Selected Works of Richard Rolle: Hermit

(Written for a Cistercian nun of Hampole Priory.)

‘Tue Commandment of God is that we love Our Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our thought.

With all our heart, that is with all our understanding, without erring. With all our soul, that is with all our will, without gainsaying. With all our thought, that is that we think on Him, without forgetting. In this manner is very love and true, that is the work of man’s will. For love is a deliberate stirring of our thought towards God, so that it receive nothing that is against the love of Jesus Christ, and that thereby it be enduring in sweetness of devotion. And this is the perfection of this life, to which all deadly sin is contrary and an enemy, but not venial sin. For venial sin does not do away with charity, but only hinders the use and the burning thereof. Hence all that will love God perfectly it behoves not only to flee from all deadly sin but also, as much as they may, all venial sin, in thought and word and deed. And especially to be of little speech—if their silence be occupied with good thoughts it helps greatly to God’s love. For babblers and backbiters that damage other men’s lives with wicked words, and all that boast their own estate before all others, or that despise any state in which a man may be safe, they have no more sight of the love of God in their souls than the eye of a bat has of the sun. For vain speech and evil words are signs of a vain heart and ill, that is without the grace of God. And he that speaks always what is good, and holds every man better than himself, shows well that he is stable in goodness in his heart, and full of charity to God and his neighbour.