XII
CONTEMPLATIONS, HINTS AND PROMISES
When a man
delights to read or hear tell about God, that comes of divine grace and is
lordly entertainment for the soul. To entertain God in one's thoughts is
sweeter than honey, but to be sensible of God is teeming consolation to the
noble soul, and union with God in love is everlasting joy which we relish here
as we are fitted for it.
They are all too few who are fully
rip for gazing in God's magic mirror. Precious few succeed in living the
contemplative life at all here upon earth. Many begin, but fail to consummate
it. Because they have not rightly lived the life of Martha. As the eagle
spurns its young that cannot gaze at the sun, even so fares it with the
spiritual child.
He who would build high must lay firm
and strong foundations. The true foundation is the very way and pattern of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who himself declared: 'I am the way, the truth and the
life.'
Dionysius says, 'The soul shall
follow God into the desert of his Godhead so far as here the body follows Christ
in outward willing poverty.' -- 'But that soul is idle.' To which St
Bernard answers: 'Waiting upon God is not idleness but work which beats all
other work to one unskilled in it.' In order to find God, we must seek him
in his Godhead. Christ says, 'If the father and mother or anything else be
a hindrance, quit them for good and serve God unhindered.' The philosopher
says, 'The soul which is moved by the power of the Prime Cause need seek no
counsel from any human vision; he is obeying what transcends wisdom, for he is
moved by the latent primitive truth.'
Though we meditate upon the blessed
works of our Lord's poverty and his humility, yet coveting them not ourselves,
the thoughts are useless. And to covet them is useless too, unless we
diligently seek how we may acquire them.
We would fain be humble: but not
despised. To be despised and rejected is the heritage of virtue. We
would be poor too, but without privation. And doubtless we are patient, except
with hardships and disagreeables. And so with all the virtues.
The willing poor, unsolaced by
corruptibles, descend into the valley of humility. They are pursued by
insult and adversity, the best school of self-knowledge. And
self-knowledge gets God-knowledge.
My children, ye who suffer much
insult, if the world reject you, do ye therewith likewise assail yourselves,
helping to reject yourselves. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, 'The servant is not
greater than his lord. If the world hate you, know ye it hated me before it
hated you.'
We ought to recompense our Lord for
all that he has done. They are plenty to follow our Lord half-way, but not the
other half. They will give up possessions, friends, and honours, but it
touched them too closely to disown themselves.
Some there be, neither wanting nor
looking for honours, yet, chancing to come their way, honours affect them.
St Bernard says: 'When a soul comes
to wanting what few desire: to be nameless, outcast and disgraced, and makes all
welcome equally, then she attains to peace and the true freedom needed for real
vision in the mirror of divinity.'
Perfect rest is absolute freedom from
motion. Our Lord says, 'Continue in my word and the truth shall make you
free.' Freedom of soul consists in this: in finding in herself no sin; in
tolerating in herself no spiritual imperfection. She is more free lacking
all hold on what possesses name and it on her. Freest of all when she transcends
her selfhood and flows with all she is into the bottomless abyss of her
primordial mould, into God himself.
Our Lord Jesus Christ exhorts us to
renounce all things that we may be less hindered. St Bernard declares:
'All the time thou occupiest not with God is accounted unto thee for
lost.' And again,' The most subtle temptation that can beset us is to
occupy ourselves too much in outward works.' Further he says, 'The best
preparation I know for heaven is having no home among externals.'
Our least interior act is higher and
nobler than our grandest outward one, and yet our loftiest interior act halts in
God's unveiled presence in the soul.
The very best work that we can do is
to prepare for union with the present God and wait for this with fixed
intention.
St Paul says, Optimum esse unire
deo: Best of all is to be one with God. In this union the soul is dead, not
only to all outward but also to all inward ghostly acts. God operates
unhindered, and the soul bears his godly operation to which she yields
obediently enough for God to bring to birth his only Son in her no less than in
himself. This is the atonement wherein, in the twinkling of an eye, the
soul is made more one with God than by her doing any act, bodily or
ghostly. The oftener this birth happens in the soul the closer grows her
union with God.
