Love

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I found the corner by the service lift and the steep flight of stairs up to Phil’s attic. It was a drab, cheapjack little area, unambiguously removed from the public, and yet I had come to love it in a way I never could the rest of the monstrous edifice. The little room—and above it the lonely roof—were nothing really, but like the lovers’ cottage in ‘Tea for Two’ they had been wonderfully sufficient for our romance. I knew there was no chance of finding him in—he would be well off on his laddish booze by now—but it would be comforting to sit there for a bit with the window open and surrounded by his empty clothes. When I put my key in the lock, though, there was a muffled call of surprise, I thought, from within. Phil and Bill were kneeling face to face on the bed. Bill’s hand rested on Phil’s shoulder, and it looked like some College jerk-off job. Their tilting dicks, alert as orgiasts’ on a Greek vase, withered astonishingly under my expressionless stare. Not for them the witless priapism of Gabriel; but there was enough defiance in their confusion for them not to blabber excuses—not to say anything at all. And I couldn’t think of anything much to say. I know I swallowed and coloured and took in, as if I needed to satisfy myself, the circumstantial details. Certainly there were no signs of passionate haste. Bill’s trousers were neatly folded and his vast smalls were spread like an antimacassar across the back of the chair. I nodded repeatedly and slowly withdrew, closing the door as if not to disturb a sleeper. Before I had reached the top of the stairs I heard a gasped ‘Oh my God’ and a loud frightened laugh. And so to James’s. By the time I got there my anger, hurt, care were welling up under the frigid discipline I had instinctively assumed. I smeared away stupid tears. Thank heavens at least no crass, unforgettable words had been spoken. ‘Darling, whisky’ was my own first utterance—and I thought, none of your namby-pamby Caribbean aphrodisiac nonsense. James was eating scrambled eggs standing up and listening to some fathomlessly gloomy music. ‘Bad day, dear?’ he enquired maritally. ‘The last twenty-four hours have actually been quite extraordinarily hideously awful.’ ‘Oh, darling.’ ‘I thought I was just about managing it until half an hour ago, when I went up to Phil’s room at the hotel—I don’t know why, just on some sentimental whim, I thought I’d put on some of his clothes and lie there for a bit and just be him, you know—he having arranged to go off drinking with some of his appalling friends. Well, they may not be appalling, I’ve never met them. I say, we couldn’t possibly take this music off? It’s driving me insane.’ ‘It’s Shostakovich’s viola sonata,’ said James pettishly.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  The perfection of brotherly love depends, secondly, upon its intensity. We know that the more intensely a man loves one object, the more easily will he for its sake despise other things. Hence the perfection of his love for his neighbour, may be gauged by what he sacrifices on his neighbour’s account. Some men, in their love of others, will give up their material possessions, either dispensing them to their neighbours at their discretion, or relinquishing them entirely, in order to supply the necessities of other men. St. Paul seems to refer to this form of charity in his First Epistle to the Corinthians (13:3), where he says, “If I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor.” In the book of Canticles, also, we are told that, “If a man should give all the substance of his house for love, he shall despise it as nothing” (Cant. 8:7). Our Lord includes this in the counsel of perfection, which He gave when He said, “If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; and come follow me” (Matt. 19:21). In this passage the sacrifice of material possession seems to be recommended for two ends. The words, “give to the poor,” point to love of our neighbour; the other words, “follow Me,” indicate love of God. But a man fulfils the same end, whether he suffers the loss of his material goods for the love of God, or for the sake of his neighbour. St. Paul commends the charity of the Hebrews in these words, “You took with joy the being stripped of your own goods” (Heb. 10:34). In the Book of Proverbs (12:26) we are told also that, “He that neglecteth a loss for the sake of a friend is just.” St. John says in like manner (1 Ep. 3:17), “He that hath the substance of this world and shall see his brother in need, and shall shut up his bowels from him, how doth the charity of God abide in him?”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  8. Job (xxxix. 21) says of the horse, by which preachers are typified, “He goes to meet armed men”, because, says the Gloss, “a preacher opposes injustice in defence of the truth, even when this duty is not imposed upon him.” Thus we see that holy preachers must wrestle with impiety, even when impious men do not attack them. But, the Saints act this way not out of hatred, but out of love. Thus, St. Paul, as the Gloss observes, when he delivered, “such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1 Cor. V. 3), did so that the Spirit might be saved; whereby we see that his act was inspired not by malice, but by charity. The Gloss further adds: “Elijah and other good men also punished certain sinners by death. By so doing, they inspired the living with a salutary fear, and diminished the number of sins which might have been committed by those whom they condemned to death.” Hence the chastisement inflicted by holy men on sinners cannot strictly be called persecution. For they do not punish them for the sake of making them suffer, but in order either to correct or check them in their sins, or else in order to deliver others from their oppression, or to restrain others from crime by fear of punishment. Sometimes, however, this chastisement may metaphorically be called persecution. Thus, St. Augustine writing to the Count Boniface (23, quaest. 