Adolescens, tibi dico : surge {Luc, 7), Our Lord went to a city called Naim, and many of his disciples went with him and much people. And when they came under the gate there was a dead man carried out, a youth, the only son of a widow. And our Lord came and touched the bier whereon the body lay, and said, ‘ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise ! ’ The life spake life into the dead. The youth arose and straightway took up his parable : his resurrection by the eternal Word.
He went to a city. I say, that means the soul which is well ordered and fortified in the Holy Ghost and, having set a watch for sin and shut out multiplicity, is safe and sound in Jesus : encompassed and walled round by the light of God. As the prophet hath it, ‘ God is the wall round Zion.’ The eternal wisdom says, ‘ In the holy and in the sanctified city I shall have like repose.’ Nothing is so restful, so unifying, as like ; hence same and in and near and by. That soul is holy in whom is God alone and wherein no creature finds rest. He says, ‘ I shall have like repose in the holy and in the sanctified city.’ All sanctity is of the Holy Ghost. This nature nothing transcends : beginning with the lowest it works it up into the highest. Philosophers say air only turns to fire when it is rarefied and hot. The Holy Ghost seizes the soul and clarifying her in its light and grace draws her up to the supreme. He says, ‘ In the sanctified city I shall alike repose.’ As the soul rests in God so God reposes fn her. If she rests partly in him then he rests partly in her ; if she rests wholly in him he rests wholly in her. That is why the eternal wisdom says, ‘ I shall repose alike (or equally).’
According to philosophers, the green and yellow colours of the rainbow merge into one another too gradually for any eye to follow, however keen its sight. And nature works so gradually when it resolves itself into the first effusion, this is so homogeneous with the angels, that Moses durst not write thereof for fear of the fainthearted, lest they should worship them : so much the same they are with the first emanation. One high authority definitely states that the topmost angel is so nigh the first eruption, he has in him so much of God’s likeness and God’s might, that he it is who cares for and looks, after this whole world as well as all the angels who are under him. The moral of which is, that God the high, the pure, and the impartible is operative in his highest creature who exerts his power, as a viceroy rules the land in the name of the king. He says, ‘ In the holy and in the sanctified city alike do I repose.’
As I was saying lately, the gate or door that, melting, God flows out by, is goodness. Essence is self-absorbed : not an effusion but an inner fusion. And unity is one and self-contained : aloof from everything and free from outside intercourse. But goodness is the melting and running out of God : his diffusion to the whole of creatures. Essence is the Father, unity the Son, and goodness is the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost seizes the soul (the sanctified city) at its purest, at its highest, and hales it up into its first source, which is the Son, and the Son bears it on into his source, his Father namely, into the ground, into the first, where the Son has his being ; where the eternal wisdom is in like repose in the holy and in the sanctified city, in the innermost.
He says our Lord ‘ went to a city called Naim.’ Naim means son of a dove, which suggests simplicity. The soul shall never rest in her potential power (or nature) till she is simplified to God. It also signifies a flow of water and implies passivity of soul towards sin and imperfection. The disciples symbolise the divine light which shall flow in and flood the soul. The ‘ much people ’ are the virtues whereof I lately spoke. The soul shall ascend in fiery aspiration and pass above the manifold merit of the angels to the greater virtues. So she comes ‘ under the gate ’ and enters into love and unity : the gate whence they bore out the youth, the widow’s son. ‘ Our Lord came and touched the bier whereon the body lay.’ How he came and how he touched I will not dwell upon but upon the words, ‘ Young man. Arise ! ’
He was the son of a widow : her man was dead. Ilcncc dead too was her son, the only son of the soul, the will and all the powers of the soul, for all these are one in the innermost mind, and mind {ix, intellect) is the man in the soul. Her husband was dead, therefore her son was dead also. ‘ Young man, I say unto thee. Arise ! ’ When the Word addresses the soul and the soul replies in the living Word, then the Son is alive in the soul.
Philosophers ask which is the better, the power of plants or the power of words or the power of stones ? Let us consider. Words derive their power from the original Word. But the abuse and multiplication of words impairs their force. Plants possess great power. I have heard that a serpent was fighting with a weasel when the weasel ran off and fetched a little plant which, wrapping in another plant, it launched upon the serpent and, breaking asunder, the serpent lay dead. What endowed the weasel with this wisdom ? The virtue of plant-lore. Therein lies much wisdom. Words, too, have prodigious power: with words we can do wonders. And stones again are very potent in virtue of the likeness wrought in them by the starry and celestial force. Like works in like most mightily, and that is why the soul, by raising herself up in the natural light, can get into angelic light and in the angelic light enter the light divine and so stand in the three lights, at the cross-ways, at the vertex, where the lights run into one. There the eternal Word is saying life in her, and there the soul is living and gainsaying in the Word. So may we be gainsay ers in the eternal Word, God helping us. Amen.