Our Lord says to every loving soul, ‘I was made man for you, and if ye are not God for me ye wrong me. I in my God-nature did dwell in your man’s nature, sö that none guessed my godly might seeing me walk like any other man. And even so shall ye in your humanity hide you in my divinity, and none shall guess your human weakness: your life being all divine they shall see naught in you but God.’ This does not mean soft words or pious mien or much parade of holiness, so that our name borne far and and wide is highly honoured by the friends of God ; nor that as cherished and elect of God we fondly think God has forgot all creatures but ourselves and anything we ask of God is straight- way done. No, not by any means! That is not what God wants of us: all the other way.
He would have us found wholly unmoved when people call us cheats and liars or whatever it may be whereby we are bereft of our fair name; and not only evil speaking but evil deeds as well: denying us our animal necessities ; and not only temporal needs but bodily hurt. (He would that) our sickness, or whatever ill it be, should help us in our bodily work ; that we should always do our best despite that people turn it to the worst account ; further, that we should suffer in this sense not alone from people but from God as well, who, withholding from us his present con- solation, builds as it were a wall between us and when we bring our work to him seeking his help and comfort, he behaves towards us as if he shut his eyes and refused to see or hear: he leavés us in our need to stand and fight alone, like Christ forsaken by his Father. Then hiding us in his divinity, behold us unbowed down by woe and with no other help than the words Christ uttered, * Father, they will be done.’
Such is the nature of God that we know it by nothing better than naught.—How, by naught ?—By getting rid of all means, not merely by spurning the world and the possession of virtue: I must let virtue go if I would see God face to face; not that I should flout virtue, but virtue being innate in me I transcend virtue. When a man’s mind has lost touch with every thing then, not till then, it comes in touch with God. A heathen philo- sopher has said, nature cannot transcend nature. Ergo, no creature can see God. If he is seen it must be in light that is supernatural. Theologians have a question, When God uplifts
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‚the soul above himself and above all creatures and leads her home into himself, why does he not raise up the body too so that it has no earthly needs? One of the masters—I think St Augus- tine—answers this as follows. When the soul attains to union with God then at last the body enjoys all things to God’s glory. Through man all creatures have flowed forth and the body’s rational use of creatures is not a drawback to the soul: it is an added dignity, for creatures can find no better way of returning to their source than in the righteous man who of his soul can say that even for an instant it has been absorbed in union with God. For then there is no obstacle between God and the soul, and as far as the soul follows God into the desert of his Godhead so far the body follows the bodily Christ into the desert of his willing poverty : as the soul is united with his deity so the body is atoned in Christ by the operation of true virtue. Well, then may the heavenly Father say, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ for not only has he gotten in the soul his only Son: he has begotten her his only Son.
From the very bottom of my heart I say, Man, how can aught afflict thee or be hard to bear when thou considerest that he who yonder subsisted in the form of God and in the day of his eternity and in the glory of the saints, and who before was born the splendour and substance of God, did enter the prison, the trap of thy sense- nature which is so unclean that aught, however pure, is besmirched and fouled by coming near it, yet notwithstanding this he abode there for thy sake ? What is there thou wouldst not gladly suffer, reading of the bitterness of thy Lord and God, pondering the afflictions, all the woes, that did befall him? The scorn and contumely he bore from king and soldier, from knaves and passers by his cross ? How the glory of the eternal light was mocked and scorned and tortured? Behold, what innocence, compassion and true love, and nowhere shown to me more clearly than where the love-power pierced his heart. Make thee then a bundle of the woes of thy Lord God and let it lie between thy breasts. Regard and realize his virtues, how all his works make for thy weal, and see thou pay him back in his own coin his infamous and shameful death and his pain-bearing nature wherein he, sinless, suffered for thy sin as if it had been his; as he says in the Prophets concerning his afflictions, ‘ Lo, I suffer for my sins,’ and speaking of the fruits of all his labours, ‘ By your works shall ye possess this kingdom!’ calling our sins his sins and his works our works ; and he has answered for our sins as though he had committed them, whereas we profit by his works as though they were our own. And this should make our labour light, for the good knight
laments not his own wounds, seeing his king who is en with
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him. He offers us the drink he drank himself. He asks nothing of us but what he has already done or suffered. We ought to suffer gladly, for God did nothing else while he sojourned upon earth. May we in God’s nature so transcend and lose our human nature, all our weakness, that nothing should be found in us but good alone, So help us God. Amen.