4, cap. Si ecclesia) says “that the persecution inflicted by the wicked on the Church of Christ is unjust, and that inflicted by the Church on sinners is just.” 9. David says (Ps. xvii. 38), “I will pursue after my enemies... till they are consumed.” Again, “The man that detracted his neighbour in private, I persecuted.” (Ps. c. 5). We will now proceed to answer the arguments used by the enemies of religious, to prove that they are acting unlawfully in causing their persecutors to be punished. 1. It has already been proved that when holy men cause punishment to be inflicted on their enemies, they act not out of malice, but out of love. Hence they do their enemies good, rather than harm. 2. Preachers ought not, in causing their adversaries to be punished, to make their discomfiture their chief object. Their aim in chastising their enemies ought to be their conversion, or the benefit of others. 3. He who, out of zeal for virtue, causes another to be punished, does not return “evil for evil,” but rather good for evil; since the punishment inflicted is of benefit to him who suffers it. Punitive measures are at times remedial, says Aristotle (2 Ethic). And Dionysius observes (IV De Div. Nom.): “It is not an evil thing to be punished, but to deserve punishment.” The prohibition against returning blow for blow means that we must not strike another out of malice or from revenge.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  tendom. The old devotee talked with him about his ex- pedition, and learning from him that he was resolved upon it, asked him if he would be disposed, after it was accomplished, to make another journey to Jerusalem, which himself and his wife had a great desire to see. The captain, highly approving of so good a design, prom- ised to accompany him, and to keep the thing secret. The old gentleman was impatient to see his wife, to tell her what he had done. As she had scarcely less long- ing than her husband to perform the journey, she talked of it often to the captain, Avho, paying more attention to her person than to her words, became so much in love with her that, in talking to her of the voyages he had made by sea, he often confounded the port of Marseilles with the Archipelago, and said horse when he meant to say ship, so much was he beside himself. He found her, however, of so singular a character that he durst not let her see that he loved her, much less tell her so in words. The fire of his passion became so violent by dint of his concealing it that it often made him ill. The demoiselle, who regarded him as her guide, took as much care of him as of the cross, and sent to inquire after him so often that the interest she evinced for him cured the patient without the aid of physic. Several persons, who knew that the captain had always had a better reputation for valour than for devotion, were sur- prised at the great intercourse between him and this lady ; and seeing that he had changed from white to black, that he frequented the churches, attended sermons, and performed all the devoirs of a devotee, they doubted not that he did so to ingratiate himself with the lady, and could not even help hinting as much to him. The captain, fearing lest this should come to the ears of the lady, withdrew from society, and told her husband and Second day.] Q UEEN OF AAV A RRB. 1 2 5 her, that, being on the point of receiving his orders and quitting the court, he had many things to say to them, but that, for the greater secrecy, he would only confer with them in private, to which end he begged they would send for him when they had both retired for the night.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  But to love our enemies with an actual love when there is no necessity for so doing, is a counsel of perfection. Of course it is necessary for salvation to love our enemies by doing them actual service and assisting them, if they be in any extremity, if, for example, they be dying of hunger. The precept of brotherly love does not, however, bind us to show any special affection nor to do any particular service to our enemies, unless they be in the extreme distress of which we have spoken; neither are we bound by precept to do any special service to any other of our neighbours. Love of our enemies springs, directly and purely, from love of God; whereas our love for other men arises from divers motives, e.g., from gratitude, from kinship, from fellow-citizenship, and the like. But nothing save the love of God can make us love our enemies; for we love them because they are His creatures, made in His image, and capable of enjoying Him. And, as charity prefers God before all other good, the consideration of the Divine Good which inclines it to love its enemies, outweighs the consideration of any injury received from them which would incline our nature to hate them. Thus, in proportion to the love of God in a man’s soul, will be his readiness to love his enemies.