Modicum videbitis me et modicum non videbitis (Joh. 161, 49). I quote in Latin from the Gospel of St John a saying of our Lord to his disciples. The translation runs, ‘A modicum, a little, ye shall see me and a modicum, a little, and ye shall not see me.’ The disciples were ignorant and did not understand. They were saying to each other, ‘We know not what he means.’ So St John relates, and he was there. Follows a parable which I will not dwell on. Then, knowing what was in their hearts he says - quite plainly, “I shall see you again and your joy shall be full.’ Now, to my mind this saying will bear four interpretations.
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More or less the same in wording but widely different in meaning. The kernel of the prime conception and of eternal happiness is knowledge. One theologist who spoke at Paris insisted with loud fulminations that this is not so. Then up and said another one, better than the best they have at Paris: Sir, you are very positive, but in the gospel did not God declare the very thing that you denounce so roundly ? Our Lord’s words are, ‘ This is eternal life, to know thee the only true God ’—‘ A little and ye shall see me.’ Meaning to say, ye must get to look upon everything in you as little and of small account if ye are ever to see God. It follows that we must observe minutely what will help and hinder divine knowledge. However small what comes from God, if treated rightly it recurs, it comes again, for we have one divine thing of our own that we can work with as with our own soul ; not that I work and God looks on: I, as it were, co-operate with my own tool which is mine and in me. Thus man being lifted up in time shall see God out of himself. I. have sometimes said, the time St Paul saw nothing he saw God. Now I say something better : when St Paul saw all nothing he saw God: when he saw all things as, nothing he saw God, and what God means to say is this : when things are all reduced to naught in you then ye shall see God.
Again, he says, ‘a little and ye shall not see me.’ While time and world, which is little, is within you, ye shall not see me. The angel swore on his eternal life that when this life is done there shall be no more time. And in his gospel St John quite plainly states, ‘the world was made by him and they knew him not.’ In fine then, to quote a heathen doctor, world-and-time is a little thing. It is out of world-and-time that we see God.
Thirdly. He said, ‘a little and ye see me not,’ as though to say: the very smallest thing that is foreign to the soul will prevent her seeing God. For heaven is shut to strangers ; even an angel from another heaven would not succeed in getting in, for it is not his. Why has my mouth, my ear, no sense of heaven ? Because they are not like it. St Bernard says, ‘ My eye is like the heavens in being round and clear and placed high in the body, nor can it brook the entry of any foreign matter.’ Before my eye can see the painting on the wall this must be filtered through the air and in a still more tenuous form be borne into my phantasy, to be assimilated by my understanding. These properties, both, the soul must needs possess ; and this likeness, how subtile soever it may be, with its suggestiveness, its hint of sin, the soul rejects as foreign to herself. If God himself were foreign to the soul she would have none of him. What the eye perceives has to be conveyed to it by means, in images. If there were no means we
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should see nothing. If an angel sees another angel or anything that God has made, he does so by some means. But himself and God he sees immediately. If my soul knows an angel she knows him by some means and in an image, an image imageless, not in an image such as they are here. Soul and angel are material things compared with God. Angelic knowledge, anything created, is a means. Which God wholly lacks: he is known without means, without little. For my soul to know God with nothing between thou must be with me and I with thee.
I will now suggest a meaning quite other than these three. ‘ While ye are little ye do not see me. To see me ye have to grow great.’ Intellect is great indeed, yet small compared with the light of God. Our Lord upbraided his apostles saying, ‘ There is still in you but a little light.‘ They were not devoid of light, but it was weak, the light of grace, the brightest thing God ever made or ever could have made. And after all the soul is small so long as she is still in grace. Sometime or other the soul must rise in grace. If grace is not yet overcome, the soul has still to ascend in grace and, being perfected, to transcend grace: then she sees God.
