This same ardour incites and presses us also (_urget_ is the word used by
St. Paul) to do our utmost to aid our neighbour to rise from sin, which
renders him displeasing to God, and to prevent sin by which the Divine
Goodness is offended. This is what is properly called zeal, the zeal which
consumed the Psalmist when he saw how the wicked forget God, and which
caused him to cry out: _My zeal has made me pine away, because my enemies
forgot thy words_.[2] And again, _The zeal of thy house hath eaten me
up_.[3]

You ask if this love of benevolence might not also be exercised towards God
in respect of that interior and infinite good which He possesses and which
is Himself. I reply, with our Blessed Father in his Theotimus, that we can
wish Him to have this good, by rejoicing in the fact that He has it, and
that He is what He is; hence that vehement outburst of David, _Know ye,
that the Lord he is God_.[4] And again, _A great King above all gods_.

Moreover, the mystical elevations and the ecstasies of the Saints were acts
of the love of God in which they wished Him all good and rejoiced in His
possessing it. Our imagination, too, may help us, as it did St. Augustine,
of whom our Blessed Father writes:

"This desire, then, of God, by imagination of impossibilities, may be
sometimes profitably practised in moments of great and extraordinary
feelings and fervours. We are told that the great St. Augustine often made
such acts, pouring out in an excess of love these words: 'Ah! Lord, I am
Augustine, and Thou art God; but still, if that which neither is nor can be
were, that I were God, and thou Augustine, I would, changing my condition
with Thee, become Augustine to the end that Thou mightest be God.'"[5]