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer: God does reject some men. We have said that predestination is a part of providence (Art. 1), and that providence permits a measure of defect in the things over which it rules (Q. 22, Art. 2). Now although providence ordains men to eternal life, it permits some of them to fail to attain this end. This is what is called rejection. Rejection is the part of providence which relates to those who fail to attain eternal life, just as predestination is the part of providence which relates to those who are ordained to it. Rejection therefore means more than foreknowledge, just as we agreed with Augustine (1 Ad Simplician 3) that providence means more than this (Q. 22, Art. 1). While predestination includes the will to bestow grace and glory, rejection includes the will to allow some to incur guilt, and to impose the penalty of damnation on account of guilt. On the first point: God loves every man, and every creature also, in that he wills some good for every one of them. But he does not will every good for every one, and is said to hate some in so far as he does not will for them the good of eternal life. On the second point: predestination is the cause of the glory which the predestined expect to receive in the life to come, and also of the grace which they receive in this present life. Rejection is the cause of desertion by God, but not of present guilt. It is the cause of eternal punishment to come, but guilt is due to the free will of him who is rejected and deserted by grace. What the prophet says is therefore true —“ O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. ” On the third point: rejection by God does not deprive the rejected one of any power. When it is said that a rejected man cannot receive grace, this does not mean that it is absolutely impossible for him to do so. It means that this is conditionally impossible. The salvation of a predestined man is ensured by a necessity which is likewise conditional, in that it permits freedom of choice. Thus even though one who is rejected by God cannot receive grace, it lies with his free will whether he falls into one sin or another, and his sin is deservedly imputed to him as guilt. ARTICLE FOUR Whether the Predestined are Chosen by God1. It seems that the predestined are not chosen by God. For Dionysius says: “ just as the corporeal sun sheds its light upon all bodies without discrimination, so does God bestow his goodness ’ (4 Div. Nom., lect. 1). Now it is especially God ’ s goodness that we receive when we share in grace and glory. It follows that God bestows grace and goodness without discrimination, and this belongs to predestination.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  On the second point: to sin is nothing other than to fall short of the good which befits one according to one ’ s nature. Now just as every created thing has its being from another, and considered in itself is nothing, so also it must be preserved by another in the good which befits its nature. It can nevertheless through itself fall short of this good, just as it can through itself cease to exist, if it is not providentially preserved. On the third point: as we said in Art. 1, a man cannot even know truth without divine help. Now his nature is impaired by sin more in the desire for good than in the knowledge of truth. ARTICLE THREE Whether a Man can Love God above All Things by His Natural Powers alone, without Grace1. It seems that a man cannot love God above all things by his natural powers alone, without grace. To love God above all things is the proper and principal act of charity, and a man cannot have charity of himself, since “ the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us ” (Rom. 5:5). It follows that a man cannot love God above all things by his natural powers alone. 2. Again, no nature can rise above itself. But to love God more than oneself is to tend to what is above oneself. Hence no created nature can love God more than itself, without the help of grace. 3. Again, since God is the greatest good, we ought to give him the greatest love, which is to love him above all things. But without grace a man is not fit to give to God the greatest love, which we ought to give him, since it would be useless to add grace if he were so. It follows that a man cannot love God by his natural powers alone, without grace. On the other hand: as some maintain, the first man was made with natural powers only, and it is obvious that in this state he loved God to some extent. But he loved God neither equally with himself nor less than himself, since he would have sinned in either case. He therefore loved God more than himself. It follows that man can love God more than himself and above all things by his natural powers alone.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  My first visit was from Taha—a ‘box-visit’, a reunion conducted through glass. I was wildly shaken to see him, so that I could not think of much to say. He smiled and was solicitous, and I looked at him closely, masochistically, for signs that he was ashamed of me. It was extraordinary how his confidence was undimmed: he spoke very quietly, so as not to be overheard by the guards or the other prisoners, and told me a score of sweet, inconsequential things. The second time he came, a few weeks later, we were allowed to sit at a table together: he had his little boy with him now, who seemed very excited at being allowed into a prison but frightened too of being left behind. Taha told him to hang on tight to my hand, and as he himself was holding my other hand we sat linked in a triangle, as if conducting a seance. The day before had been Taha’s birthday—and of course I had nothing to give him. He was forty-four! I can honestly say that he was no less beautiful to me than he had been when I saw him first, twenty-eight years ago. His brow was higher, his face scored with lines that had been mere charcoal strokes on the boy’s velvety brow and cheeks. His eyes, though, had deepened their immensity of melancholy and laughter, and his exquisite hands too were lined and shiny as old leather, as if he had done far more than merely polishing my shoes and silver. That night I lay long awake, caught up again, with a vividness of recall, in the life we had spent together. Despite a thousand differences it was like a marriage, a great, chaste bond of love and tact—which made it all the odder that he had really married and become a father. I was gripped again by my mood of awful falseness and despair on his wedding day, when I gave him away into that little house in North Kensington and into a world more unknown and inaccessible than the Nuba Hills where I had found him first. Since then I have seen this period simply as a test, challenging our bond only to affirm it again. The terms were different, his independence, as each evening he went off on the Central Line, took a concrete, dignified form; but his loyalty was unaltered. Perhaps his distancing even endeared him to me more, and showed me afresh a devotion to which we had both become over-accustomed.