(begin) What does it mean when we’re told we should love God with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with our whole mind, and with our whole strength? The first commandment is that we should love God more than anything else. The only way I know how to love God is to love what God loves; only then do we love with divine love and allow it to flow through us.
Just how does God love? Franciscan philosopher-theologian Duns Scotus said in his doctrine of “thisness” (“haecceity”), that we are to love things in and as themselves, to love things for what they are, not for what they do for us. That’s when we really begin to love our spouses, our children, our neighbors, and others. When we free them from our agendas, then we can truly love them without concern for what they do for us, or how they make us look, or what they can get us. We begin to love them in themselves and for themselves, as living images of God. Now that takes real work!
So why is “thisness” so good and important? Duns Scotus mirrors Jesus as the Good Shepherd leaving the ninety-nine sheep and going after the one (Luke 15:4–6). The universal incarnation of Christ always shows itself in the specific, the concrete, the particular; it refuses to let life be a mere abstraction. No one says this better than Christian Wiman: “If nature abhors a vacuum, Christ abhors a vagueness. If God is love, Christ is love for this one person, this one place, this one time-bound and time-ravaged self.” [1]
The doctrine of haecceity says that we come to universal meaning deeply and rightly through the concrete, the specific, and the ordinary, and not the other way around. The principle here is “go deep in any one place and we will meet all places.” When we start with big universal ideas, at the level of concepts and -isms, we too often stay there— arguing about theories, forever making more distinctions. At that level, the mind is totally in charge. It’s easier to love humanity then, but not any individual people. We defend principles of justice but can’t muster the courage to live fully just lives ourselves. Only those who live like Francis and Clare do that.
Francis lived such “thisness” simply by looking at things and loving things in themselves and for themselves. I think this is what it means to love God. When we love things in themselves, we are looking out at the world with God’s eyes. When we look out from these eyes, we see that it’s not about us! (my emphasis). I promise, when we begin seeing the world this way, everything starts to give us joy. Simple things start to make us happy, and Reality begins to offer us inherent joy.
[1] Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), 121.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2014), 181; and
Franciscan Mysticism: I AM That Which I Am Seeking (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2012). Available as CD and MP3 audio download. (end)
Father Rohr has introduced me to Duns Scotus. I now pay attention to what Scotus had to say.
Deacon David Pierce
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