The fifth light is divine light. Therein stood Mary always, bearing her gracious child. But Christ was born of her bodily. This birth transcends all sense and reason and whoso is rapt away into this unveiled light perceives himself none other than that essence wherein God has his being, his very Godhead. An we would bear with Mary this eternal Word we must be caught up past the four lights into this fifth where we are ever giving birth to God in spirit as Mary bare him in the flesh. _
To continue. ‘ He was in the world and the world knew him not,’ vide what was said above anent the difference between created and uncreated light. I say, this means in the world of his pro- vidential knowledge. What time the world was in the Father as uncreated essence, his light, his flowing intellect to wit, was shining on this world-stuff wherein the world subsisted in the Father in uncreated formless simplicity. But in its first eruption
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the world leaps forth manifold albeit this multiplieity is one essentially. In this eruption this world was self-luminous light.
Mark a second interpretation of the words, ‘He was in the world and the world was made by him.’ By this world I under- stand none other than the divine man. See how this divine light may be called the world. Isay, man has within his soul the power of being all creatures, stones, trees and all the rest of them, and that in this same potentiality his mind has gotten the universal prototype of creatures discriminately. So within the ambit of her five senses the soul compares with rational and irrational creatures. In this sense the soul has gotten both the form and matter, the rational and irrational natures of creature generally. In this sense all things were made in man. And by the same token, before God made everything as such, hell, purgatory, everything, was God: this man is the world this light was in, this is the world that was made by him. John says, ‘ All things were made by him and without him was not anything made.’ From which I can only gather that multitudinous man too is the world, to wit the world of darkness which comprehended not the light referred to in Christ’s words, ‘I am the light of the world and whoso walketh in me walketh not in darkness.’ Here our Lord is inviting rational men to follow his example.
He goes on to say, ‘ He came into his own and his own received him not.’ This refers to Christ and I apply it to the individual soul as well. He is come into his own and his own have neither known him nor accepted him. Isay : whatever is found in Christ’s nature is found in the highest power of the soul, therefore God is man’s own, but his own is not received. by him. I refer to the intellectual five senses. Clearly we have a parable of this in the woman at the well to whom Christ said, ‘ Show me thy husband.’ The woman answered, ‘I have no husband.’ Christ said, ‘ Thou sayest truly: thou hast had five husbands and him whom thou now hast“is not really thy husband.’ I take it that her interests had lain in her five senses. Christ’s words, ‘ him whom thou now hast is not really thy husband,’ I interpret to mean that she was neglecting the intellect she had so it was no true man to her. When God comes sensibly to the soul, which is his own, he is received by what is not his own, to wit the outward senses and inward faculties of the soul. When God is conceived by the soul insensibly then we can say, ‘our abode is in heaven.’ This passage is clear in the light of the foregoing.
I Brother John, propound two questions. They concern the statement, ‘ But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become God’s sons, even to them that believe in his name.’ I ask in the first place, does the power to become God’s sons lie
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with us or with God ? In the second I ask, what name do we believe in? My answers are briefly as follows.
To start with it must be borne in mind that God is without will, without love, without justice, without mercy, nay without divinity or anything we can ascribe to him or predicate of him or attribute to him (for any good attributed to God or predicated of him simply reduces God to naught), so it is with the soul that lies the power, the ability to make this her own will; in her real will she is incapable of stooping to anything opposed to the nature of that will, and at the point where God and spirit vanish, in that same point I am the Son of God, begotten of God eternally according to Christ’s words, ‘ I am the only-begotten Son of God,’ for I am free from self in all creaturehood. Where I am God is and where God is I am and our joint love is God and he who dwells in this love dwells in God and God in him. Then mine is the highest angel God has in heaven, as much as he is God’s, by whose power and by whose might we make ourselves God’s sons, for he em- powers us with himself, penetrating the will of the soul even as Father and Son permeate their common Spirit. That is the answer to the first question to the best of my knowledge at present.
Now to answer the second question: What divine name do we believe in? That is written in the gospel in Christ’s words, ‘Father, this is eternity or eternal life, to believe in thee the true God, i.e. truly as God.’ Truth is God, and love, as truly as God is God. If God is free from names then, I durst not think I have the name of Henry nor of Conrad nor of Ulric for by adding any- thing to God I block him with an idol ; but he who believes in the name of God rejoices in the universal name, to wit the divine name which we believe in. In this unfathomable light of faith, faith makes us of multitudinous knowledge ignorant, of multi- tudinous will without volition, in multitudinous form unshapen. And so with the prophet, ‘I say, ye are Gods.’ Believing in the name of God we are God’s sons. If anyone is able to give a better answer to these two questions I would fain hear it.
