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Choosing Between The Fire Of Love Or Hate

Choosing Between The Fire Of Love Or Hate

Last updated on: June 10, 2026 at 1:22 am by Henry Karlson

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Choosing Between The Fire Of Love Or Hate 2026-06-10T01:22:43-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Walters Art Museum Illuminated Manuscripts: Moses before the burning bush, Walters Manuscript W.805, fol. 37v detail / Wikimedia Commons

Our God is a consuming fire (cf. Heb. 12:29; Deut. 4:24); we can either join in with the fire, and unite with it, or get singed in its presence. How do we do that? Through love. For God is love, and comes towards us with a purifying fire, seeking to remove all that is impure in us so we can experience true beatitude. The fire we feel in God’s presence is God’s eternal, infinite burning love for us all. The more we love, the more like God we become. If we embrace the way of love, letting it transform it, then, when God comes to us, we will not resist God’s love, as we will find ourselves joining ourselves to it. If we resist the way of love, then God’s fiery love comes as a purifying flame, seeking to remove all that unlove, causing us pain as we feel all that is unlove taken into the fire to be consumed by it. This is why we should embrace love, doing the good which love would have us do. We will seek for the common good, helping those who need help. We will desire all to experience the glory of God’s love. If we don’t’ do so, we will find ourselves inflamed by a rival fire, the fire of hate and the inordinate passions such hate brings, a fire which does not purify but destroys, indeed, a fire which seeks to annihilate all that comes across its path, including ourselves. The two might appear similar, as they are both kinds of fires, but they are far apart, as one seeks to purify and preserve all that is good, while the other seeks to destroy all that is good, even being itself. We must choose for ourselves between the two. We can either embrace the way of love, and so, embracing God’s love, allowing it to purify us from all that is unlove, or else, we can embrace hate, and find ourselves corrupted and hollowed out by it, so that what is left of us will be singed we find ourselves in God’s presence. Thus, St. Ceasarius of Arles says, if we find even a spark of charity left in us, we should embrace it and help it grow:

When the fire of charity burns in a soul, it removes all evil; so on the contrary nothing that is good will remain in a man in whom the fire of passion has been kindled. Therefore, let each one hasten to his own conscience. If a person feels aroused within himself the slightest spark of compunction, he should preserve the grace of divine mercy by good works and further kindle the fire of compunction. [1]

This is why, while we cannot save ourselves, it also is not something which is forced upon us. We must cooperate with God and God’s grace, activating that grace by doing what God’s love expects from us. God’s grace and love perfects us, but only if we let them. We can’t expect them to do so without us acting on them. This is why those who do good in the world find their actions have value, and can even be said to transform them, making them better, for by such good, they embrace the way of love, opening themselves up to God’s grace. For example, if we give alms, out of the spirit of love, our alms will open us up to God’s purifying love and the grace which flows from it, so that we can even say our alms helped cleanse us of our sins. It is God who does the cleansing, but only because we welcomed God by our act of love. This is also why we are told to repent. We must be sorry for the wrongs we have done, for the ways we have abandoned the way of love, the way of God. When we repent, when we truly want to change and do better, we open ourselves back to love, and through that love, open ourselves up to the fiery love of God, and all that God is willing to give to us. St. Albert the Great suggested the story of Moses encountering God in the burning bush is a representation of this:

Do you not know that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? For this strongly burning kindness should by its merit bring all men to conversion. The fire that appeared in the burning bush signified this kindness. [Ex 3.2] In this [fire] it prefigured this sacrament, in which the fire of kindness and of divine goodness is received in the verdure of the burning bush, that is, in his humanity, vigorous in every virtue, for the communion with Christ, God and man. [2]

How do we enkindle this love? By looking out into the world, seeking for and finding the good in all things, embracing that good and loving it because it is good and because it was made good by God. As every good has its own beauty, a beauty which flow from that goodness, when we perceive that goodness, we perceive that beauty, which then attracts us to it, making it easier for us to love it as we should. Because the good of everything comes from and participates in the ultimate Good, the Good which comes from God, it is not idolatrous for us to love the things of the world so as long as we remember this relationship and use our relationship with the good found in all things to direct us to their source, the Good found in God:

If, then, a man can so extend his thinking as to ponder and consider the beauty and the grace of all the things that have been created in the Word, the very charm of them will so smite him, the grandeur of their brightness will so pierce him as with a chosen dart—as says the prophet—that he will suffer from the dart Himself a saving wound, and will be kindled with the blessed fire of His love.[3]

St. Augustine, in his Confessions, writes of the way he saw the good of all things directed him to God, so that he was able to come to God’s fiery love and be transformed by it:

Now, indeed, ‘my years [are spent] in sighs,’ and Thou my Consolation, O Lord, Thou art my Eternal Father. But I have disintegrated into periods of time, of whose order I am ignorant, and my thoughts, which are of the innermost vital parts of my soul, are rent asunder by tumultuous diversities – until such time as I shall flow together into Thee, purged and melted into clear liquid form, by the fire of Thy love.[4]

Each of us, because the differences between us, will have different experiences, not only of the world, but of God. But, behind those differences, we share in common a need for love, the need to love something or someone, but also the need to experience love. The problem is we often do things which get in the way of love. And, if we are not careful, we turn love inside out and upside down, until we act in our need for love by way of hate. We need to stop doing that. We truly need to look, see the goodness of all things, see, indeed, how God is reflected in all things, so we can begin to love all things and in that love, love God. Then, love will take us in and transform us, making us more and more like God, and the more we become like God, the more we will find ourselves joining in and participating in God’s love, experiencing the divine life for ourselves.

[1] St. Caesarius of Arles, Semons. Volume II (81-186). Trans. Sister Mary Magdeleine Mueller, OSF (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1963), 70 [Sermon 96].

[2] St. Albert the Great, On the Body of the Lord. Trans. Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, OP (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2017), 39.

[3] Origen, “The Song of Songs: Commentary” in Origen: The Song of Songs, Commentary And Homilies. Trans. R.P. Lawson (New York: Newman Press, 1956), 29-30.

[4] St. Augustine, Confessions. Trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1953; repr. 1966), 363-4.

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