LXXXI
I HAVE CHOSEN YOU
Ego
elegi vos de mundo (Joh 1519). These words which I quote in
the Latin are from the gospel of to-day, the feast of one of the saints,
Barnabas by name, who is commonly referred to in the scriptures as being an
apostle. Our Lord says, 'I have elected you, selected you, chosen you out of the
world, from all created things, that ye should bring forth much fruit and that
your fruit should remain,' for it is very good to bring forth fruit and for the
fruit to remain, and the fruit does remain if we dwell in love. At the end
of this gospel our Lord says, 'Love one another as I have every loved you; my
Father hath loved me eternally and so have I loved you; keep my commandments, so
shall ye remain in my love.'
All God's commandments come from
love, from the kindness of his nature; did they not come from love they
would not be God's law, for God's law is the goodness of his nature and his
nature his benignant law. Whoso dwells in love dwells in the goodness of
his nature; he dwells in God's love, and love is without why. Supposed I
had a friend and loved him for benefits received and because of getting my own
way, I should not love my friend, I should be loving my own self. I ought
to love my friend on his own account, for his virtues, for his own intrinsic
worth: I love my friend aright, loving him like this. And so with the man
abiding in God's love, seeking not his own in God nor in himself nor in any
thing but loving God simply for his kindness, for the goodness of his nature,
for what he is in himself: that is true love. Love of virtue is the
flower, the ornament of virtue, aye, the mother of all virtue, all perfection
and all happiness: it is God, for God is the fruit of virtue, and it is this
fruit which remains to man. When a man works for fruit and the fruit
remains to him he rejoices greatly. Suppose he has a vineyard or a field
and makes it over to his man to work while keeping all the produce; he may give
into the bargain all the things thereto belonging and still be much rejoiced to
have the fruits remain in payment. Even so a man rejoices in the fruit of
virtue; he has no worries, no vexations, because he has made over himself and
everything.
Our Lord says, 'Whoso shall leave
anything for me and for my name's sake, to him will I restore a hundredfold and
eternal life to boot.' But if thou leave it for that hundredfold and for
the sake of eternal life, thou art leaving nothing; nay, so thou leave it for a
thousandfold reward thou are leaving nothing: leave thyself, give up self
altogether, that is real riddance. A man once came to me (it was not long ago),
and told me he had given up a quantity of land and goods to save his soul.
Alack! I thought, how paltry, for inadequate, the things thou has
resigned. It is blindness and folly so long as thou dost care a jot for
what thou has forsworn. Forswear thyself, that is true resignation.
The man who has resigned himself is
so impartial, this world will have none of him, as I have said not long ago. The
devotee of justice is given up to justice, seized of justice, identified with
justice. I once wrote in my book: The Just man serves neither God nor
creature; he is free; and the more he is just the more he is free and the more
he is freedom itself. Nothing created is free. While there is aught above me,
excepting God himself, it must constrain me, however small it be or however
(great); even love and knowledge, so far as it is creature and not actually God,
confines me with its limits. The unjust man, whether he would or no, is
the servant of illusion; serving the world and creature he is the bondman of
sin.
I was thinking lately: that I am a
man belongs to other men in common with myself; I see and hear and drink
like any other animal; but that I am belongs to no one but myself, not to
man nor angel, no, nor yet to God excepting in so far as I am one with
him. All God's work he puts into his one replica of himself, and though
radically differing in their operation, (creatures) all tend to reproduce
themselves. In my father nature took its normal course. In the
course of nature I should be a father like himself. This tendency is every
towards self-repetition, toward the preservation of the species; it is every
man's intention that his would should be himself. Any shifting or hindering of
his nature and the result is woman: thus where nature stops God begins to work
and create; for without woman there would be no men. The child as
conceived within its mother's womb has shape and colour and material being; so
much is wrought by nature. That lasts for forty days and forty nights, and on
the fortieth day God creates the soul in much less than the twinkling of an eye.
Now ends the work of nature, all nature can contrive in colour, form, and
matter. The activity of nature goes out altogether, and as the natural energy is
finally withdrawn it is restored intact in the rational soul. This then is
the work of nature and the creation of God. In created things (as I have
said repeatedly) there is no truth.
There is something, transcending the
soul's created nature, not accessible to creature, non-existent; no angel has
gotten it, for he is a clear (intelligible) nature, and clear and overt things
have no concern with this. It is akin to Deity, intrinsically one, having
naught in common with naught. Many a priest finds it a baffling
thing. It is one; rather unnamed than named; rather unknown than
known. If thou couldst naught thyself an instant, less than an instant, I
should say, all that this is in itself would belong to thee. But while
thou dost mind thyself at all thou knowest no more of God than my mouth does of
colour or my eye of taste: so little thou knowest, thou discernest, what God is.
Plato, that great priest, who
occupied himself with lofty matters, makes reference to this things. He
speaks about a light which is not in this world; not in the world and not out of
the world; not in time nor in eternity: it has neither in nor out. God the
eternal Father, the fullness and the sink of all his deity does he give birth to
here in one one-begotten Son, so that we are that very Son, and his birth in his
presence within and his abiding within is his bringing forth. That remains
ever the same which comes welling up in itself. Ego, the word I,
is proper to none but to God himself in his sameness. Vos, the word
implies your collective unity, so that ego and vos, I and you,
stand for unity. May we be the unity of itself, unity abiding, So help us
God. Amen.