In Book 12 of the Confessions, Augustine considers heaven not only as a place at which he is aiming to arrive but also as a creature that models right love for us. Augustine considers heaven a creature whose love is perfect because it is always directed toward God’s countenance. In order to find out the direction of one’s love, Augustine explains that one needs to see the end toward which the love is tending (en. Ps. 121.1; doctr. chr. I.27-28).

Augustine comes to this consideration of heaven’s love after reflecting on his own unstable love. In Book 10, he loves God and his neighbor, but he also lacks stability. His love changes at times away from God and neighbor. He does not love God all the time with all his mind and strength. Like ourselves, heaven was created. Yet unlike us, heaven has always participated in God’s eternity (conf. 12.9.9). Augustine meditates on how heaven clings and adheres to God totally and is never separated from God.

Without the permanent quality of heaven’s love, heaven would darken and grow cold. Heaven, though, is bright as a perpetual midday (12.15.21). The perfection of heaven’s love lies in that heaven does not ever loosen itself from God and flow off into any temporal diversity and vicissitude (12.15.19), nor does heaven ever turn away from God’s countenance (12.15.21).

Augustine intriguingly and succinctly describes how our love moves us toward that which we love by writing, “My love is my weight” (conf., 13.9.10; translation mine). This expression is based on an understanding of ancient physics in which weights determine the direction of the movement of objects as well as the magnitude of the movement. In modern science, one can think of the concept of a vector. A vector is a notion used to analyze quantities such as forces and velocity. Vectors have magnitude and direction. They are represented by an arrow with its magnitude represented by the arrow’s length and its direction represented by the slope of the arrow. “My love is my weight” in Confessions 13 could be understood as love as a vector because love, for Augustine, has magnitude and direction. We can examine ourselves and the sum total of our loves by asking ourselves if our life is tending toward love of God and neighbor (direction), and if we are loving God with all our strength and our neighbor as ourselves (magnitude), as well as whether these qualities vary over time (or Augustine’s addition of stability).

Heaven models for Augustine, and for us, clinging to God with perfect direction, magnitude, and stability (12.11.12). So, insofar as we approach the ideal magnitude and direction of our love in a stable manner, we become more perfectly who we are created to be, namely God’s image. Like Augustine, we too hope to find rest by entering heaven, our role model in love. There we hope to be directed unendingly and with all our affection toward the face of God as we praise God eternally in insatiable satiety (S. 362.28-29).