Lumen Fidei - page 35

35
eyes to see reality in a new way, in union with the
beloved. In this sense, Saint Gregory the Great
could write that “amor ipse notitia est ”, love is itself
a kind of knowledge possessed of its own logic.20
It is a relational way of viewing the world, which
then becomes a form of shared knowledge, vi-
sion through the eyes of another and a shared
vision of all that exists. William of Saint-Thierry,
in the Middle Ages, follows this tradition when
he comments on the verse of the Song of Songs
where the lover says to the beloved, “Your eyes
are doves” (Song 1:15).21 The two eyes, says Wil-
liam, are faith-filled reason and love, which then
become one in rising to the contemplation of
God, when our understanding becomes “an un-
derstanding of enlightened love”.22
28. This discovery of love as a source of
knowledge, which is part of the primordial expe-
rience of every man and woman, finds authori-
tative expression in the biblical understanding of
faith. In savouring the love by which God chose
them and made them a people, Israel came to
understand the overall unity of the divine plan.
Faith-knowledge, because it is born of God’s
covenantal love, is knowledge which lights up a
path in history. That is why, in the Bible, truth
and fidelity go together: the true God is the God
20 Homiliae in Evangelia, II, 27, 4: PL 76, 1207.
21 Cf. Expositio super Cantica Canticorum, XVIII, 88: CCL,
Continuatio Mediaevalis 87, 67.
22 Ibid., XIX, 90: CCL, Continuatio Mediaevalis 87, 69.