Laudate celi et exultet terra (Is. 49,,). Ego sum lux mundi (Joh. 8,2). I quote two Latin texts: one from the lesson, the words of Isaiah the prophet, ‘Rejoice, O heavens and earth, God hath comforted his people and will have mercy on his poor ones.” The other comes out of the gospel. Our Lord’s saying, *T am the light of the world: he that followeth me walketh not in darkness ; he shall find and have the light of life.’
First take the words of the prophet, ‘ Rejoice, O heavens and earth.’ Verily, verily, by God, by God and as God liveth, at the least good deed, the least good will, the least good desire, all the saints in heaven as well as all the angels rejoice with such great joy as all the joys of this world cannot equal. With the saints, the higher the more joyful, and all their joy combined is but a speck to the delight that God takes in this act. God plays and laughs in this good work, whereas all other works, those which redound not to God’s glory, are dust and ashes in God’s sight. Therefore he cries, ‘ Ye heavens, rejoice! ' God has comforted his people.’
Consider the words, ‘God has comforted his people and will have mercy on his poor.’ ‘His poor,’ he says. The poor are left to God alone, for no one troubles about them. Anyone who has a friend, a poor one, if he does not forget him and if he has posses- sions and is wise, will say ‘Thou art my servant,’ and he is soon forgot ; but to the beggar he will fling, ‘God guard thee,’ and be ashamed of him. The poor are left to God: wherever they go they may come upon God and have God in all places; God takes them in charge, for they are abandoned to him. Wherefore he says in the gospel, * Blessed are the poor.’
Now take the words, ‘I am the light of the world.’ ‘I am,’ that touches the essence. According to philosophers, all creatures can say ‘I,’ for the word is common property; but the word sum, am, none can really,say but God alone. Sum signifies one thing which is big with good things as a whole, and it is denied to creatures that any one of them should have all human consolation. If I had my heart’s desire but my finger hurt me, then I should have it not, for with a wounded finger, while it hurts me, I lack entire comfort. Bread comforts a man when he is hungry, whereas if he is thirsty bread will give him no more comfort than a stone ; and the same with clothes, when he is cold, but being hot no clothes will comfort him ; and this applies to creatures, hence all creatures have a certain bitterness of heart. True, creatures have this
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comfort for their souls, that none can deprive them of their rights. Their property is all in God whatever possessions they may have in creatures. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, ‘In thee all good belongs to my soul.’ Creature comfort is imperfect, it has innate defect. But God’s comfort is complete, with no shortcoming ; it is whole and perfect and he needs must give it thee, for he cannot work unless he gives thee himself first. God is foolishly in love with us, it seems he has forgotten heaven and earth and all his happiness and deity, his entire business seems with me alone, to give me everything to comfort me; he gives it to me suddenly, he gives it to me wholly, he gives it to me perfect, he gives it all the time and he gives it to all creatures.
‘He that followeth me walketh not in darkness.’ Philosophers attribute three powers to the soul. The first power ever seeks the sweetest. The second ever seeks the highest. The third one ever seeks the best, and the soul is too noble ever to rest anywhere but in her source whence drops what goodness is made out of. Behold, so sweet God’s consolation, all creatures go in quest of him, hunting after him. Nay, I say more: it is creature’s life and being, this searching after God, this hunting for him.
Peradventure ye will say, Where is this God all creatures are in quest of and whence they get their being and their life? (Fain would I speak of the Godhead whence comes all our happiness.) The Father says, ‘Son, this day do I beget thée in the reflection of the saints.’ Where is this God? Where the saints leave off there I begin. Where is this God? In the Father. Where is this God? In eternity. No man ever found God. As the wise man says, ‘ Lord, thou art a hidden God.’ Where is this God ? Suppose a man in hiding and he stirs, he shows his whereabouts thereby and God does the same. No one could ever have found God; he gave himself away. One of the saints has said, ‘I sometimes experience such sweetness in me that, forgetting creatures altogether, I dissolve right into thee. But when I try to embrace thee Lord, lo, thou art fled. What wouldst thou then ? Why draw me on only to run away ? If thou dost love me wherefore dost thou shun me? Nay, Lord, it is to make me more eager to obtain.’ The prophet says, ‘my God.’— Who told thee that I am thy God ? ’—* Lord, I cannot rest except in thee, I have no well-being but in thee.’ May we thus seek God and also find him, So help us God. Amen.
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God-Parents and God-Children
Posui vos ut eatis et fructum afferatis (Joh. 15,,). Christ said to his disciples, ‘1 have set you to go and bring forth fruit.” God spake to them and to us all who are in darkness. Being in the dark we need a light to walk by. But Christ says: ‘I am the light of the world.’ If we keep in the true love of our head we shall be lighted by Christ. For a taper goes on burning at the tip in virtue of its contact with the flame which consumes the matter it supplies and changes it into itself.
