LIII
WHOSOEVER WOULD COME AFTER ME
Dominus
dicet: quit vult venire post me etc. ( Matt 1624; Luc. 923).
Our Lord says, 'Whosoever would come to me let him take up his cross and with
willing martyrdom forsake himself and follow me.' Everything by nature is
pursuing God after its own fashion. Fire draws upwards, earth falls
downwards, and similarly every creature here is searching out the place God has
ordained for it. Origen says a make forsakes himself when he by striving
rids himself of customary sins and denies himself those things he is addicted
to; so doing he takes up his cross and with willing pain and disciplines himself
in virtuous uses. Basilius, the saint, once said that any man who leaves
the things that are behind him and beneath him and which are not God, has left
himself. And treating of this subject in the book wherein he speaks about
the soul, St Augustine calls her nobler, mightier, grander than any other
creature and in these respects most like to God of all, barring the angels, who
are nobler than her nature because they were the first to be poured forth and
loosed from spirit although they keep a refuge in it. This the soul has
not. She has to pour into the body.
Various people comment sagely upon
this: If God is quite impartible why did he not create all things simply like
the angels? That would never do, theologians say. One sort of
creature could not show forth God. He made many kinds of creature for each one
to show forth a modicum of God albeit no more of him that one drop of water
reveals about the sea. Not but what a drop of water tells us more about the sea,
and indeed the universe, than any creatures can reveal (of God). For out of
drops we might get a sea, but not by means of any creatures could we succeed in
getting God. St Gregory observes that, The Soul whom God shines into so
that she see him somewhat, to her creatures are dwarfed or merely ciphers.
Thirdly, the text refers to one who
dies a martyr's death as forsaking self. Our Lord says, 'Moses, to me no man
comes as himself.' Now according to St Chrysostom, 'To be an other than I
am I must abandon that I am.' This is accomplished by humility.
'Nothing,' says St Gregory, 'gives more power than does lowliness.'
We see this well with Moses, who when he wanted to rest drove his flock of sheep
into the valley. It was there he saw the bush burning but not consumed. 'I
will go,' said Moses, 'and look at this great sight.' Then God called to
him, 'Stay, Moses, go no further! Doff thy shoes.' The feet are symbols of
desire. They must be bare: drawn out of everything temporal and mortal;
then the soul can offer her whole self to the Lord. One of the saints has
said that if the soul should rise and, being unillumined, offer herself to our
Lord she would be rebuffed and come to grief; like an eye that likes
trying to look at the sun finds it grows weaker and blinder.