AdolescenSj tibi dico : surge (Luc, 7), We read in the gospel that a woman came to our Lord Jesus Christ. She said, ‘ Sir, I am a widow, and had an only son who is dead.’ Our Lord said, ‘ Young man, Arise ! ’
The widow, this woman whose husband was dead, and her only son. By this woman is meant the understanding, her husband is the man of the soul, and the youth the highest intelleet, for that is the young man. When the soul is dead in imperfection, the higher mind awakening into understanding cries to God for grace. Then God gives it divine light and it becomes self-knowing. Therein it sees God. I said, intellect alone can receive divine light. The other powers of the soul are instruments and agents for raising the intellect to its maximum lucidity.
It is a question with the theologians, which ranks higher, understanding or love ? One school says understanding, the other school, love. It is a lively subject of debate. Understanding says : How canst thou love a thing thou dost not know ? Love says : What avails thee thy knowledge without love ? Loveless, thou shalt never find eternal happiness. Understanding says : I am born in the clear light of self-knowledge. Love says : Great knowledge without love is vain. Understanding says : Give place, thou are only my slave : thou dost help me to rise and remainest. Love says : I am the good that God is himself. Knowledge says ; High is thy claim : without me thou dost fall to the ground. Love says : It would be well for thee to bear me more in mind. Understanding says : I can rise higher not fettered to thee ; my vision is clearer, nay, I want none of thee. I have what I will the while I know what hitherto I have descried and into which I now have flowed to abide for aye in perfect unity. Here, I am above love and transcend all activity. Here I have intuition ; and my real knowledge of all things, all I believed, is now come true. Faith and hope and all the powers of the soul remain, they can go no further. True love says : I must abide with thee, for I am eternal. Our sisters stay behind, that is but meet : they are our servants who have brought thee to the actual enjoyment of thy eternal happiness. — Now comes the highest intellect, that which receives all things direct from God, and says : I have conceived the sovran good wherein is naught save unity. Intuition says ; I shall cleave to thee, iny place is at thy side. Intellect says : Knowledge and love must remain behind. Intuition says : It is meet I should enjoy what I have divined. Highest intellect replies : What you have brought me to and which I hitherto have known, now knows itself in me. Wherefore I find I need none else. All created things must remain behind with all I ever was. I stand before my cause.
To go back to the widow and our Lord’s command, ‘ Young man, Arise ! ’ we must bear in mind that anything not far from birth is young. Thus it is with intellect as standing in the presence of its cause ; oblivious of the aids to its ascent it fondly weens it has been there for aye and there shall eternally remain. That may not be.
Then take the words : ‘ by the widow is meant the understandby her son the intellect, and by her husband the man of the soul.’ Now you must know, when the man of the soul begins to rise, the masters say it is another man. By which you must not understand it is another soul : it is another being of the soul ; the old mode is done, it is dead. The soul assuming her real mode stands in her virgin innocence. The man of the soul, transcending his angelic mode and guided by the intellect, pierces to the source whence flowed the soul. Intellect itself is left outside with all named things. So the soul is merged into pure unity. This we call the man of the soul, and, having reached this consummation, he has no need of any help. What he did heretofore God now does in him. God knows him as he knew him, God loves him as he loved him. God is doing all the work and the man of the soul is absolutely idle.
When a man has reached this point we may well say, this man is God and man. All Christ has by nature he has won by grace. His body is filled with the noble nature of the soul, which she receives from God, with divine light, wherefore we may truly ery, Behold, a man divine ! Pity them, my children, they are from home and no one knows them. Let those in quest of God be careful lest appearances deceive them in these people who are peculiar and hard to place ; no one rightly knows them but those in whom the same light shines. Namely, the light of truth. Yet it may well be that wayfarers to that same good, but who have not yet reached it, will come across these perfect of whom we have been speaking. Believe me, did I know one such, and had a convent-full of gold and precious stones, I would give the whole of it for a single fowl for him to eat. Further I declare, if all the things God ever made were mine, I would for with give them all for the enjoyment of that man, and rightly, for they are all his. Nay, more I say : his, too, is God in the fullness of his power, and if there stood before me all who in imperfection are anhungered, I would not withhold from that man’s need a single feather of the fowl, though I might feed that multitude. For, you must remember, with one in imperfection, anything he eats or drinks will drag him down and make him prone to sin. But not the virtuous man : what he eats and drinks he raises up in Christ to the Father. So look well to yourselves.
You are familiar with Christ’s words, ‘ Where two are gathered together in my name I will be with them.’ Here Christ is referring to the harmonious union of the body and the soul, where body wants nothing except what the soul wills. God is with these : they are the people we have been speaking of. Here the man of the soul is in actual possession of his eternal happiness, and, being docked of all her powers, the soul encounters no sort of opposition. I warn you, you must keep a sharp look out, for they are difficult to tell ; thus if they should need it, while other people fast they will be eating, while other people watch they will be sleeping, while other folks are pra> ing they will hold their peace. In short, the things they say and do seem imaeeountable, for what God makes obvious to persons on the way to their eternal happiness is foreign to those that have arrived there. These have no wants whatever : they are rich in the possession of a city of their own. I call that my own which is mine eternally and no one can take from me. These people, you must know, do most valuable work. They work within, you understand, in the man of the soul. Blessed is the kingdom wherein dwells one of them ; in an instant they will do more lasting good than all the outward actions ever done. See ye withhold not aught of theirs. May we recognise these people and loving God in them, with them possess the city they have won. So help us God. Amen.