Then again there is ghostly freedom. He is in this sense free who finds within himself no sort of sin or imperfection. More free is he who cleaves to nothing that has name nor it to him. Still freer is the man who works not for reward from God but solely for God’s glory. And most free of all, one who forgets himself and flows with all he is into the bottomless abyss of his first cause. This is the case of those willing poor who have descended into Humble Valley. They verily obey the precept of
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our Lord, ‘ If any man will come after me let him take up his cross and follow me.’ From such as have denied themselves to follow after God in genuine poverty how can God refrain? he must — pour out his grace into those souls who thus in love have undone themselves. He pours his grace into them filling them full and in his favours he bestows himself. With his own self does God adorn the soul like gold adorned with a precious stone. There- after he leads on the soul to the beholding of his Godhead. In eternity this happens, notintime. Although in time she has a fore- taste of it in what is here described of the virtuous life. This I have told so ye may know that none achieves the crown and sum- mit of his nature, knowing and loving, excepting by the path of willing poverty, of being like these poor. That is for all the best.
Now praising God for his eternal goodness we pray him to
receive us at the last. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Amen.
The Rank and Nature of the Soul
When God created the soul he fell back upon himself and made her after his own likeness. Meister Eckhart of Paris says, God made nothing like himself besides the soul. Thus we can give no shape to God nor can we to the soul, and as God is immortal so did he make the soul. The soul is not dependent upon temporal things but in the exaltation of her mind is in communication with the things of God, hence her prodigious capabilities, and it amazes me that, being so like God and of such perfection and with such a powerful word of her own, the soul is still unable to speak the same as God. Some say it is because what is innate in God is not so in the soul: God is his own being and gets this from himself, but what the soul is that she gets from God and when she issues forth from him she does not keep his nature: she takes another nature, a descendent of divinity. Soshe does not behave the same as God : God moves all things in heaven and earth and gives life to all, and the soul moves the body, giving life to every limb so that it sees, hears, feels and walks and talks although the mind may be else- where. St Gregory observes, ‘We cannot see the visible except with the invisible’: the eye sees nothing corporal, lacking the a-corporal thing which quickens it to sight. Subtract the mind, i.e. the soul which is invisible, and the eye is open to no purpose, which before did see. God has formed the soul to himself and with himself and in himself; of time and in time and timely, and no soul can get into God without first being God as she was before she was made into God. Nothing but God finds its way into
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God, and once the soul is in God she is God, borne into God on his eternal Word. Soul is the mean ’twixt God and creature; she is placed at the beginning and end of the supreme, in touch with common knowledge and with the consolation the angels bring to her from God. If she prefers the inferior powers of her five senses to her higher ones whence comes her knowledge of celestial things, then she grows ignoble and base. The creature pleasures of the soul God has no stomach for, and when she realizes this she discards the joys in which God has no share.
While the soul is still here, in sleep, she drives away the angels, and refusing any longer to serve creature she conceives herself all one with God. St Augustine says the soul is nobler, mightier, grander than any creature, but the angels are by nature of still higher rank, for they are the first issue of the breath of God which gives life to them. Gregory, again, observes that ‘ The soul God has appeared to, who has some inkling of him, finds creatures all. so narrow and so vain.’—While the higher powers of the soul are holding fast to God she actuates her lower powers so that what . occurs in these comes to the knowledge of the higher ones. The highest power of the soul is called an inextinguishable light because of the vision the soul has in this power. However far away her power is from God she can discern God always. Her power is never sö much out but that it still burns somewhat, enough to be a danger-signal to the soul and, even were she spiritually dead in sin, a beacon showing her the way to come alive again and arise in true sorrow and repentance.
Here comes the question, Can the soul with her own powers comprehend her highest happiness? The answer given to this question by the four doctors, Thomas, Egidius, Henricus and Albertus is, that if the soul had her knowledge of herself, as she has her being, image-free, then she would be able to take in her _ highest happiness, she being an infinite capacity which God cannot fill excepting with himself. St Augustine says, If her own perfect nature were immediately present to the soul she would be her proper self rather than creature in her nature, as she is classified. For God is spirit and he en-spirits the soul who, in her spiritual nature, belongs to an order above creatures ; she finishes with creature in the perfect image of the eternal birth which is directly . formed in her.