LVIII! DIVINE UNDERSTANDING
Lord God Almighty, all things are in thy power. Power and lordship lie in two things, in freedom and in the possession of many good things. in peace. What is freedom? A ‘heathen philosopher says, ‘That thing is free which cleaves to naught and to which naught cleaves.’ So there is nothing free but the first cause, that is, the cause of all things.
To lordship belongs the possession of many good things and beautiful. God is all good in all; hence he possesses himself in all. What God has, that is he in all. The love and will, the wisdom, the goodness we say that he has, these he is. If God is this, he is not naught, for God was prior to naught. God has no before nor after: but naught has a sequel; its sequel is aught. Naught’s foregoer was God, for he was prior to naught. Naught’s - issue is aught. God then has no before nor after. Lo, the cause of all things, self-subsistent, discriminate light which is himself! God is a light shining in itself in silent stillness. The one light, the one essence itself, which knows and understands itself. The understanding of this unique light is the light from the light, it is the eternal Person of the Son from the eternal Person of the Father. The Father spoke one Word, namely, his Son. In this only Word he spoke all things. The Word of the Father is none other than his understanding of himself. The understanding of the Father understands that he understands, and that his under- standing understands is the same as that he is who is understanding. That is, the light from the light. ;
Job says, God spake one Word; this was his own conception of himself: it was his Son. In this one conception he conceives all things ; he sees them as issuing from nothing. They are that in themselves. But as subsisting eternally in him, they are without themselves. What they were (without) themselves, was he him- self: God is nothing but God, for God is without other. All creatures are a light, for they are conceived in the light of unity
1 See Pfeiffer, Zt. f. disch. Alt., Bd. 8 (2), 1850. For authorship see Preger’s Geschichte, p. 319.
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and eternity. Creatures flowing forth as light reveal the hidden light. As St James says, ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift come down from above from the Father of lights.” We may deduce from this that all things are one light radiated by the Father for the purpose of revealing his own hidden light. And as all things have been one light proceeding forth, so also they are all one light which is flowing back, if they turn not away there- from of their own free will. Those who are steadfast in the face of multiplicity, behold what light and grace are revealed to them ! For the sovran good is so ordered towards the soul that she receives it not except by means. As St Dionysius says, ‘ The © means is light: grace that illumines understanding.’ What is understanding ? Understanding means seeing a thing quite clearly and without mistake. St Dionysius says, ‘ Disengage thy- self entirely from things if thou wouldst understand the highest good, God namely.’ What are we to understand by God ? That he is the one power. Let us therefore unify ourselves so that this one power may energise in us. He is also the good which moves things towards their good, namely himself, albeit he himself remains unmoved. And he is perfect simplicity ; and the simpler the soul is the better she understands his simplicity. How can we be perfectly simple? By departing from things and from our- selves, and knowing our own mind and all the working of the powers of the soul, except the chief one, understanding: leave that to God alone. The passive soul stands to lose all this and leave God to work without hindrance; then he begets his perfect likeness in her and conforms her to himself. Then she understands with him and loves with him. This is perfection. It is sometimes asked, Do’ we love God with the love wherewith the Father and the Son love one another ? Let us consider.
Two kinds of love belong to us. One is the virtue. In this love we go on growing and any good we do in this love wins us eternal merit. But the love of the Father and the Son knows no increase for it is the Holy Ghost. Thus our love is as nothing compared with the love of the Father and the Son : it is the virtue that we grow with.—The other love which is in us is the love of the Father and the Son. As St Paul says, * God’s love is poured into our heart.’ In giving us his love God has given us his Holy Ghost so that we can love him with the love wherewith he loves himself. We love God with his own love; awareness of it deifies us.
Intuition of the Sovran Good, that is God! To have that is to have the life most worth of any creature. God is willing his own clear conception and his own delight. What is willing in the Godhead? It is the Father watching the play of his own nature.