Vir mens serous tuus mortuus est {4 Reg. 4j_7). The woman said to the prophet, ‘My husband thy servant is dead and the creditors are come to take my two sons as bondsmen for the debt, for I have nothing but a drop of oil.’ Then said the prophet, ‘ Go borrow empty vessels and pour a little in : it will increase and multiply and will pay thy debt and release thy sons. Thou and thy children can live on the rest.’
The spark {i.e. the intellect, the head of the soul), the so-called husband of the soul, is none other than a spark of the divine nature, a divine light, a ray, an imprint of divinity. A woman begged our Lord for the water which he gives. Whoso drinks of this shall never thirst. Theologians say, the best gift of God is the Holy Ghost wherein God bestows all his grace and favour, his living water, namely. ‘ Whom I give this to shall never thirst.’ This water is grace and light upspringing in the soul to everlasting life.
The woman said, ‘ Sir, give me of this water.’ And our Lord replied, ‘ Bring me thine husband.’ She said, ‘ I have no husband.’ Quoth our Lord, ‘ Thou hast well said ; thou hast not one, thou hast had five, and he whom now thou hast is not thine husband.’ St Augustine asks : ‘ Why docs our Lord reply, “ Thou hast well said ” ? ’ What he means is this : thy five senses, these are the five husbands thou hadst in thy youth, after thine own heart ; now in thine age thou hast one, not thine own : intellect, namely, and this thou dost not obey. When the man in the soul, the intellect, is dead, unchecked evil prevails. To separate soul and body is bad enough, but for the soul to be divorced from God, that is a far worse matter. As the soul is the life of the body so God is the life of the soul. As the soul suffuses our members so God suffuses the powers of the soul and is passed on by them in goodness and love to everything round that they may be aware of him as flowing all the time, i.e. above time, in eternity and in the life they live.
The woman said, ‘ Sir, my husband thy servant is dead.’ Serous means one who receives, receiving another’s ; one who keeps and keeps for another. To keep for himself would make him a thief. Intellect is a servant, more so than will is or love. Will and love fall on God as being good : were he not good they would ignore him. But intellect pierces right through into essence, reckless of goodness, of power, of wisdom, of things accidental whatever they be and added to God. Not looking for these she gets them in him when, merged into his essence, she knows God simply as existence. What though he be not good nor just, yet she enjoys him as pure being. Here intellect is like the highest rank of angels of which there are three choirs. The Thrones receive God into them and preserve God in themselves. In the Cherubim God rests; they sec God continually. The Seraphim are ardent (burning) : like to these is the God-bearing intellect. With these angels the intellect spies God, in his vestibule, naked, as one without difference.
Quoth the woman, ‘ Sir, my husband thy servant is dead, and the creditors have come for my two sons.’ What are the two sons of the soul ? St Augustine, and with him a heathen doctor, speaks of the two faces of the soul. One is turned towards this world and towards the body, in this she works virtue and wisdom. The other face gazes straight into God ; the divine light is always in it, and this tells upon it unless, through being from home, she has it unawares. When the spark of the intellect carries right into God, then the man is alive. The birth lakes place. Not once a year it happens nor yet once a month nor once a day but all the time, beyond time, in the open, where there is neither here nor now nor thought nor nature. That is why we speak of sons, not daughters.
Now, to speak of the two sons in another sense. As understanding and will. Understanding leaps out of the intellect first and is afterwards followed by will, from them both. But no more of this. — These two sons of intellect may be taken in yet another way. One as power, the other as actuality. One heatlicn doctor says that it is in this power the soul becomes all things, ideally. In her actuality she is, like the Father, making all things new. It pleased God to seal her in the nature of all creatures : before the world when she existed not. God wrought this whole world ghostly in every single angel before he made the world itself. An angel has two understandings. The one is morning light, the other is the evening light. In the morning light he sees everything in God. In the evening light he sees things in the light of his own nature. When he goes out into things it grows night. So long as he remains within he has the evening light. We say that the angels rejoice when a man becomes good. But, our best doctors ask, do the angels also repine when a man commits sin ? We say : No ; they see into the justice of God and enjoy all things therein as they are in God. Therefore they do not repine. Intellect in its potential power is like the angel’s natural light, i,e. the evening light. With her actual power she raises all things up into God, where all things are bathed in the morning light.
Quoth the woman, ‘ The creditors are come to seize my two sons for their slaves.’ Then said the prophet, ‘ Go borrow empty vessels from thy neighbours.’ These neighbours mean all creatures and the five senses and the powers of the soul with her interior faculties which work in secret and are angels. From all these neighbours borrow empty vessels. Let us borrow empty vessels ; these filled with heavenly wisdom will give us means to pay our debt and, on the rest, to live eternally. So help us God. Amen.