As regards the angels. The angels, of whatever rank, abet and assist at God’s birth in the soul; that is to say, they have satisfac- tion, they delight and rejoice in this birth. Nothing is wrought by the angels: the birth is due to God alone and anything that ministers thereto is work of service. May God be born in us, So help us God. Amen.
‘Vision Is the Whole Reward’
Beatus es, Simon Bariona, quia caro et sanguis non revelavit tibi, sed pater meus, qui in ceelis est (Matt. 16,7). * Blessed art thou, Simon Peter,’ says our Lord, ‘for flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in heaven.“ St Peter has four names: Peter and Barjona and Simon and Cephas. Our Lord says, ‘ Blessed (6r happy) art thou.’ Everyone desires happiness. As the philosopher hath it, All men desire to be. Hence St Augustine’s dictum, The good man wants no praise, he wants to be praiseworthy. And our own doctors teach withal that virtue is so pure, so wholly abstract and detached from corporal things in the ground and summit of its nature that nothing what- ever can occur therein without defiling virtue and introducing vice. The least thought or suggestion of self-seeking and it is not virtue : it is turned to vice. Such is virtue by nature. ae}
A heathen philosopher says, Virtue, except for virtue’s sake, is in no wise a virtue. If its object is praise or aught fe is
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bartering virtue. Genuine virtue is not to be sold for anything on earth. Wherefore the good man seeks no praise: he seeks to be praiseworthy. It is not the chiding that we ought to mind but the fact of deserving to be chidden. ‘Blessed art thou,’ quoth our Lord. Beatitude lies in four ‚things. To have all that has being and is lustily to be desired and brings delight ; to have it all at once and whole in the undivided soul and that in God, revealed in its perfection, in its flower, where it first burgeons forth in the ground of its existence, and all con- ceived where God is conceiving himself—that is happiness. The name Peter means seer of God. Now, theologians question whether the kernel of external life lies more in intellect or will. Will has two operations: desire and love. Intellect, with its simple function, is therefore better; its work is understanding, and it never stops till it gets a naked hold on what it sees. Withal it runs ahead of will and tells it what to love. We desire a thing while as yet we do not possess it. When we have it we love it: desire then falling away. What must a man be to see God? He must be dead. ‘No man can see me and live,’ said our Lord. Now St Gregory says, q ‘That man is dead who is dead to the world.’ Ye can judge for "yourselves how dead one may be and how little can touch us the things of this world. _By dying to this world we do not die to God. St Augustine prayed a variety of prayers. ‘ Grant me, Lord,’ yo & he said, ‘to know both thee and me.’ ‘O Lord, have mercy E upon me and show me thy face and grant me that I die not until I eternally behold thee.’ This is the first point: one must be _dead to see God. So much for the first name, Peter.
One philosopher says, were there no means we should see the beloved in heaven. But another one says, were there no means we should see nothing. Both of them are right. The colour on the wall which is carried to my eye is filtered and refined in the air and in the light and transmitted in a pure state to my eye.
ae „ Even so the soul must be strained by light and grace before it can 6, see God. So rather is that master right who said that without wor means we should not see at all. But the other one is also right who said that without means we should see the beloved in heaven. For the soul would see God naked if there were nothing between.
The second name, Barjona, signifies a son of grace, in whom the soul, clarified and sublimed, is meet for the vision of God.
The third name is Simon. That is to say, one who listens, one who cbeys. To hear God one must be divorced from the world. David says, ‘I will be still and listen to what God is saying in me.’ He pronounces peace in his Word, on his saints, on his people, on all such as commune with their heart. Happy the man who is
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busy attending to what God is saying in him. He is directly subject to the divine light-ray. The soul that stands with all her powers under the light of God is fired and inflamed with divine love.
The divine light shines straight in from above, and a perpendicular 7“.
_sun on one’s head is a thing that few can survive. Yet the highest , power of the soul, her head, is held erect beneath this shaft of godly
light so that there can shine in this light divine which I have oft described as being so bright, so overwhelming, so transcendent, that all lights are but darkness in comparison with this light. All creatures, as so being, are as naught ; dowsed in the light wherein they get their being they are aught. How noble soever the natural mind yet to reach, to grasp God without means the soul must possess these six qualifications I speak of.