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  In a swift, unconscious convulsion he clutched together the bevelled glass salt and pepper pots. ‘Of course not. I love you.’ He looked up for a split second and then went on very quickly and quietly, pushing the last French beans around his plate with his fork, ‘I really love you, I don’t think I could live without you. I couldn’t bear it when you were ill, and … I don’t know …’ It was much more of an avowal than I’d asked for, and the tears came to my eyes and I grinned at the same time. I covered his hand that was coupling the cruet with my own, and looked anywhere but at him—around the horrible, narrow but disproportionately tall room, which had obviously been made by splitting some more generous space in two. Afterwards we got changed upstairs and shared a tooth-mug of vodka, which made me if anything more amorous, though in a generalised way, as if it were not just Phil but the whole world that was in love with me. I put on some very old, faded, tight-loose pink jeans and a white T-shirt with no arms and side-seams ripped open almost to my hips. Phil squeezed into other new acquisitions—some hugging and rather High Street dark blue slacks with a thin white belt, and a gripping pale blue T-shirt. When we were clear of the hotel I took Phil’s arm. It moved me to do this, to insist out loud that he was mine (he himself, keen to be so claimed, didn’t quite flow with it, butchly somehow held himself apart—though I locked my fingers through his). At Winchester one summer day I had run across a couple of queens-one perhaps an old Wykehamist showing his friend the places where his honour died. They had wandered over to Gunner’s Hole, that curving canal-like backwater, drawn off and returning to the Itchen, where in Charles’s day swimming had taken place. Now, of course, there was a beautiful indoor pool—where I was soon to establish my freestyle record—and the Hole had surrendered, as it must always have promised to do, to crowding cow-parsley and heavy seeded grasses, while in the water itself long green weeds curled to and fro in the current. I came scuffing past through the meadow, hot, shirt undone, and saw them gazing, one pointing at the rioting May-time flowers, then spotting me, giving me a glance—very brief but I felt it—and then the two of them turning back towards College, arm in arm. I mastered a frisson of shock into pleasure—not at them individually (they seemed hopelessly old and refined) but at the openness of their gesture. I wanted men to walk out together. I wanted a man to walk out with.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I colour to remember how at first I assumed that James fancied me, so infatuated was I with myself. A few days later we met again at a cricket match in the Parks (my French boy having turned moody and hostile), drank beer together all afternoon, sat up late listening to Wagner, and I realised that what he liked was my company, and the fact that we felt the same about boys and music. We reached the stage of drunkenness where Brünnhilde’s Immolation seems to last only thirty seconds or so, though each bar is still a miraculous revelation. When he turned off the gramophone, stood up and said, ‘Well, you must go, darling,’ I was smitten with friendship, moved especially that he did not want me to stay. After that we met almost every day of our undergraduate careers. Tonight we were meeting in the Volunteer, my local gay pub. Mildly art-nouveau and metropolitan outside, with mysteriously opaque acid-etched windows, the Volunteer inside, after disastrous refurbishments, was an eternal parable of disappointment. A little back bar, favoured by the elderly, retained some period character, but the rest had been laid waste into the vast areas required for the mass jostling and cruising of a Friday or Saturday night. Round tables with beaten copper tops were aligned in front of the leather-covered tram which ran along the walls. In season, a fire burnt in the grate, the adjustable gas jets failing to kindle the synthetic logs. When it was lit the flames showed up the hundreds of fag-ends that had unthinkingly been thrown in. The pub was at its least inspiriting in the early evening. Hardy regulars, resigned to hours of waiting, lounged at the bar or filled in time with the Evening Standard, inching their way down pints of lager, glowering at any newcomers and exchanging greetings in tones that suggested that things were pretty bad. And so they were. The Volunteer was a second-division gay pub, and while the glamorous and fashionable were chatting each other up in King’s Cross or St Martin’s Lane, a mood of provincial neglect settled over it. It seemed, as I bought my bottle of Guinness and retired to a corner, like the waiting-room of a station on a branch line where the last train was not expected for quite some time. One of the barmen, very thin in very tight jeans, and with a lugubrious, made-up manner, wandered across to the door and stood looking out over the pavement, a lust-quenching advertisement to any potential drinker. ‘Startin’ to rain,’ he said to no one in particular as he turned back into the bar. James, of course, had an umbrella and trotted in a minute or two later looking very respectable. He had just come from surgery.