This St Elizabeth did with much care. She looked well to the ways of her house. She had no fear for the winter for her house- hold was doubly clad. Probable ills she provided against. Any lack she worked hard to supply. So she ate not the bread of idleness. Withal her superior powers she kept oriented to God. The superior powers of the soul are three, The first is intuition; the second irascibilis, i.e. the power of attack; the third is will. In the act of imbibing knowledge of the very truth into the impartible power whereby we apprehend God, the soul is a light. And God too is light, and when the divine light is flooding the soul, soul becomes merged into God just like a light into light. Then she is called the light of faith which is a divine virtue. And whither the soul is unable to go with her senses and powers thither faith takes her.
The second is the attacking force whose special function it is to progress. As the eye is for seeing colour and shape and the ear is for hearing sweet voices and sounds, so the soul with this power is ever advancing ; if she glances aside to waver from him, that is sin. She cannot brook that aught should be above her. I trow she cannot brook God even being above her; unless he be within her and she has gotten as good as God himself, she
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never rests. With this power God is apprehended by the soul, as far as that is feasible to creature and so it is called hope, which - is a divine virtue also. Herein the soul has such a clear prospect. of God that she fondly imagines God in his whole being has not a thing withholden from her. King Solomon says, ‘Stolen waters are sweet.” And St Augustine tells us, ‘ The pears I stole were nicer than the ones my mother gave me, because they were forbidden and locked up.’ So is that grace far sweeter to the soul which she has won by special work and wisdom than that which is our common property.
The third power is interior will, turned ever face-like towards God in godly will, drawing from God his love into itself. God is drawn by the soul and the soul is drawn by God, and this is divine love, another divine virtue. Divine felicity lies in three things. In knowledge and in liberation from the bondage of creature : in having enough of, having finished with, self and all creatures. Further, the soul’s perfection lies in gnosis, in conception, in conceiving God and in union of perfect love. Do we want to know what sin means ? Lapsing from felicity and virtue, that is the whole cause of sin. It behoves every soul to look to her ways. ‘She had no fear for the winter with her household doubly clad,’ as the scriptures tell of her. She was clothed with strength to withstand imperfection and was adorned with the truth. To all appearance this woman was rich and had the world at her feet, but in secret she knelt at the shrine of true poverty. And when her outward comforts failed she fled to him to whom all creatures flee, setting at naught the world and self. In this way she trans- cended self, despising men’s despisery and not minding it, for all she had in mind was the tending of the sick and the cleansing of the foul, which she managed by dint of her pure heart. Even so let us look to the ways of our house and not eat the bread of idleness. So help us God. Amen.
Whosoever Would Come After Me
Dominus dicet : qui vult venire post me etc. (Matt. 16,,; Luc. 9,3). Our Lord says, ‘ Whosoever would come to me let him take up his cross and with willing martyrdom forsake himself and follow me.’ Everything by nature is pursuing God after its own fashion. Fire draws upwards, earth falls downwards, and similarly every creature here is searching out the place God has ordained it for. Origen says a man forsakes himself when he by striving rids himself of customary sins and denies himself those things
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he is addicted to ; so doing he takes up his cross with willing pain and disciplines himself in virtuous uses. Basilius, the saint, once said that any man who leaves the things that are behind him and beneath him and which are not God, has left himself. And treating of this subject in the book wherein he speaks about the soul, St Augustine calls her nobler, mightier, grander than any other ereature and in these respects most like to God of all, barring the angels, who are nobler than her nature because they were the first to be poured forth and loosed from spirit although they keep a refuge in it. This the soul has not. She has to pour into the body.
Various people comment sagely upon this: If God is quite impartible why did he not create all things simply like the angels ? That would never do, theologians say. One sort of creature could not show forth God. He made many kinds of creatures for each one to show forth a modicum of God albeit no more of him that one drop of water reveals about the sea. Not but what a drop of water tells us more about the sea, and indeed the universe, than any creatures can reveal (of God). For out of drops we might get a sea, but not by means of any creatures could we succeed in getting God. St Gregory observes that, The soul whom God shines into so that she sees him somewhat, to her creatures are dwarfed or merely ciphers.