Observe. When Christ said to his disciples, ‘I have set you to go,’ he referred to our being taken up into the light of grace. The prophet says, ‘ I was sitting when he took me up into himself.’ Sitting, we stop groping and, in the light, can see our way. To wit, the way of virtue. That is-the meaning of Christ’s words, ‘I have set you to go.’ Sitting is not going. We cannot go the right way without first sitting in the light of contemplation and making out the way to take; all our works must be a light to lighten our neighbour’s darkness.
Now Dionysius says:+ ‘These, who have thus gone out of themselves and are living in the light of truth, these (I say) are the christened, they are god-children and godfathers.’ Bishop Albertus expounds this as follows: God-children are they who, reading or hearing the holy scriptures read, take them to heart and show them forth in good works whereby they ultimately find the truth in God. The christened again are dead in God, there is no longer anything alive in them but God. As St Paul says, ‘ We are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God.’ But. the most perfect of all are the godfathers, who are drowned in the unfathomableness of God ; not only does God live in them but they are alive in God and there is now in them the beginning of eternal life.
Consider now those who are god-children. Comprehending the scriptures in the light of faith they come into the dew of grace and in this gracious dew inhale the fragrance of the path of life eternal. As saith the Bride in the Book of Love, ‘ Take me along with thee, out in thy desert, within in thy fastness.’ Out in the desert means detached from creatures; the inner fastness is the subjective certainty of truth which neither life nor death can alter. Such are these god-children, sons of power and wisdom and goodness. To them our Lord cries in the Book of Love, ‘ How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter!’ The slioes being the holy life put on the feet of love and knowledge in the desire to walk
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therein. But the christened are in mystical union with God and are actually leading the life of God. What shall I say of these ? In their eating and drinking, their sleeping and their entire wont there is nothing found but God, did we but know it. Burn them, they yield but the test of divinity, the sweetness of the Holy Ghost, wherein they are gotten fullofsap. But this none knoweth save the children of true light and him they dwell in, namely God. The children of darkness know it not, whose hearts are filled with the poison of everlasting death. Wherefore the light is turned to darkness in them and the eternal sweet to bitterness. God light us with the light we used to bask in in his Son eternally, so shall we escape from darkness into the true light !
But the third class, yclept godfathers, these climbing hill and mountain have followed the track of the true sons with will and knowledge, and the flaming heat of the Holy Ghost having burnt up all their matter, they show now only the one light in God. In this light they have come to rest, at peace after their labours, the peace of absolute consciousness, a peace which is never dis- turbed. Thought fails in speaking of these fathers, for they have received all good and perfect gifts from the Father of lights and have reached the goal of virtue. This goal set John, the soaring eagle, wondering in the Apocalypse. And Christ answered him, saying, ‘ I am the first without beginning and the last that has no end.’ Amen.
The Crossing
Exhibite membra vestra servire justitie in sanctificationem (Rom. 6,5). St Paul says, ‘ Yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness, for the wages of sin is death but the reward of virtue is eternal life.’ The soul has but two members to offer for service of the sort acceptable to God, these are will and understanding.
One master says, God exerts the whole force of his will in loving the soul. But my point is that God’s sole object in loving the soul is to make her love him in return. Again, I contend that God devotes his divine nature to pleasing the soul, to making her like him and enjoy his society and be friendly with him and love him. Thirdly, I hold that this love which comes up in the ground of the soul, sprouting out of the ground of the Godhead, that this (I say) is the self-same love wherewith God loves his one-begotten Son, and nothing less. And fourthly, if so be that man is planted in God as he is in creature, then I maintain it is in the very ground
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of the Holy Ghost’s being and becoming, the very ground where the Holy Ghost is coming out in blossom.
St Paul does well to say, ‘ Yield your members.’ For intellect, — albeit natural, is too exalted to be moved by mundane things. Yet, rendered to the source whence it proceeded forth it is absorbed in God, and that which absorbs it it becomes. Will, that is will proper, is as such omnipotent. But thousands die without acquiring this genuine will. Doubtless they had desires and inclinations like other animals. One man does something trifling, does it just once and sends it on the wings of praise and thank- fulness up to its source. Another one does some important work which occupies him long and constantly, and yet this little thing done once is more acceptable to God than the other man’s great work which cost him so much time and trouble. Why? I will tell you. Because the trivial act was carried up past time into the now of eternity, therefore it was to God’s entire satisfaction. Though one should live through all the time from Adam and all the time to come before the judgment day doing good works, yet he who, energising in his highest, purest part, crosses from time into eternity, verily in the sight of God this man conceives and does far more than anyone who lives throughout all past and future time, because this now includes the whole of time.