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It soon became clear that he was very fond of me. He would make me clean his shoes & make his bed & cook his toast in Chambers over the coal fire. I did not really begin to fall in love with him until he became more obliging, calling me to him for no reason other than to have me there, or question me about something I was supposed to know—all this of course very shy & inept although it had to me the fascination of authority. But then other boys noticed that he had a softness for me, and brocked us both, so that I, who had been as unconscious as ever of anything erotic, suddenly learnt what was going on &, by some profound power of suggestion, what my feelings actually were. As soon as they said we were always together, I glowed that our secret had been revealed—although until that moment I had not known the secret myself. At first there were fighting denials, but the pleasure of affection overrode them, a pleasure oddly shared by the other boys, who were both catty and collusive. All was well in Chambers, but we were awkward when alone. I was soon idolatrously in love, & I believe he was too. One afternoon in Cloister Time when the whole College was out on war work at a farm beyond St Catherine’s Hill, digging potatoes, he took me off for a walk through the fields. We walked along arm-in-arm though he was much bigger than me. I had an intense sense of privilege & occasion, though I don’t think I envisaged anything particular happening. Nor did it. He said it wd be awfully sad when he left, but he wanted to join the War, & play his part. Then he said how perfectly furious he had been when he had heard what Stanbridge had done to me. He would have done something about it, only Stanbridge’s brother being killed had made it impossible. I said I didn’t mind, really; but he said he would never have done a thing like that. When we got back to the potato field, there were remarks. Somebody said, ‘You look a bit stiff, Strong’ & somebody else said, ‘You two look fairly tweaked.’ There was a general impression that we had made love to each other, which was pruriently celebrated by the other boys, as if on the morning after a wedding. I blushed & was delighted at this. I remember sifting through the barely damped forked earth with my hands, picking out the potatoes, the dirt packing behind my nails, & not in the least minding that we hadn’t.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Monsieur de Montmorency was sent to Endand by King Louis XI. in the capacity of ambassador. He conducted himself so well there that he won the friend- ship of the kmg and all the other princes, and they even communicated to him many secret affairs on which they wished to have his advice. One day, when he was at an entertainment given by the king, he was seated beside a milord of high family, who wore, fastened to his doublet^ a small glove such as women use. The glove was fastened with golden hooks, and the seams were adorned with such a great quantity of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and pearls, that the value of the glove was something Sixth cfay.l QUEEN OF NA VARRE. ^cq extraordinary. Monsieur de Montmorency cast his eyes on it so often that the milord perceived he wished to ask him the reason of his magnificence ; and, thinking the explanation would redound to his honour, he said to the ambassador, " I perceive, monsieur, that you are surprised I have so much enriched this poor glove ; but I will tell you the reason I look upon you as a gallant man, and I am sure you know what love is. You must know that I have all my life loved a lady whom I still love and shall love even after I am dead. As my heart was bolder to make a good choice than my tongue to declare it, I remained for seven years without darnig even to show any signs of loving her, for fear, if she perceived them, I should lose the opportunities I had of being frequently with her — a thought which terrified me more than death. But one day, being in a meadow and gazing upon her, I was seized with such a palpitation of the heart that I lost all colour and countenance. She having noticed this, and asked me what was the matter, I replied that I felt intolerably sick at heart. Thinking that this sickness was one in which love had no share, she expressed her pity for it ; and that made me to entreat that she would put her hand on my heart, and see how it beat. She did so, more from charity than affection, and as I held her gloved hand on my heart, its motions became so violent that she perceived I had spoken the truth. Then I pressed her hand on my bosom, and said to her, ' Receive this heart, madam, which struggles to escape from my bosom and put itself in the hands of her from whom I hope for grace, life and pity. It is this heart, madam, which now constrains me to declare the love I have long cherished for you in secret, for neither my heart nor I, madam, can longer withstand so potent a god.' Surprised at so unexpected a declaration, she would 460 THE HErrAMERON OF THE [7\'brr/ 57.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " Since I cannot and dare not say what I think," said Dagoucin, "at least I will speak of a man to whom cruelty was prejudicial and afterwards advantageous. Although love has such a good opinion of its own strength and potency that it likes to show itself quite naked, and finds it extremely irksome, nay, insupport- able to go cloaked, yet those \yho, in obedience to its dictates, make too great haste to disclose themselves often suffer for it, as happened to a gentleman of Castile, whose story I shall relate to you." NOVEL XXIV. Device of a Castilian to make a declaration of love to a queen, and what came of it. There was at the court of a king and queen of Cas- tile, whose names history does not mention, a gentleman of such good birth and comely person that his equal there was not in all Spain. Everyone held his endow- ments in admiration, but still more his eccentricity ; for it had never been perceived that he loved or courted any lady, though there were many at the court who might have fired ice itself ; but there was not one who could kindle the heart of Elisor, for so this gentleman was named. The queen, who was a woman of great virtue, but a woman, nevertheless, and not more exempt than the rest of her sex from that flame which is the more violent the more it is compressed — the queen, I 238 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \N<rvel 24

