* That will I not,’ she answered, ‘ I must be about my own business. I mean to live in exile, anywhere where I am persecuted. For you must know I have found more of God in the least despisery than ever I did in the sweetness of ereatures.’—* I’ll not quarrel with that for it is true,’ he said. ‘ Christ proves it by those words to his disciples, Go ye into all places where they shall persecute — you.’ Quoth she, ‘God bless you for it, who have my homage betwixt me and God.’—‘ Come to me wheresoever thou shalt find me,’ he said.—‘ That will I gladly.’
St Paul affirms of the holy martyrs and friends of our Lord, “ They are dead.’ From this we argue that we have to be dead too. I hold that anyone who is not really dead has not the faintest notion of the sacred things revealed by God to his beloved. As long as thou still knowest who thy father and thy mother have been in time, thou art not dead with the real death. Further I hold: as long as it affects thee that no one will shrive thee nor give thee God’s body nor shelter thee from the world’s scorn, as long as it is in thee to be moved by this, know that thou art a stranger to the true death. When thou art aware of nothing within thee : when, having escaped from earthly species and forgot thy honourable estate and all temporal happenings, thou hast entered oblivion so deep that nothing formulates itself in thee and thou art sensible of naught save the sheer ascension of thy soul, then thou canst say that thou art really dead. He who is dead thus is always the same ; nothing affects him. Anent this St John says, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in God.’ See then, my friends, how good it is to die in God. We can die gladly if God will live and work in us while we are idle. We die, ’tis true, but ’tis a gentle death. Folks tell us of the holy life, how they have suffered. To tell the tale of what our Lord’s friends suffered time would be all too short. I say: they did not suffer. The least suspicion of God-conscious- ness and sufferings would be all forgot. This may well happen while the soul is in the body. I say more: while yet in the body'a | soul may reach oblivion of its travail not to remember it again. Further I hold: to him who suffers not for love, to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But he who suffers for love does not suffer, and this suffering is fruitful in God’s sight. It follows, friends, that by contriving to die in God gladly, we go scot-free from suffering. To practise this is to be really dead. So to die in God, help us O Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Here the aforementioned daughter comes to her confessor, beseeching him, ‘ Sir, ‘hear me for God’s sake.’—‘* Whence come you?’ said he. ‘ From foreign parts,’ said she. He asked, * Of what country art thou?’ She answered, ‘ Sir, do you not know me ? ’—“ Not I, God wot,’ quoth he. Quoth she, ‘ By the same
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token you have never known yourself.’—‘ True,’ he replied, * for well I ween that if I knew myself as intimately as I ought, I should have perfect knowledge of all creatures.”—‘ You are right,’ she © said; ‘ but a truce to this talk, sir. Hear me, in God’s name.’— ‘ Willingly,’ he said. ‘Say on.’
The daughter made confession to her revered confessor, as it was now in her to do, in a manner to rejoice his heart. Quoth he, ‘ Return ere long, daughter.’-—‘ Gladly, God willing,’ quoth she.
Going off to his brethren he announces, ‘I have just shriven someone, whether woman or angel I misdoubt, nay, I wot not. If woman, her soul powers dwell with the angels in heaven and her soul has received angelic nature. She knows and loves beyond anyone I ever met.’—‘ Glory be to God,’ the brethren ery.
Seeking his daughter where he knows her to be, in the chapel, namely, her confessor earnestly entreats her to converse with him. --*Do you not know me yet ?’ she asks. He answers, ‘ No, God knows.’—‘ Then I will tell you for love. I am the poor soul you led to God.’ And she discovers to him her identity.—‘ Alas, wretch that I am!’ he cries. . ‘Shame on me in the sight of God that having spiritual light so long I am so unfamiliar with divinity. Prithee, my daughter, for the love of God, recount to me thy life and doings since I last saw thee.’ Quoth she, ‘ That were a deal to tell.—‘ Not more than I am fain to hear,’ he said. * Know, I have been amazed by what you told me.’
Ere taking up her tale the daughter says to her confessor : * You must never betray me while I live. —‘ I give you my word,’ he answered, ‘ not to divulge thy confession during thy lifetime.’ Whereupon she embarks on such a wondrous story he marvels any human being could go through so much. Quoth she, ‘ Sir, still I fall short. I find that I have conquered all my heart’s desires save only that my faith be not assailed.”—* God be praised for making thee,’ he cried. ‘Now rest content.’—* Never,’ she said, ‘ while my soul has no abiding place in eternity.’ Said he, ‘I should be well content to have my soul ascend as thine does.’ She said, ‘ My soul ascends freely, but it makes no stay. To will does not content me; if only I might know the thing to do to establish me permanently in eternity!’ He asked, ‘ Is the desire so strong?’ She answered, ‘ Aye.’-—‘ Be rid of it,’ he said, ‘ if thou wouldst be confirmed.’ Saying, ‘ ’Tis gladly done,’ she sinks into destitution. And God drawing her in his divine light she weens that she is one with God. While this continues she keeps beating back into herself with an overwhelming sense of deity, and keeps ejaculating, ‘ I am sure there is no escape for me.’
