Peradventure thou wilt say, What then is detachment that it should be so noble in itself ?— True detachment means a mind as little moved by what befalls, by joy and sorrow, honour and dis- grace, as a broad mountain by a gentle breeze. Such motionless detachment makes a man superlatively Godlike. For that God is God is due to his motionless detachment, and it is from his detach- ment that he gets his purity and his simplicity and his immuta- bility. Ifthen a man is going to be like God, so far as any creature can resemble God, it will be by detachment. This leads to purity and from purity to simplicity and from simplicity to immova- bility ; and it is these three which constitute the likeness between man and God, which likeness is in grace, for it is grace which draws a man away from mortal things and purges him from things corruptible. I would have ycu know that to be empty of creatures is to be full of God and to be full of creatures is to be empty of God.
Now it must be remembered that in this immutable detachment God has stood for aye and does still stand. Know also, that when God created the heavens and the earth he might not have been making anything at all for all that it affected his detachment. Nay, I say more: prayers and good works wrought by a man in time affect no more the divine detachment than if no prayers nor virtuous works had come to pass in time; nor is God any kindlier disposed towards that wight than if his prayers and deeds had all been left undone. Further I declare, when the Son in his Godhead was pleased to be made man and was and suffered martyrdom, God’s motionless detachment was no more disturbed than if he had never been made man.
Haply thou wilt say, I gather then, that prayers and virtuous deeds are all in vain; God takes too little interest in them to be affected by them. And yet they say God likes to be entreated upon all occasions.
Now mark, and realize if possible, that in his first eternal glance (if a first glance may be assumed), God saw all things as they would happen and he saw in that same glance both when and how he would make creatures. He saw the humblest prayer that
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would be offered, the least good deed that anyone would do and saw withal which prayers and which devotions he would hear. He saw that to-morrow thou shalt call upon him earnestly, urgently © entreating him; and not for the first time to-morrow will God grant thy supplication and thy prayer: he has granted it already in his eternity ere ever thou becamest man. Suppose thy prayer is foolish or lacking earnestness, God will deny it thee not then, he has denied it thee already in his eternity. Thus God, who has seen everything in that first eternal glance, in no wise acts from any why at all, for everything is a foregone conclusion.
And though God does stay all the while in motionless detachment yet are men’s prayers and virtuous works not all in vain, he who does well being well rewarded. As Philippus says, ‘ God creator holds all things in the course and order he has given them from the beginning.’ With him nothing is past and nothing future, who has loved all his saints even as he foresaw them ere ever the world became. Yet when there come to pass in time the things he speculated in eternity then people think that God has changed his mind, though whether he be wrathful or benignant it is we who change and he remains the same ; just as the sunshine hurts weak eyes and benefits the strong ones what time the light itself remains unchanged. God does not see in time nor is his outlook subject to renewal. Isodorus argues in this sense in his book on the Arch-Good. He says, People are always asking what God did before he created the heavens and, the earth and whence there came to God the new will to make creatures ? His answer is that no new will at all arose in God; for what though creature was not in itself as it is now yet it’ was from eternity in God and in his mind. God did not make the heavens and the earth as we should say, man-fashion, ‘Let them be!’ but creatures are all spoken in his eternal Word. Moses said to God, ‘ Lord, if Pharaoh ask me who thou art, what am I to say?’ And God replied, ‘Say, He-who-is hath sent me.’ Or in other words, He who is unchanging in himself, he it is hath sent me.
Here someone may object, But was Christ in motionless detach- ment when he cried, ‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death!’ Or Mary when she stood beneath his cross? yet much is said about her lamentations. How is all this compatible with motion- less detachment ?—Know then, that according to philosophers there are in everyone two men: one, the outward man, is his objective nature ; this man is served by the five senses, albeit he is energised by the power of the soul. The other one, the inner man, is man’s subjective nature. Now I would have you know that the Godly-minded man employs his soul-powers in his outward man no more than his five senses really need it; and his interior man
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only has recourse to the five senses so far as it is guide and keeper. to these five senses and can stop them being put to bestial uses as they so often are by those who live according to the baser appetites, as do the mindless beasts, and who deserve the name of beast rather than that of man. What surplus energy she has beyond what she expends on her five senses the soul bestows upon her inner man, and supposing he has toward some right high endeavour she will call in all the powers she has loaned to the five senses and then the man is said to be senseless and rapt away, his object being either some unintelligible form or some formless intelligible. Remember, God requires every spiritual man to love him with all the powers of his soul. ‘ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,’ he says. Some squander all their soul-powers on their outward man. Namely, those whose thoughts and feelings hinge on temporal goods, all unwitting of an inner man. And even as the virtuous man will now and then deprive his outward self of all the powers of the soul what time he is embarking on some high adventure, so bestial man will rob his inner self of all its soul-powers to expend them on his outer man. Withal it must be realized that the outward man is able to be active and leave the inward man entirely passive and unmoved. Now in Christ too existed an outward and an inward man and also in our Lady, and what Christ and our Lady said concerning outward things was prompted by their outward man, the inner man remaining in motionless detachment. So was it when Christ said, ‘ My soul is sorrowful unto death.” And despite her lamentations and various things she said, Our Lady, in her inner man, stood all the while in motionless detachment. Take an illustration. The door goes to and fro upon its hinges. Now the projecting door I liken to the outward man and the hinge I liken to the inner man. As it shuts and opens the door swings to and fro while the hinge remains unmoved in the same place without undergoing any change. And likewise here.