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Everything in this job is personal: it is government on the ground, journeys of many days with a band of men across deserts or through sudden floods & then the instantaneous fields of flowers. It is not sitting at a desk: it is standing in scant shade & deciding between one naked tribesman and another. It is not bookish & bureaucratic: it takes place in open spaces almost without end, in which the rare, unobvious & beautiful people materialise out of the quivering heat. Their beauty of course is neither here nor there: their heads could grow beneath their shoulders … But when I went back through the doorless aperture into the room where Taha was, asleep, unaware, & yet tormented, like some saint in ecstasy or martyrdom, I felt all my vague, ideal emotions about Africa & my wandering, autocratic life here take substance before my bleary eyes. He lay with his head back, half off the pillow, an arm flung out, the fingers twitching with his pulse, only an inch above the floor … At once I saw he was my responsibility made flesh: he was all the offspring I will never have, all my futurity. He became so beautiful to me that my mouth went dry, & when he woke he found me staring at him. I’m not sure if he was the one I prayed for or the one to whom I made my intercession. I am very, very drunk. It is half past two in the morning. I tiptoe in with fantastical caution, & see him sleeping quietly. Everything I have an impulse to do wd wake him—& that wd be inexcusable. All my love to him goes out in a sweet bedside gesture of self-denial, a kind of blessing, a sweeping of the arms that comes from I don’t know where and is lost into the air. And in a mood of certainty & faint ridiculousness, I stagger to bed. June 1, 1926: A terrible head this morning. I cancelled all engagements, such as they were, & fell into a routine of parallel convalescence with my boy. Hassan evidently foully jealous.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  When he comes, as the New Testament insists, he will bring to light all the hidden things that are now in darkness and expose the thoughts and intentions of the heart. He comes, of course, as the one who died for us; there is no doubting his love. But his love is the love that wants the very best for us and from us, not the sentimental kind that doesn’t want to make a fuss and so refuses to confront the thing that’s actually wrong. He loves in the way a doctor or a surgeon loves, wanting the best, working for life, dealing powerfully and drastically with the cancer or the blocked artery. The only proper Christian way to think of the second coming is, as I said, with humility and patience. But also with faith, hope, and love. “And our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love.” That is our hope, our longing, our delight. Even so, we pray with the second to last verse of the Bible, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Jesus Today Jesus yesterday, Jesus tomorrow. What about Jesus today? We omitted (deliberately) one of the other vital events that, in the New Testament, complete the story of Jesus. The resurrection is all about Jesus as the prototype of the new creation. The ascension is all about Jesus as the ruler of the new creation as it breaks into the world of the old. The second coming is all about Jesus as the coming Lord and judge who will transform the entire creation. And, in between resurrection and ascension, on the one hand, and the second coming, on the other, Jesus is the one who sends the Holy Spirit, his own Spirit, into the lives of his followers, so that he himself is powerfully present with them and in them, guiding them, directing them, and above all enabling them to bear witness to him as the world’s true Lord and work to make that sovereign rule a reality. This—the coming of the Spirit, the story of Pentecost as in Acts 2—is a vital part of the story of Jesus. Again, I and others have written a good deal about this. All we can do here is to summarize the main points in the light of what we’ve said about Jesus so far. The Acts of the Apostles is the New Testament book that is most obviously about what happens when the Spirit comes. It should be equally obvious that the Spirit enables Jesus’s followers to do and say things that the authorities, both Jewish and pagan, see as dangerous nonsense—just as they did with Jesus himself.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  In a swift, unconscious convulsion he clutched together the bevelled glass salt and pepper pots. ‘Of course not. I love you.’ He looked up for a split second and then went on very quickly and quietly, pushing the last French beans around his plate with his fork, ‘I really love you, I don’t think I could live without you. I couldn’t bear it when you were ill, and … I don’t know …’ It was much more of an avowal than I’d asked for, and the tears came to my eyes and I grinned at the same time. I covered his hand that was coupling the cruet with my own, and looked anywhere but at him—around the horrible, narrow but disproportionately tall room, which had obviously been made by splitting some more generous space in two. Afterwards we got changed upstairs and shared a tooth-mug of vodka, which made me if anything more amorous, though in a generalised way, as if it were not just Phil but the whole world that was in love with me. I put on some very old, faded, tight-loose pink jeans and a white T-shirt with no arms and side-seams ripped open almost to my hips. Phil squeezed into other new acquisitions—some hugging and rather High Street dark blue slacks with a thin white belt, and a gripping pale blue T-shirt. When