LXI
THERE COMES FORTH A ROD OUT OF THE ROOT OF JESSE
Egredietur
virga de radice Jesse et flos de radice ejus ascendet et requiescet super eum
spiritus domini (Isaias 111,2). We read to-day in the Mass
that there comes forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and out of the root comes
forth a flower, and on this flower there rests, reposes, the spirit of the
Lord. Jesse means a brand, which is burning; it signifies love in the
abstract, where it is no more called love, where nothing adventitious exists,
and in this ground where as yet nothing grows, it germinates just like, within
the root, the coming shoot. The offshoot has three properties: likeness to
what it shoots from, the nature of the same, and it is of exactly the same
species; thirdly, it is free from all attachments, simple an emanation.
Thus the son proceeded from the Father, as another Person with the Father,
albeit in the Father essentially the same. Accordingly he says, 'Out of
the root came a rod and on the rod came a flower.' My loving is a heavenly
matter, for like all end in same and the same is in the ground,
and a thing that grows out of another is in every respect the same kind.
An apple grafted on a pear-tree has the taste of both. It is not so here: this
has the flavour of the one alone; itself is not therein and yet it is
therein. It could never come out were it not first within in the abstract,
in brooding essence. The wine is in the vine: it is and it is not.
I say concerning God's freedom that
it yields no nature save one. God starts with the Son, and the Son is another
than the Father who is power, and from then twain there blossoms forth the Holy
Ghost. Our philosophers teach that the sun draws the flowers out of the
roots through the stem, timelessly wellnigh, and too subtly for any eye to
follow.The soul, which has no nature in her ground, the ground of love, where
she is love, emerges from this nature where she is stored in God. Whatever
enters this being has much the same being. At the coming of the bride he
devotes himself to her and works with all his might within his ground, in his
innermost, where naught exists, where activity stops altogether. The tree
of the Godhead grows in this ground and the Holy Ghost sprouts from its root.
The flower that blossoms, love, is the Holy Ghost. In this holy Ghost the soul
flowers with the Father and the Son, and on this flower there rests and reposes
the spirit of the Lord. He could not repose had he not rested first upon
the Spirit. The Father and the Son rest on the Spirit, and the Spirit
reposes upon them as on its cause. What is rest? St Augustine says, rest
is complete lack of motion: body and soul bereft of their own nature. One
philosopher says, God's idiosyncrasy is immutability. That is, all
creatures. Man as transcending motion. Jesse means a
fire and a burning; it signifies the ground of divine love and also the ground
of the soul. Out of this ground the rod grows, i.e., in the purest
and highest; it shoots up out of this virgin soil at the breaking forth of the
Son. Upon the rod opens a flower, the flower of the Holy Ghost. We
beseech the Lord our God that we may rest in him and he in us to his
glory. So help us God. Amen.
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