Fourthly, “and ye shall not see me’: being poor in light and grace ye cannot see God. One must abound in light and grace before one can see God. Grace is a surpassing light, superangelic. In grace we can see God but from afar. While grace exists in us as grace we are not able to see God. ‘ Ye do not see me because I am going to my Father.’ While the soul progresses God remains unseen. While we are on the way to God we have not gotten him. With finding God all progress ends, as our Lord said to St Mary Magdalene, ‘ Touch me not, I am not yet ascended in thee tomy Father.’ While God is ascending in the soul and has not reached the zenith, we are unable to see God. St Paul says, ‘God dwells in light inaccessible.’ And one saint declares, ‘ No man ever saw God.’ St Paul tells us ‘ We shall know God as we are known.’ As God knows himself so we shall know him; as he sees all things in himself so we shall see all things in him. ‘ We shall know as we are known,’ St Paul says. The little being cleared away, I shall see as I am seen, as he sees himself, without little, with nothing between ; all in himself and in him all things, nothing outside him; and we too shall know without little and without means. We shall know in his Son. The Son is the image of the Godhead, not the Godhead itself: he is the idea of God the Father. The Father’s reflection is his only Son. In that idea where nothing exists, in that image we shall be reflected in the Son and by the Son reflected back into the Father: in that image, all the same, where there is no this nor that, we shall know
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God with God’s only Son. May the little depart from us and allow us to know thee the one true God. So help us God. Amen,
The Image and Its Object
Modicum et jam non videbitis (Joh. 16,,, 19). My Latin quota- tion is from the Gospel of St John which we read on Sunday. It is what our Lord said to his disciples, ‘ A modicum, a little, and ye see me not.’ Anything, however small, adhering to the soul prevents your seeing me. St Augustine being asked the meaning of eternal life answered and said: Dost thou ask me what is eternal life? Ask eternal life, see what it says itself. None knows what heat is like the hot, nor wisdom like the wise, none knows the meaning of eternal life so well as the eternal life itself. Our Lord Jesus Christ says, ‘ This is eternal life, to know thee God, the one true God.’ :
“A modicum, a little, and lo! ye see me not.’ Now you must understand that if the soul saw God even from afar, or in some intervening thing, as in a cloud, an instant, she would not turn away from him, not for all the world. What think ye then would happen if she saw God in himself, as he is, face to face in his naked essence ? All creatures God has ever made or could make if he would amount to very little, a mere nothing as compared with God himself. The heavens are big, so vast indeed, were I to tell ye would not credit me. If you could take a needle and prick the heavens with it, that needle-point of heaven, as compared with the whole heavens plus this entire world, would be greater than this universe compared with God. Well and truly then it may. be said, ‘a trifle, a little, and ye shall not see me.” Whilst thou seest aught of creature thou seest naught of God; however little, it must go. Says the soul in the Book of Love, * I ran about and sought him whom my soul loveth and I found him not.’ She met with angels and many things besides, but she found not him whom her soul loved. Then she goes on to say, ‘ It was but a little I passed from them and I found him whom my soul loveth,’ just as though to say: when I had gotten beyond creatures (little things and of small account) I came on him whom my soul loveth. The soul must pass beyond, she must transcend, all creatures before she can find God.
Now you must know, God loves the soul so mightily, he who should rob God of loving the soul would rob him of his very life and being : would kill God, if one may so say ; for the very love
wherewith God loves the soul is what his Holy Breath is blowing in.
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But if God loves the soul so much the soul must be a most important thing.
The philosopher says in his book On the Soul: If there were no means the eye could see a gnat, an ant, in heaven. And he was right, referring to the air and fire, etc. that intervene between the eye and heaven. Another philosopher declares that without means no eye could see at all. Both are expressing the same truth. ;
The first one says that if there were no means the eye could see an ant in heaven. And that is true. If nothing intervened between God and the soul she would see God every whit, for God himself is wholly free from means and brooks no sort of intervention. Ifthe soul were stripped of all her sheaths, God would be discovered all naked to her view and would give himself to her, withholding nothing. As long as the soul has not thrown off all her veils, however thin, she is unable to see God. Any medium, but a hair’s-breadth, in betwixt the body and the soul stops actual union. That is true of corporal things and how much more of ghostly. Boéthius says, Wouldst know the naked truth? Then cast off joy and fear and trust and hope and pain. Joy is a means, fear is a means, faith and hope and pain, they all are means. While thou regardest them and they have regard to thee thou canst not see God.