we were clear of the hotel I took Phil’s arm. It moved me to do this, to insist out loud that he was mine (he himself, keen to be so claimed, didn’t quite flow with it, butchly somehow held himself apart—though I locked my fingers through his). At Winchester one summer day I had run across a couple of queens-one perhaps an old Wykehamist showing his friend the places where his honour died. They had wandered over to Gunner’s Hole, that curving canal-like backwater, drawn off and returning to the Itchen, where in Charles’s day swimming had taken place. Now, of course, there was a beautiful indoor pool—where I was soon to establish my freestyle record—and the Hole had surrendered, as it must always have promised to do, to crowding cow-parsley and heavy seeded grasses, while in the water itself long green weeds curled to and fro in the current. I came scuffing past through the meadow, hot, shirt undone, and saw them gazing, one pointing at the rioting May-time flowers, then spotting me, giving me a glance—very brief but I felt it—and then the two of them turning back towards College, arm in arm. I mastered a frisson of shock into pleasure—not at them individually (they seemed hopelessly old and refined) but at the openness of their gesture. I wanted men to walk out together. I wanted a man to walk out with. Well, I had one. My heel was suddenly tacky, and I stopped—though Phil kept going and almost pulled me over. I hopped forwards, supported by him, and turned my sole upwards under the yellow street light.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  If I had not been so fiercely and sexually in love with him, these days would have been utterly intolerable. And even so there were spells of repugnance, both at him and at my own susceptibility. Sex took on an almost purgative quality, as if after hours of inertia and evasion we could burn off our unspoken fears in vehement, wordless activity. Sex came to justify his presence there, to confirm that we were not just two strangers trapped together by a fateful mistake. The immediate concern, the first night, had been to get him patched up. I lied to James on the phone, and felt the sudden sadness of complicity. I said that we had been fooling around in the kitchen and there had been an accident with a knife. He came over promptly in his car, and I went down to let him in. He adjusted with only slight awkwardness to his professional role, with a practical briskness which did not quite conceal his curiosity. Arthur was hanging about in my dressing-gown, apprehensive of a doctor; when I introduced them I assumed James would find him attractive, although the makeshift dressing on his cheek spoilt the general impression. It had to be stitched and there was an injection. I watched, out of the way, James’s absorption in the intimate, serious work, running through a long series of subcutaneous stitches and drawing the skin neatly together above. That way, he said, the scar would be smaller. Arthur shot me little tear-whelmed glances as it took place, and I looked on, firm and encouraging, as a parent might over some necessary ordeal of its child. I was touched, too, by James’s expertise, his deft, slender hands holding Arthur’s head, his intent application to a task that I could never perform for him. When it was done Arthur looked as if deservedly reproved, past the worst now, his face rueful and very swollen. James washed his hands and said, ‘I’ll have that whisky.’ As I poured it for him he shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Don’t do that again, Will,’ he recommended. ‘Bloody terrifies me.’ I was struck by the uncertainty of it all: he clearly thought we had had a fight and made his own interpretation of what was itself a lie. It was almost amusing how far he was from the truth. ‘I won’t ask you how it happened.’ ‘Oh …’ I waved my arm about. ‘You know.’

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  The union of man with God is twofold. One way is by affection, and this is brought about by charity, which in a certain sense makes man one with God in affection, as is said in 1 Corinthians 6:17: “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Through this virtue God dwells in man, according to John 14:23: “If anyone love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make Our abode with him.” It also causes man to be in God, according to I John 4: 16: “He who abides in charity abides in God, and God in him.” By receiving this gratuitous gift, therefore, man is made pleasing to God, and he is brought so far that by the love of charity he becomes one spirit with God: he is in God and God is in him. Hence the Apostle teaches, in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, that without charity the other gifts do not profit men: they cannot make men pleasing to God unless charity is present. This grace is common to all the saints. And so the man Christ, when asking for this grace for His disciples in prayer, begs: “That they may be one,” namely, by the bond of love, as We also are one” (John 17:22). There is another conjunction of man with God that is brought about, not only by affection or inhabitation, but also by the unity of hypostasis or person, so that one and the same hypostasis or person is both God and man. And this conjunction of man with God is proper to Jesus Christ. We have already spoken at length of this union. In truth, this is a singular grace of the man Christ, that He is united to God in unity of person. Clearly the grace was given gratis, for it exceeds the capacity of nature, and besides, there were no merits to precede this gift. But it also makes Him supremely pleasing to God, so that the Father says of Him in a unique sense: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3: 17; 17: 5), The difference between these two graces seems to be as follows. The grace whereby man is united to God by affection exists in the soul as something habitual. For that union is accomplished through an act of love, and perfect acts issue from habit; consequently some habitual grace is infused into the soul to produce that eminently perfect habit whereby the soul is united to God by love. On the other hand, personal or hypostatic being is constituted, not by any habit, but by the natures to which the hypostases or persons pertain. Therefore the union of human nature with God in unity of person is brought about, not by some habitual grace, but by the conjunction of the natures themselves in one person.