(He goes on to say, ‘ Which were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man ’) for flesh and blood and human will unconquered cannot possess the kingdom of heaven till they are born again in God. This is quite clear, the meaning is patent to all. But I desire to speak briefly on the subject of manhood.
Isay : the highest power of the soul is the man, her will namely, which always stands bare and uncovered. The second power is intellect, the woman, who is always veiled, and the lower is raised up to the higher. Now when the power we call the man, i.e. the will, is joined to the power we called the woman, the intellect,
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that is to say, then the woman brings forth fruit in the perennial now. When the male is parted from the female power man’s will is wavering in false light. The apostle truly says, ‘the Word was made fiesh.’ The manhood of Christ as seeing in[to God] has a reflection in the Father’s personal nature. In the groundless substance of the Godhead human nature stands perfectly steady, gazing down in the transcendent light for love of creatures. Thus divine and human nature’are atoned in human nature. And by the same token, even if Adam had not fallen yet would Christ have been made man by reason of the love proceeding which is ever being born in eternity in the divine nature and was bound to become man in Christ owing to the idiosyncrasy of that nature which flowed for aye out of the groundless ground of God. The smallest spark falling from out the least and lowest of the angels would illuminate and outshine this world and it would dim the brightest lights of human and angelic nature did it shine next to God. So Christ restores human nature not angelic nature. As his divinity lay hid in his humanity when ‘ the Word was made flesh ’ in him, so let us hide our human nature in his divine nature in that same Word which was incarnate. By living the Christ life more than my own life I am Christ rather than myself and my proper name is Christ rather than James or John, and so this befall beyond time I am changed into God.
Now listen to another meaning, the incarnation of the Word in the sacrament. Just as he made his body in the sacrament by word and knowledge and took and gave it to his disciples idly, without motion or passion, that is to say, nor was this sacrament consummated by knowledge alone but by words as well, even so I observe that in the highest power of the soul, corresponding to the Father-nature, intellect begat itself in the image of Divinity to smite into this Word as perfect will and in the groundless love of this same will the Holy Ghost was gotten in the Word with this same intellect. And still this birth is ever going on in the sacrament to those who are Christ properly so called : these people are true priests and in the truth, for their going is above the angels and they are not to be touched by temporal things. As Christ said to Mary Magdalene, ‘ Touch me not for I am risen,’ so verily these souls are risen with Christ. God gives himself freely, idly, as he gave himself to his disciples in token of the love which works the same in us, and those who take this sacrament as freely and resignedly and unselfhindered, do receive it as really as the giver gives it and he who takes it otherwise does not wholly and solely resign him to the truth. When in the sacrament I receive God from God thus supersacramentally, I am actually changed into the same that I receive, thus the Word is made
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flesh and dwells among us mystically and wherever this is realized there is the proof of the divine spark, moreover I make bold to say, were anyone prepared for outward food as for the sacrament he would receive God as much as in the sacrament ; which is to many people a hard saying albeit quite consistent with the truth, for the gift prepares for its own reception and I should be the thing prepared for that which has prepared me. St John says, ‘ We have his glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.’ From which I gather that anyone who knows the joys of the divine life is shining within and without like the only Son of God, as St Paul says, ‘ I live not but Christ liveth in me in his love.’
Consider what is meant by sons of God and children of God. To be God’s children in the sense that he created us is not enough. For instance. If I paint my likeness on the wall, he who sees the likeness is not seeing me; but anyone who sees me sees my like- ness and not my likeness merely but my child. If I really knew my soul, anyone who saw my conception of it would say it was my son for I share therewith my energy and nature, and as here so is it in the Godhead. The Father understands himself perfectly clearly so there appears to him his image, that is to say, his Son. The Father is light, the Son is light and image and the Holy Ghost also is light and image and inasmuch as the Father imagines (or conceives) his Son he is called Son and inasmuch as he endows him with his nature he is called his child. Likewise that man is the image of God who, being detached from things, is living as spirit in the spirit of God and such have glory and honour as the only Son of God full of grace and truth of the reflection of God, and really containing and possessing God in them; thus the kingdom of God is within us.
Here endeth the Commentary on this Gospel.
XIX? THE BEATIFIC VISION