Fr. Jarek Kurek: “I Hate and I Love, Therefore I Am” is the title of the first major work by Canadian Anne Carson, the recently announced winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature.
This reworking of the philosopher’s famous statement, “I think, therefore I am,” marked the beginning of our poet’s journey towards understanding of human desire and love.
Initially, drawing inspiration mostly from her favourite ancient Greeks, she couldn’t help but see the ambivalent nature of love, its inherent ‘bittersweet’ character. Almost everyone has experienced it: it starts so beautifully, feels so pleasant, and then, sadly, it all ends in pain, bringing a great deal of suffering. And regardless, we still look for it…
Some 20 years later, however, Carson was to discover a different, superior understanding of love by reading closely some Christian writings from the Middle Ages. It was a French mystic, Marguerite Porete, who, supposedly addressing her book to ‘the simple souls’, showed her how to go beyond hate and love, pleasure and pain, laying bare for her the mystery of supreme, divine love.
Now, why not imitate this distinguished writer for the sake of our own spiritual growth? Why not, after hearing today’s Gospel, look into that mysterious book that captured Carson’s attention and thus learn more about love from that 13th-century laywoman?
For Marguerite Porete, loving God with all our heart means that our thoughts should always be truly in God; with our soul, that we should speak nothing but the truth until death; with all our strength, that we should accomplish all our works purely for God; and loving our neighbours as ourselves means that we should neither do, nor think, nor say anything towards them that we would not wish them to do, think, or say towards us.
No doubt, this is a tall order for many of us. But is that all? Is that all that can be done?
Not for Marguerite. And perhaps not for anyone who has a gentle heart and is filled with noble courage within.
‘Do not be afraid to come higher,’ suggests the mystic, especially since doing more than is merely commanded or expected will please anyone you truly love. It will, no doubt, require going beyond yourself, indeed losing yourself, following the example we have in Jesus Christ himself. It will mean making your work of love go beyond what is ordinary, but this extraordinary dimension of it will allow you to experience what Marguerite calls ‘the boiling desire of love’. Even more, before long, it will allow you to have another experience: that of ‘the touch of the pure delight of love’, the source of spiritual joy and charm.
A true wonder might be at work. Having overcome the commonly assumed ways of thinking, we can all be transformed into divine love, thus becoming God’s work of love in the world. Needless to say, this requires a humble realisation: an awareness of our own spiritual poverty and of the fact that this divine seed of love, planted in us, is God’s gift, for which we need to praise Him.
Ultimately, it is also up to His divine will to will and bring it to fruition; we are no longer supposed to will or desire anything. At this stage, it is God who works in us. We gradually become nothing, and yet all—in God, and God in us.