What then, I ask, is the object of absolute detachment? I answer, that the object of absolute detachment is neither this nor that. Itis absolutely nothing, for it is the culminating point where God can do precisely as he will. God cannot have his way in every heart, for though God is almighty yet he cannot work except where he finds readiness or makes it. I add, or makes it, by reason of St Paul in whom he found no readiness but whom he did make ready by infusion of his grace; wherefore I affirm, God works according to the aptitude he finds. He works differently in man and in astone, and for this we have anatural analogy. If you heat a baker’s oven and place in it the dough, some made of barley,
some of oats and some of wheat and some of rye, then albeit in
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the oven the heat is all the same it does not tell alike on all the doughs, but one yields a fine bread, another one more coarse and a third a coarser still. The heat is not to blame: it is the material which differs. Nor does God tell alike on every heart but accord- ing to the readiness and the capacity he finds. In any heart containing this or that there is something to hinder God’s highest operation. For a heart to be perfectly ready it has to be perfectly empty, this being its condition of maximum capacity. To take another common illustration.. Suppose I want to write on a white tablet, then anything already written there, however excellent it be, will interfere and hinder me from writing ; ere I can write I must erase completely whatever is already on the tablet which is never better fitted for me to write upon than when there is nothing there at all. And so for God to write his very best within my heart everything dubbed this or that must be ousted from my heart leaving it quite without attachment. God is free to work his sovran will when the object of this solitary heart is neither this nor that.
Then again I ask, What is the prayer of the solitary heart ? I answer, that detachment and emptiness cannot pray at all, for whoso prays desires of God something : something added to him or something taken from him. But the heart detached has no desire for anything nor has it anything to be delivered from. So it has no prayers at all; its only prayer consists in being uniform with God. In this sense we may take St Dionysius’ comment ön the saying of St Paul, ‘ Many there be that run but one receiveth the prize.’ All the powers of the soul competing for the crown which falls to the essence alone. According to Dionysius this running is none other than the flight from creature to union with uncreated nature. Attaining this the soul loses her name; God absorbs her in himself so that as self she comes to naught, just as the sunlight swallows up the dawn and naughts it. To this pass nothing brings the soul but absolute detachment. And here it is germane to quote St Augustine’s dictum : ‘ The soul has a private door into divine nature at the point where for her things all come to naught.’ This door on earth is none other than absolute detachment. At the height of. her detachment she is ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, dark with enlightenment.
Here too we might cite a master’s words, Blessed are the spiritual poor who have abandoned unto God all things as he possessed them when we existed not. This none can do but a heart wholly without attachment.
That God would sooner be in a solitary heart than any other, I argue in this fashion. Starting from thy question, What does God seek in all things? I answer in his words out of the Book of
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Wisdom, ‘ In all things I seek rest.” Now there is nowhere perfect rest save in a heart detached. Ergo, God is happier there than in any other thing or virtue. Know that the more we are disposed to receive the inflowing God, the more happy we shall be ; perfect receptivity.gives perfect felicity. Now one makes oneself receptive to the influence of God only by dint of uniformity with God ; as a man’s uniformity with God so is his sense of the inflow of God. Uniformity comes of subjection to God, and the more one is subject to creature the less one is uniform with God. But the heart which is quite detached and all devoid of creatures, being utterly subject to God and uniform with God in the highest measure, is wholly receptive of his divine inflow. Hence St Paul’s exhorta- tion to ‘ Put on Christ,’ 7.e. uniformity with Christ. For know, when Christ was made man it was not a certain man that he assumed, he assumed human nature. Do thou go out of all things, \ then there remains alone what Christ put on and thou hast put on Christ.