Advent Weekday

NOTHING LESS THAN LOVE
From a letter by Hadewijch of Flanders 6
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I will tell you without beating about the bush: be satisfied with nothing less than Love. Give reason its time, and always observe where you heed it too little and where enough. And do not let yourself be stopped by any pleasure through which your reason may be the loser. What I mean by “your reason” is that you must keep your insight ever vigilant in the use of discernment. Never must any difficulty hinder you from serving people, be they insignificant or important, sick or healthy. And the sicker they are, and the fewer friends they have, the more readily must you serve them. And always bear with aliens willingly. As for all who slander you, contradict them not. And be desirous to associate with all who scorn you, for they make the way of Love broader for you.

Leave not anyone in need out of spite. And never fail to ask about any wise teaching you are ignorant of, out of spite or shame that you do not know it. For you are bound before God to acquire a knowledge of all the virtues and to learn them by exertion, questioning, study, and earnest purpose.

And if by your fault you have offended anyone, wait not too long to set it right. You are bound to this by the death of our Lord, in order to content him. Take whatever means you think the quickest and best to make peace with the one you have offended.

Do not become so stubbornly attached to anything that God may, in consequence, refuse you grace. Do not, through pride, spare any service. Do not, through pride, refrain from giving gifts to the poor. Do not, through pride, fail to ask for anything you need and cannot well do without. Do not, through pride, be ashamed that you are hungry, thirsty, drowsy, or cold, or be ashamed of a repulsive illness, or of having shown a lack of good understanding or courtliness. For it is great honor and the finest courtly behavior if one acknowledges outwardly what one is ashamed of; but it is great pride not to tell it; and it is outrage and shame to see [in anyone] more evil than is truly to be seen.

Moreover toward God, our Beloved, it is guileful insincerity and odious infidelity. For it is the law of high [promise] and love that the loved one be revealed to the beloved in all that he or she is, lowly or sublime.

6
Hadewijch, The Complete Works, trans. Mother Columba Hart, OSB; New York: Paulist Press, 1980, pp. 103-104.