The confessor visits his daughter frequently, inquiring, ‘ Tell
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me, how goes it now with thee ? ’—‘ Ill,’ she replies. ‘ Heaven and earth are too confined for me.’ He entreats her to tell him something. She says, ‘I have nothing whatever to tell.’—‘ Just a word, for God’s sake,’ he pleads, and wins it for the asking. She proceeds to reveal to him such profound and marvellous things concerning the pure perception of divine truth that he exclaims, ‘Thou knowest this is not common knowledge, and were I not among those priests who have read it in theology, I had not known it either.’—* Much good it is to you,’ she said. ‘I would you had a lively sense of it.” Said he, ‘I am this much alive to it, I feel as certain of it as of my having said the mass to-day. Natheless, this lack of actual experience does trouble me.’
With the words, ‘ Pray God for me,’ the daughter returns into her solitude to enjoy God’s society. Ere long she appears at the door again, demanding her confessor, to whom she says, ‘ Sir, rejoice with me, I am God.’—‘ Glory be to God ! ’ he cries.. ‘ Retire again into thy solitude ; all joy be thine an thou remainest God.’
Obedient to her confessor, she goes into the chapel, into a secluded corner. There oblivion descended upon her, and she forgot everything named and was so far withdrawn from self and everything created that she had to be carried from the church and lay till the third day, surely accounted for dead. ‘I misdoubt she is dead,’ quoth her confessor. Know, had there been no confessor they would have buried her. They essayed by all manner of means, but whether her soul was in her body they could not discover. They said, ‘ For sure she is dead.’—‘ For sure she is not,’ said her confessor. On the third day the daughter re- turned. ‘Alas, me miserable, am I back!’ she cried. Her confessor, who was already there, addressed her, saying, ‘ Permit _me to taste divine truth in the revelation of thy experience.’ She said, ‘God knows, I cannot. My experience is ineffable.’— ‘Hast got now all thou wilt?’ he asked. She answered, ‘ Aye. I am confirmed.’
Blest and praised be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ who showed us the way to conquer by grace what he is by nature. It needs a God-receptive man who treads beneath his feet self and all creatures. He has five deaths to die. The first is death to natural things. Being dead to nature spirit reigns. Never- theless he still may lapse into eternal death, as shown by Lucifer. Himself pure spirit, from himself he fell, falling eternally. We must die in spirit, our spirit being inspired into the spirit of truth. Now we begin to live in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, strictly obeying his precepts and example. Thus we die in our Lord Jesus Christ in the truth which is himself, even as he died in his humanity. And we rise in our Lord Jesus Christ to live again in
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the quick of life. We enter the Father in the Son. Humanity receives its coup de grdce, pierced to the heart by light divine. Therein man learns to know himself. Forgot are all God’s gifts beknownst tohim. Thought, word, will, act, lie strewn before him in the reflection of the divine light received from the Father. In this divine light the soul sees herself less than creature. She finds no place to dwell in. She deems herself the vilest thing God ever made. Lucifer is to her so meritorious that she ranks under him. Accordingly the masters say, ‘ Christ’s soul and Lucifer’s were made in the same light.’ Hence the soul’s grievance and self- condemnation. Christ’s soul was the wisest soul that ever was: she faced round in the creature and looked towards the creator. Wherefore the Father clad her in the divine garment and property of his own nature. But Lucifer looked away to the deficiency and thereby fell, falling eternally. So fall all they that turn from God to things corruptible. In this plight the soul now finds herself and is consumed within herself, there thinking to remain eternally,
- for it is she who is to blame.
The best authorities aver that from the very lowest angel of all those in heaven, there fell one drop upon the highest heaven. This started the celestial revolutions, each heaven following the course nature laid down for carrying round the drop. From it all creatures get their life, those that have life in time; in it all creatures hie them back to their first source; in it the soul becomes aware that, so little has God become in time, our works must be wrought above time, in eternity. Christ taught us this. His works are all wrought in eternity. Did God perform one act outside himself, he were not God. God’s works are wrought so that they remain in him. And our works which are wrought thus endure in eternity. Understand, we call mine that which is in me, which none can take from me.—Here the soul is moved to exclaim: ‘ Alas, that I have wrought so many works outside me ! °
Concerning nature, the masters speak as follows: Nature and naturalness are not identical. The natural state is taken on in time ; nature is in itself eternal. This touches the soul. Philo- sophers will tell you that thunder is merely the result of opposites. Clouds cannot bear being charged with opposites, which crash together ; hence lightning and the thunder. So with the wind; it blows till foreign matter is expelled, namely, the rain. Creatures in general will purify themselves from incompatibles. _
Here the soul realizes that she has often harboured incompatibles. She says: ‘Creatures all pointed me to my eternal happiness. They did not Lucifer: he fell from God for ever because of the unlikes he assumed. God kept me in himself. I had no mind to
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see it, so I can never look for grace.’ And there she stops, failing to rise beyond herself.