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I was deeply aware that it was not a thing that could be appealed against. Also after that the teasing stopped, & I was shown a companionable respect. And we all learnt, when the Second Master himself came to the dormitory late at night a few weeks later, that Stanbridge’s brother had been killed in France: Stanbridge himself became clouded about & supported by the decent & entirely artificial respect that we young gentlemen accorded to the bereaved. Every week brought news of the deaths on the battlefields, often of Wykehamists who were fresh in the memories of dons & boys, & many of whom had been lavishly adored. Things did not pick up with Strong until the next term, when he had me as his valet. I put up a slight resistance to this idea, because there was something unnatural in being sweated. In the holidays I had servants of my own, so it seemed absurd to become a paid lackey in the term. Yet Strong was very businesslike & pleasant in his proposal. Although he was a College man he had, I now knew, the reputation of not being very bright. I should say what he looked like: solidly built, with a wide, square face, cleft chin, square nose, dark, deep-set eyes, a heavy beard for a schoolboy, & thick, curly hair that was almost black. His father was a banker, not a country person, but he had lived mostly with his mother near Fordingbridge. He had rather bandy legs, & walked on the outside edges of his feet. I did not particularly need the money I got from being his valet but all the men who were valets agreed that the money was why they did it. It soon became clear that he was very fond of me. He would make me clean his shoes & make his bed & cook his toast in Chambers over the coal fire. I did not really begin to fall in love with him until he became more obliging, calling me to him for no reason other than to have me there, or question me about something I was supposed to know—all this of course very shy & inept although it had to me the fascination of authority. But then other boys noticed that he had a softness for me, and brocked us both, so that I, who had been as unconscious as ever of anything erotic, suddenly learnt what was going on &, by some profound power of suggestion, what my feelings actually were. As soon as they said we were always together, I glowed that our secret had been revealed—although until that moment I had not known the secret myself. At first there were fighting denials, but the pleasure of affection overrode them, a pleasure oddly shared by the other boys, who were both catty and collusive. All was well in Chambers, but we were awkward when alone.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I colour to remember how at first I assumed that James fancied me, so infatuated was I with myself. A few days later we met again at a cricket match in the Parks (my French boy having turned moody and hostile), drank beer together all afternoon, sat up late listening to Wagner, and I realised that what he liked was my company, and the fact that we felt the same about boys and music. We reached the stage of drunkenness where Brünnhilde’s Immolation seems to last only thirty seconds or so, though each bar is still a miraculous revelation. When he turned off the gramophone, stood up and said, ‘Well, you must go, darling,’ I was smitten with friendship, moved especially that he did not want me to stay. After that we met almost every day of our undergraduate careers. Tonight we were meeting in the Volunteer, my local gay pub. Mildly art-nouveau and metropolitan outside, with mysteriously opaque acid-etched windows, the Volunteer inside, after disastrous refurbishments, was an eternal parable of disappointment. A little back bar, favoured by the elderly, retained some period character, but the rest had been laid waste into the vast areas required for the mass jostling and cruising of a Friday or Saturday night. Round tables with beaten copper tops were aligned in front of the leather-covered tram which ran along the walls. In season, a fire burnt in the grate, the adjustable gas jets failing to kindle the synthetic logs. When it was lit the flames showed up the hundreds of fag-ends that had unthinkingly been thrown in. The pub was at its least inspiriting in the early evening. Hardy regulars, resigned to hours of waiting, lounged at the bar or filled in time with the Evening Standard, inching their way down pints of lager, glowering at any newcomers and exchanging greetings in tones that suggested that things were pretty bad. And so they were. The Volunteer was a second-division gay pub, and while the glamorous and fashionable were chatting each other up in King’s Cross or St Martin’s Lane, a mood of provincial neglect settled over it. It seemed, as I bought my bottle of Guinness and retired to a corner, like the waiting-room of a station on a branch line where the last train was not expected for quite some time. One of the barmen, very thin in very tight jeans, and with a lugubrious, made-up manner, wandered across to the door and stood looking out over the pavement, a lust-quenching advertisement to any potential drinker. ‘Startin’ to rain,’ he said to no one in particular as he turned back into the bar. James, of course, had an umbrella and trotted in a minute or two later looking very respectable. He had just come from surgery.