Another question is, How does God enter the soul? Is he innate in her, sustaining her with his intrinsic energy and pro- viding her with life and being? One theory is that God enters the soul in three ways. First in his grace whereby a man being gratified is filled with the desire of perfecting virtue as a whole,
mingled with alarm lest any creature ever filch it ae him.
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Secondly, God enters the soul in pure perception wherein a man beholds himself and learns to know himself and answer any call God may make upon him, be it suffering or trials, bodily or mental. Thirdly, God enters the soul in true freedom, liberating man from all the cares of life. Let the soul bid him welcome, refusing to be satisfied save with him alone. At the highest point of his inner self, his soul, man is more God than creature : however much he is the same as creature in his nature, in mind he is like God more than any creature. To the soul at rest in God in her potential, her essential, intellectual nature, everything comes natural as though she were created not at the will of something else but solely at her own. In this point creatures are her subjects, all submitting to her as though they were her handiwork. It was in this power the birds obeyed St Francis and listened to his preaching. And Daniel took refuge in this power, trusting himself to God alone, when he sat among the lions. Moreover, in this power it has been the custom of the saints to offer up their suffer- ings which, in the greatness of their love, are to them no suffering. Dionysius says the soul has got to purify herself till in her perfect clarity she is like the angels and receives by grace what the angels have by nature. For the soul will not be able to fulfil her destiny till she is like the angels in whom is no sin. But the soul is from heaven (that is to say, from God who is the heaven of the soul) and body from the earth, so they are ever opposed to one another. And that is why the soul, wanting to get back to God whence she issued forth, absconds and leaves behind her all the things which are not God and do not lead to God. All form and likeness, Dionysius says, God in the first instance imprinted in the lesser angels so that they should inform the soul with divine light and consolation and enable her to enter into her own solitude, God namely, wherein no creature can ever look and see. Theologians say the soul is more greatly blest when God begets himself in her without corporal union than the body of Christ is without his Godhood and without his soul. But any beatific soul is a nobler thing than Christ’s mortal body, for the interior birth of God within the soul is the final consummation of her happiness, a happiness more real to her than Christ’s becoming man since this profits the soul nothing without union with God. As Dionysius says, ‘ Beatitude means an in-dwelling with God such that he is more present to the soul than she is to herself, and the soul can apprehend him best when she approaches him with a tranquil mind.’ For in peace is his habitation and in peace he elected us his children. But as God is the mover in the starry and revolving heavens so here in the soul he is the mover of the freedom of our will towards himself and towards all good things :
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it is in his light that she sees the light and in his light she will be united with the light. Theologians say that in their own nature the angels in heaven are nobler than the soul of Christ or Mary because they are in essence nearer than the soul to God. But by merit Christ’s soul has more joy than all the angels and is nearer God than any angel. And the, same with Mary’s soul. Not by nature though, for by nature Christ’s soul, and Mary’s too, is the same as mine or any other human soul. Further, theologians teach that the soul in man is more than thousandfold, for it is whole in every limb: in the fingers, in the eyes and in the heart and in every several portion of each member large and small. Just as in the eighth heaven, where there are so many stars, there is one angel who revolves that heaven and exists entire in each star. When God created man he safeguarded him against all ills; the golden chain of destiny coming from the Trinity to - the highest power of the soul and running also through her lower powers subordinates them to the higher so that no fell disorder can attack either the body or the soul excepting he transgress this law. In her higher powers the soul is spirit and in her lower, soul; and betwixt soul and spirit is the bond of one common being.
tes you must know that in the soul there exists one power which rests not day or night; it is flowing from the Spirit and is altogether ghostly, and in this power God comes out in the full flower of his joy and glory, as he is in himself. Such intense delight, such supreme exaltation as no mind can conceive nor tongue express. Were he always recollected in this power a man would never age. Nay more I say: should he in this power catch but one fleeting glance of the joy and bliss therein, it would be happiness enough to make amends though he suffered all things.