LXXI (2)
BOETHIUS SAYS: HE WHO WANTS TO SEE TRUE
Boethius says, 'He who wants to see
true in this light I speak of let him relinquish four things,' which are set
down. He must relinquish the joys of the world and care and want and fear;
while these are in thee it is dark and clouded therein. St Paul says God
dwells in light inaccessible. Anything approaching this light the light
consumes and turns to its own divine nature, even as I said of the divine
essence: what is taken into the essence is changed into essence. Speaking
of understanding; as it is characteristic of God to subsist unmoved in his pure
and virgin essence, his own being, so is this property imputed to understanding,
which is so noble as to be self-subsistent.
I have told how understanding has to
break through the image of the Son; as he himself declares, 'I am the light of
the world no man cometh to the Father but through me.' As the wise man
explains in the Book of Wisdom, when the soul is borne into God by his divine
wisdom, she is clarified and sublimed in light and in grace, all that is foreign
to the soul being detached and shelled away, together with a portion of
herself. Further, I related how the soul, no throughly purged of soul
accretions, is carried up and flows back into the Son as pure as she flowed out
in him. The Father created the soul in the Son, so if we are ever to get
into the ground of God, into his innermost heart, we must take the lowest place
in our own ground, in our own innermost self, in abject lowliness. When
the soul enters into her ground, into the innermost recesses of her being,
divine power suddenly pours into her, producing much activity, both manifest and
secret, and the soul grows big and high in favour with God. This is and
must be in the soul who, rightly disposed in the ground of humility, ascends
right into God and coming to absolute rest in him, abides wholly within without
looking out, subsistent in his pure essence; for even therein is the soul.
God is pure being. The philosopher says that nothing at all can get into
God, who is pure being, but what is also pure being. Ergo, the soul is
pure being who has gotten therein, soaring right up into God. Amen.