The philosophers say the soul is bigger than the heavens. St John says: ‘He who sat upon the throne declared, ‘ Behold, I make all things new.”’’ Now, according to St Augustine, ‘ God’s speaking is his child-bearing and his child-birth is his Word.” God spake never a word but one and that he holds so dear that he will never say another. If God stopped saying his Word, but for an instant even, heaven and earth would disappear. Augustine says : “ As the marriage of man and woman is for good and all, so is the _ marriage of the soul.’ The highest power of the soul, the one for ever straining up to God, is called the man. The lower power, the one that is condemned to wander among mortals, is the maid. The higher power, the man, goes all uncovered. But the lower power, the maid, is closely veiled and this lower power is taken to the higher. To this nature it belongs to be always active. It tries all the time, father-like, to beget ; and were it not prevented, a son would be always being born as with the heavenly Father. But what God does of his free gift (man’s) nature hinders and a girl is born ; but were there neither time nor place nor matter, man would rejuvenate himself as the Son does the Father, always.
God said: ‘ Behold I make all things fruitful.” Then why am I myself not fruitful ? God first bears his image in the God-loving ‘soul and afterwards himself. If God gave himself to the soul here in time she would be vexed. So he gives her himself in eternity, in the perennial now, up-springing freshly without ceasing. She is too curious to rest until she finds her source. This is quite plain from Philip’s words: ‘Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied.’ As the eternal Son of God comes welling up in his paternal heart, so he wells up in the God-loving soul. Mortal things work outwardly, ghostly things work inwardly. The soul this birth once happens in, that soul is nigh let into God; if it happens twice she gets still more into God. The more frequent this birth the deeper in God and the closer knit into the Father’s heart. This birth transcends here and now. Here, that is, place ; now, that is, time. It befalls in eternity. May we, being born in him, enable him to bear himself in us. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen. ee
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Rejoice in the Lord
Gaudete in domini, iterum gaudete ete. (Philip. 4,). St Paul says: ‘ Rejoice in the Lord and have no more care: the Lord is present with yourthoughts which are known unto God in prayer and thanks- giving.’ ‘ Rejoice in the Lord alway,’ he says. Jerome declares that none receives knowledge nor wisdom nor honour from God
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except he be a virtuous man. No virtuous man is he who, changing not his ways, does not receive from God knowledge and wisdom and joy. He says again: ‘ Rejoice in the Lord.’ Not in our Lord but in the Lord. I have repeatedly explained that God’s lordship consists not alone in his being lord of all creatures : his lordship consists in having the power to create a thousand worlds and to transcend them every one in his pure essence: therein lies his lordship.
‘ Rejoice in the Lord (alway),’ he says. And here we note two precepts. First, that we must remain all within in the Lord, not looking for him outside whether in knowledge or in love: simply rejoice within in the Lord. The other precept is: rejoice in his innermost in his first, whence all things get their joy and take their being. That is the meaning of ‘ Rejoice alway.’ As St Augustine hath it, ‘ He rejoices all the time who is rejoicing above time and timelessly.’ Then he goes on to say: ‘Have no more care. The Lord is present, is at hand.’ The soul must needs cast off all care what time she is rejoicing in the Lord, leastwise on her union with God. And hence his words, ‘ Have no more care : the Lord is present, he is nigh.’ In other words, God is with us in our inmost soul, provided he find us within and not gone out on business with our five senses. The soul must stop at home in her innermost, purest self; be ever within and not flying out : there God is present, God is nigh.
Another meaning of the particle by which he employs. He is in himself, not going far out but remaining all by himself. Quoth David: ‘ Rejoice, my soul, O Lord, for unto thee have I lifted her up.’ The soul must put forth all her strength to lift herself above herself and be translated beyond time and place into the void where God is in and by himself, not going out nor eke in touch with any outside thing. Jerome remarks that ‘God can no more have recourse to time and temporal things than stones can have angelic wisdom.’ He says: ‘The Lord is nigh.’ Quoth David: ‘God is nigh unto all them that call upon him, that call upon him in truth and invoke him.’ How to call upon him, to call upon him in truth, to invoke him, that I leave aside. But he uses the words ‘in truth.’ The Son alone is the truth and not the Father, save in the sense that they are one truth in their essence. That is truth which reveals what I have in my heart without likeness. This revelation is truth. The Son alone is the truth. The whole content of the Father’s love he speaks at once in his Son. This utterance, this act, is the truth.
He goes on to say: ‘ Your thoughts are known unto him in the -Lord,’ 7.e. in this truth with the Father. Faith inheres in in- tellectual light and sight in the combative faculty which is always
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aspiring to the highest and the purest : to the truth, where God is in himself. I have sometimes said, watch me these souls: their ı power is too free, too passionate to bear restraint of any kind.