God is born in the empty soul by
discovering himself to her in a new guise without guise, without light in divine
light.
St Augustine says, 'The soul being
aflame with divine love, God is born in the soul, the Holy Ghost being the
enkindler of love.'
God has vouchsafed divine light to
the soul that he may blithely work in his own image.
Now no creature can do what is not in
its power. Hence the soul cannot act above herself, not even with the bridal
gift that God has given her in the shape of her most exalted faculty. This
light, albeit divine, is still created. The creator is one and the light
another. So God comes to the soul in love, purposing that love shall raise her
to a higher power, to a function superior to her own. But love fails to tell
unless she meets or makes her match. As far as God finds his likeness in the
soul, so far is God operation. If her love is boundless, God acts as boundless
love.
A man might live a thousand years and
go on growing all the time in love, just as fire will burn so long as there is
wood. The bigger the fire and the stronger the wind, the more fiercely it
burns. Now put love for the fire and the Holy Ghost for the wind: the greater
the love and the stronger the inspiration of the Holy Ghost in grace, the
quicker the work of perfection is achieved. Yet not suddenly, but by the
gradual growth of the soul. It would not be well for the whole man to be
consumed at once.
The soul becomes so one with God that
grace confines her; she is not satisfied with grace, for grace is
creaturely. The soul is so curiously glamoured, she does not realise that
she exists: she fancies herself God, so utterly she has escaped from self.
But be she never so far gone from self, she goes on being creature.
Pouring a drop of water into a vat of wine does not destroy it. Seeing
herself the soul sees spirit; seeing the angels she again sees spirit; but God
is such pure spirit that soul and angel are nigh bodily compared with him. A
portrait of the highest seraph limned in black would be a better likeness far
than God portrayed as highest seraph: that were a pre-eminent unlikeness.
Now in the contemplative state we are consumed by fiery love
in the Holy Ghost. Sooner than knowingly commit a sin, venial or mortal,
we shall prefer to suffer every imaginable martyrdom. If by one venial sin
we were enabled to release from hell souls without number, we would not ransom
them. Such love to God must a man have to be familiar with him in
contemplation. Moreover, he must have a mind at ease; and in preparing for
it, an undisturbed retired spot is necessary. The body should be rested
from bodily labour, not only of the hands but of the tongue as well and all five
senses. The soul keeps clear best in the quiet, but in jaded body is often
overpowered by inertia. Then by strenuous effort we travail in divine love
for intellectual vision till, clearing a way through recollected senses, we rise
past our own mind to the wonderful wisdom of God, though this is quite beyond
the grasp of any creature. We rise to divine heights. David says: Accedat
homa ad cor altum et exaltabitur deus, that is, Man rising to the summit of
his mind is exalted God. From this divine eminence we see the lowness and
insignificance of creatures. We feel an inkling of the perfection and
stability of eternity, for there is neither time nor space, neither before nor
after, but everything present in one new, fresh-springing now where
millenniums last no longer than the twinkling of an eye. And we win
participation in the manifold delights of the heavenly host. So great and joy of
Mary Queen in heaven, that having but a thousandth part of it, each member of he
heavenly company would taste far more than ever they have earned. There
every spirit rejoices in the joy of every other, relishing it each in his
degree. Every celestial habitant is, knows and loves in God, in his own
self and in every other spirit whether soul or angel. And the distinctive
consciousness of one God in three Persons and the Three one God gives such
ineffable, amazing satisfaction that at all their passionate longing is
fulfilled. And just what they are full of they crave unceasingly, and what they
crave is all their own in new, fresh-springing joyful ecstasy, theirs to enjoy
in all security from everlasting unto everlasting.
Thereafter we press on into the
truth, into the simplicity God is himself not seeking what is his. So we fall
into peculiar wonder. In this wonder let us remain for human wit is
powerless to fathom it. Plumbing the deeps of divine wonder but stirs
facile doubt.