First, she.is dead-to-ehanging-things. Next, she is well clarified in light and grace. Thirdly, she is without means. Fourthly, she hears God’s Word in her heart. Fifth, she is under the
divine light. The sixth is the heathen philosopher’s definition
of happiness: one perpetual ascension and vision of beatitude in God. Where the Son himself is understanding, in his first leaping forth, there in God’s highest we too shall understand. Wherefore it behoves us to keep our head turned steadfastly that way. er
Cephas means a head. Understanding is the head of the soul. The superficial notion is that love stands first. But the soundest arguments expressly state (what is the truth) that the kernel of ‘eternal life lies rather in knowledge than in love. This mark, for our best masters say, will no special thing, and lo ! intellect, under- standing, this flies straight up to God. Love turns to the loved : she finds there what is good. Intellect seizes the cause of the good. Honey is sweeter in itself than anything we make from it. Love takes God as-being-sweet, but intellect goes.deeper-and-conceives God as being. ‘ Blessed art thou, Simon Peter,’ quoth our Lord, To the righteous man God gives divine being, and calls him by the name which is appropriate to that being. Thus he goes on to speak of ‘my Father which is in heaven.” Among names none is more appropriate than He-who-is. That one should recognise a thing and simply say, it is, would seem absurd ; call it a stone, a bit of wood, and we know what that means. But suppose every- thing detached, abstracted, pared away, and nothing left except
2.08 : Reusor,
the is; that is the characteristic nature of his name. Our Lord |
promised his disciples, ‘ My followers shall sit at my table in my Father’s kingdom, and shall eat my meat and drink my drink which my Father hath prepared for me.’ Happy is the wight who has attained to receiving with the Son just where the Son receives. Right there we too shall find our happiness, and there in
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his felicity, there where he has his being, in that same ground his friends shall all behold and thence shall draw their happiness. That is the table in God’s kingdom. May we approach that table, So help us God. Amen.
The Man in the Soul
Vir meus servus tuus mortuus est (4 Reg..4,-,). The woman said to the prophet, ‘My husband thy servant is dead and the creditors are come to take my two sons as bondsmen for the debt, for I have nothing but a drop of oil.’ Then said the prophet, * Go borrow empty vessels and pour a little in: it will increase and multiply and will pay thy debt and release thy sons. Thou and thy children can live on the rest.’
The spark (i.e. the intellect, the head of the soul), the so-called
> husband of the soul, is none _other-than-a-spark the divine / nature, a divine light, a ray{ an imprint .of divinity. / A woman begged our Lord for the water which he gives. Whoso drinks
of this shall never thirst. Theologians say, the best gift of God is the Holy Ghost wherein God bestows all his grace and favour, his living water, namely. ‘ Whom I give this to shall never thirst.’ This water is grace and light upspringing in the soul to everlasting life. ©
The woman said, ‘ Sir, give me of this water’ And our Lord replied, ‘Bring me thine husband.’ She said, ‘I have no husband.’ Quoth our Lord, ‘ Thou hast well said: thou hast not one, thou hast had five, and he whom now thou hast is not thine husband.’ St Augustine asks: ‘Why does our Lord reply, “ Thou hast well said’? ?’ What he means is this: thy five senses, these are the five husbands thou hadst in thy youth, after thine own heart; now in thine age thou hast one, not thine own: intellect, namely, and this thou dost not obey. When the man in the soul, the intellect, is dead, unchecked evil prevails. To separate soul and body is bad enough, but for the soul to be divorced from God, that is a far worse matter. As the soul is the life of the body so God is the life of the soul. As the soul suffuses our members so God suffuses the powers of the soul and is passed on by them in goodness and love to everything round that they may be aware of him as flowing all the time, i.e. above time, in eternity and in the life they live.
The woman said, ‘Sir, my husband thy servant is dead.’ Servus means one who receives, receiving another’s; one who keeps and keeps for another. To keep for himself would make
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him a thief. Intellect is a servant, more so than will is or love. Will and love fall on God as being good : were he not good they,
would ignore him. But intellect pierces right through into | yo :
essence, reckless of goodness, of power, of wisdom, of bbings |
accidental whatever they be and added to God. Not looking for these she gets them in him when, merged into his essence, she knows God simply as existence. What though he be not good nor just,
yet she enjoys him as|pure being. ) Here intellect is like the highest ©
rank of angels of which there ‘are three choirs. The Thrones receive God into them and preserve God in themselves. In the Cherubim God rests; they see God continually. The Seraphim are ardent (burning): like to these is the God-bearing intellect. With these angels the intellect spies God, in his vestibule, naked, as one without difference.
Quoth the woman, ‘Sir, my husband thy servant is dead, and the creditors have come for my two sons.’ What are the two
sons of the soul? St Augustine, and with him a heathen doctor, | \"
speaks of the two faces of the soul. One is turned towards this‘ world and towards the body, in this she works virtue and wisdom. | The other face gazes straight into God ; the divine light is always in it, and this tells upon it unless, through being from home, she has it unawares. When the spark of the intellect carries right into God, then the man is alive. The birth takes place. Not once a year it happens nor yet once a month nor once a day but all the time, beyond time, in the open, where there is neither here nor now nor thought nor nature. That is why we speak of sons, not daughters.
Now, to speak of the two sons in another sense. As under- standing and will. Understanding leaps out of the intellect first and is afterwards followed by will, from them both. But no more
of this.—These, imnagps of intellect may be taken in yet another (\ fi) wer, the other as actuality. One heathen doctor |“ bod