Thirdly, the text refers to one who dies a martyr’s death as forsaking self. Our Lord says, ‘ Moses, to me no man comes as himself.’ Now according to St Chrysostom, ‘To be an other than I am I must abandon that Iam.’ This is accomplished by humility. ‘ Nothing ’, says St Gregory, ‘ gives more power than does lowliness.’ We see this well with Moses, who when he wanted to rest drove his flock of sheep into the valley. It was there he saw the bush burning but not consumed. ‘I will go,’ said Moses, ‘ and look at this great sight.’ Then God called to him, ‘ Stay, Moses, go no further! Doff thy shoes.’ The feet are symbols of desire. They must be bare : drawn out of everything temporal and mortal ; then the soul can offer her whole self to her Lord. One of the saints has said that if the soul should rise and, being unillumined, offer herself to our Lord she would be rebuffed and come to grief ; like an eye that likes trying to look at the sun finds it grows weaker and blinder.
| LIV FROM HIM AND THROUGH HIM AND IN HIM
Ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipso sunt omnia, ipsi gloria in secula (Rom. 11,,). St Paul says, ‘ From him and through him and in him are all things, to whom be glory and honour.’ These words
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are said of the three Persons and the unity of their nature. From him applies to the Father, the origin of all things in eternity and in time. Through him applies to the Son, through whom all things proceeded forth. In him applies to the Holy Ghost, in whom all things are contained, made spirit and brought back to their end. From another point of view these words, again, betoken the three Persons by. their from and through and in. As these words are distinct even so do they show the distinction of the Persons. But from the word him (which is the same for all) we gather the oneness of their nature. He says, ‘ To him be glory and honour.’ Proclaiming the three Persons as one God, to whom alone be all honour.
Now we proceed to speak of the things of God, of Persons and of essence, which we hardly understand. Those that cannot follow this discourse can take refuge in the dogma I have taught before, that the three Persons are in one essence and one essence in the three Persons. Remember we are speaking of Father and paternity, and you must understand that these two are not apart in two hypostases, but they are one hypostasis, and moreover they are one and three rationally speaking. Consider the meaning of paternity. It means the power of father-kind. A father is known by the fact that he begets, but we recognise paternity in a potential father. Take, for example, the maid who is a virgin. By nature she is maternal though not actually mother. The same thing with a father: in his power to beget he is paternal, but the fact of his begetting makes him father. Mark this difference between father and paternity when the Word is gotten ghostly in the soul. This we take to be the case when the soul, sublimed and in the proper state, grows pregnant with God’s light and divine by nature: by the unique power of God grown big with Deity. You see, in this immanent power, soul too is paternal. But radiant with revelation, she with the Father begets and is then with the Father called father. This father and fatherhood differ as applied to the soul. Mark, too, that Son differs from filiation, remembering that these two are not separate in two hypostases : they are the same hypostasis. We find filiation in potential father-nature, unborn. If he were not unborn in his potential nature the Father could not beget him, for a thing that comes out must first have been in. So much for filiation. But the Son we explain as the Father’s begetting of his own Word, whereby the Father is Father. The Son, moreover, is God in himself, not God of himself but of the Father alone. Were he . God of himself he would not be one with the Father so there ' would be two without any beginning. Which is impossible. We postulate three distinct properties, the Father’s property is that
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he comes from none but himself. The Son’s property is that he does not come from himself : he descends from the Father by way of nativity. The Holy Ghost’s property is that he comes from the Father not as being born: he proceeds from them twain, both Father and Son, not as a birth but as love. For two who are sundered in Person cannot together bear one but they can bear mutual love. The Holy Ghost is not born because he proceeds out of two and not merely out of the Father, albeit certain doctors do maintain that the Holy Ghost comes from the Father alone and not from the Son at all. This is false; for when the Father gat the Son he gave him his whole nature as well as all perfection, which goes with being of that nature, the Father withholding nothing from his Son. It follows that the Father cannot alone bring forth the Holy Ghost as he alone did get the Son. Had these doctors envisaged it aright, they would no doubt have said the same. They were speaking without understanding. So it is wrong to say the Son is God from himself and not from the Father. The Son may be said to bring forth the Spirit yet not from himself: from the Father whence he comes himself. Thus the Holy Ghost comes from them twain and not from one; but not as being twain, as being one. So much for the Son and filiation. ;
It may be asked concerning Spirit and spiration, Can we use these terms ornot ? Is there some objection, which makes it inad- missible ? Filiation is found latent in the nature of the Father, that is plain, seeing he is not merely brought forth out of him. Herein lies the objection to speaking of Spirit and spiration. Let us see if we can find precisely the right meaning of Spirit and spiration. We have here two and one. That is the difference between Spirit and spiration. In the first, when we predicate two we mean Father and Son. . But by saying in one we refer to spiration. This same in one is formless: the mark of spiration. Again, when we say in another that signifies Spirit, who is another than Father and Son in his Person.
LV! GOD MADE THE POOR FOR THE RICH
God made the poor for the rich and the rich for the poor. Lend to God, he will repay you. Some say they believe in God who believe not God. It is a greater thing to believe in God than to believe God. I may trust a man to pay me back five shillings