The Angel Gabriel Was Sent!
Missus est Gabriel angelus etc. (Luc. 1,,). St Luke says in his gospel, ‘the angel was sent from God into a land called Galilee, into a town called Nazareth, to a virgin called Mary, who was of the house of David.’ According to Bede, the theologian, this was the beginning of our salvation. I have said before and say again that everything our Lord has ever done he did simply to the end that God might be with us and that we might be one with him, and that is the reason why God was made man. The masters say that God was ever being born in our Lady ghostly ere ever he was born of her in flesh, and from the overflow of that begetting wherein the heavenly Father begat his one-begotten Son within her soul the eternal Word received its human nature in her and she became with carnal child.
He says, “the angel was sent from God.’ The soul would scorn to have the angelic light were it not sent to her from God; if there were not concealed in it the light of God to make the angel’s light detectable, she would have none of it.
He says, ‘the angel.’ What is an angel? Three doctors give three different definitions of what an angel is. Dionysius says, An angel is a mirror without flaw and passing clear containing the reflection of God’s light. Augustine says, An angel is nigh unto God and matter is nigh unto him. John Damascene says, An angel is a reflection of God and through all that is his there is shining the image of God. The soul has this image in her summit whereon the light of God for ever shines. This is his first definition of an angel. Later on he calls him a dividing sword, aflame with divine desire, and, he adds, ‘ angels are free and inimical to matter.’
He says, ‘the angel was sent from God.’ What for? Accord- ing to Dionysius, an angel has three functions. First, he purifies, next he enlightens, and lastly he perfects. He purifies the soul from stain, i.e. he purges her from matter and gathers her together to herself, cleansing her from foulness as one angel does another. Then he ‘enlightens her in twofold fashion. Divine ‚light is so overwhelming that the soul is unable to bear it unless it is tempered in the angel’s light and so conveyed into the soul. He enlightens
1 See also Sievers’ No. 2.
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her therefore by reflection. The angel conveys his own knowledge to the soul and strengthens her in this way to bear the light of God.
If I were in a wilderness alone and was afraid, the presence of a child would dissipate my dread and give me courage, so noble, so blithe a thing is life. Failing a child, a beast would comfort me. Hence necromancers use an animal, a dog (for instance), the animal’s vitality invigorating them. Knowledge is power. The angel conveyed it to the soul in preparation for the light of God.
He says, ‘ the angel was sent from God.’ The soul must be like an angel in the ways that I have named if the Son is to be sent to her and born in her. But there remains the question of how the angel perfects her. May God send his angel to us, So help us God. Amen.
The Angel Gabriel Was Sent
Missus est Gabriel angelus (Luc. 1,,). ‘In time the angel Gabriel was sent from God.’ Inwhattime? Inthe sixth month, John being then quick within his mother’s womb. When anyone asks me, Why do we pray or why do we fast or do our work withal, I say, So that God may be born in our souls. What were the scriptures written for and why did God create the world and the angelic nature? Simply that God might be born in the soul. All cereal nature means wheat, all treasure nature means gold, all generation means man. As the philosopher says, No animal exists but has somewhat in common with mankind in time. First of all when a word is conceived in my mind it is a subtle, intangible thing ; it is true word when it takes shape in my thought. Later, as spoken aloud by my mouth, it is but an outward expression of the interior word. Even so the eternal Word is spoken in the inner- most and purest recesses of the soul, in the summit of her rational nature, and there befalls this birth. Whoso has nothing more than a firm belief in and lively conviction of this will be glad to know how this birth comes to pass and what conduces to it.
St Paul says: ‘In the fullness of time God sent his Son.’ St Augustine was asked what it meant, this fullness of time. It is the fullness (or end) of the day when the day is done: then the day is over. Certain it is that there is no time where this birth befalls, for nothing hinders this birth so much as time and creature. It is an obvious fact that time affects neither God nor the soul. Did time touch the soul she would not be soul. If God were affected by time he would not be God. Further, if time could touch the soul, then God could not be born in her. The soul wherein God is born must have escaped from time, and time must
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have dropped away from her; she must be absolutely one in will and desire.
Another fullness of time. Ifsomeone had the knowledge and the power to gather up the time and all the happenings of these six thousand years and all that is to come ere the world ends to boot, all this, summed up into one present now, would be the fullness of time. This is the now of eternity, when the soul knows all things in God, as new and fresh and lovely as I find them now at present. The narrowest of the powers of my soul is more than heaven wide. To say nothing of the intellect wherein there is measureless space, wherein I amas near a place a thousand miles away as the spot I am standing on this moment. Theologians teach that the angel hosts are countless, the number of them cannot be conceived. But to one who sees distinctions apart from multiplicity and \ number, to him, I say, a hundred is as one. Were there a | hundred Persons in the Godhead he would still perceive them} as one God.