace and joy, a freedom from all disquiet, all content and happiness. Love wherever it comes, comes as the restorer of every lost perfection, a redeemer from all evil, a fulfiller of all righteousness. Thro’ all the universe nothing is uneasy, unsatisfied, or restless, but because it is not governed by love, or because its nature has not reached or attained the full spirit of love. ”

“ I engaged in a religious life only for the love of God, and I have endeavored to act only for Him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God. ”

“ The emotional aspect of religion is not exhausted by the varieties of fear and hope and love. Wonder, awe, admiration, the æsthetic emotions, in fact all the active principles of man’s mental economy are at times excited and directed by the thought of supernatural power. Some have attempted to trace the religious sentiment exclusively to one or the other of these. ”

“ Before religious emotion could make any approximation to the devout feelings of a modern Christian, it was necessary to eliminate all these licentious, cruel, and blasphemous features of worship—the eating or slaughtering of human victims, the obscene orgies, as well as the spiteful and revengeful acts toward disobedient gods. The progress—like the Evolution of Romantic Love—has been from the sensual and selfish to the supersensual and unselfish. In the highest religious ideal, love of God takes the place of fear, adoration that of terror, self-sacrifice that of self-seeking. ”

“ And those souls whose inner being is lit by the love of God are even as spreading rays of light, and they shine out like stars of holiness in a pure and crystalline sky. For true love, real love, is the love for God, and this is sanctified beyond the notions and imaginings of men.
Let God’s beloved, each and every one, be the essence of purity, the very life of holiness, so that in every country they may become famed for their sanctity, independence of spirit, and meekness. ”

“ Lastly, there remains that which is the dominant factor in Christian goodness. Love. There is an element of passion in {496} Christlike holiness, which differentiates it from philosophic conceptions of virtue as a tranquil, balanced state [535] . Love gives worth to the fulfilment of duty; embraces, in union with God, the Divine aim of creation; and manifests itself in spontaneity and inventive activity, transforming the fulfilment of obligation into an occasion of joyous and delightful service. Our Lord represents this 'ardent, passionate, devoted state' of heart as the real root of virtue. ”

“ There is a flame of religious love when the heart sacrifices itself in humble realization of the joy of its adorable love purer than the fierce fire of the hating heart that applies the torch to the martyr's pyre. ”

“ Oh, my friends, let us surround and incompass Humanus with these flames of love, till he cannot make his escape from them, but must become a willing victim to their power. For the universal God is universal love; all is love, but that which is hellish and earthly. All religion is the spirit of love; all its gifts and graces are the gifts and graces of love; it has no breath, no life, but the life of love. Nothing exalts, nothing purifies, but the fire of love; nothing changes death into life, earth into heaven, men into angels, but love alone. Love breathes the Spirit of God ”