Friedrich von Hügel on loving animals

Dearer to God for our love of animals

An internationally respected Catholic scholar and sought-after spiritual director in the first years of the twentieth century, Friedrich von Hügel loved his dog, his “darling little friend” Puck, to whose company he refers several times in Letters to a Niece. This is taken from a letter to an unnamed correspondent in his Selected Letters.

I much like your love for your cats. I deeply love my little dog; and Abbé Huvelin was devoted to his cat. We all three can and will become all the dearer to God for this our love of our little relations, the smaller creatures of God. Again it was God incarnate, it was Jesus of Nazareth, of Gethsemane, of Calvary, and not pure Theism, that first taught this.

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