Modicum etjam non videbitis (Joh, My Latin quota- tion is from the Gospel of St John which we read on Sunday. It is what our Lord said to his disciples, ‘ A modicum, a little, and ye see me not.’ Anything, however small, adhering to the soul prevents your seeing me. St Augustine being asked the meaning of eternal life answered and said : Dost thou ask me what is eternal life ? Ask eternal life, see what it says itself. None knows what heat is like the hot, nor wisdom like the wise, none knows the meaning of eternal life so well as the eternal life itself. Our Lord Jesus Christ says, ‘ This is eternal life, to know thee God, the one true God.’
‘ A modicum, a little, and lo ! ye see me not.’ Now you must understand that if the soul saw God even from afar, or in some intervening thing, as in a cloud, an instant, she would not turn away from him, not for all the world. What think ye then would happen if she saw God in himself, as he is, face to face in his naked essence ? All creatures God has ever made or could make if he would amount to very little, a mere nothing as compared with God himself. The heavens are big, so vast indeed, were I to tell ye would not credit me. If you could take a needle and prick the heavens with it, that needle-point of heaven, as compared with the whole heavens plus this entire world, would be greater than this universe compared with God. Well and truly then it may be said, ‘ a trifle, a little, and ye shall not sec me.’ Whilst thou seest aught of creature thou seest naught of God ; however little, it must go. Says the soul in the Book of Love, ‘ I ran about and sought him whom my soul loveth and I found him not.’ She met with angels and many things besides, but she found not him whom her soul loved. Then she goes on to say, ‘ It was but a little I passed from them and I found him whom my soul loveth,’ just as though to say : when I had gotten beyond creatures (little things and of small account) I came on him whom my soul loveth. The soul must pass beyond, she must transcend, all creatures before she can find God.
Now you must know, God loves the soul so mightily, he who should rob God of loving the soul would rob him of his very life and being : would kill God, if one may so say ; for the very love wherewith God loves the soul is what his Holy Breath is blowing in.
But if God loves the soul so much the soul must be a most important thing.
The philosopher says in his book On the Soul : If there were no means the eye could see a gnat, an ant, in heaven. And he was right, referring to the air and fire, etc. that intervene between the eye and heaven. Another philosopher declares that without means no eye could see at all. Both are expressing the same truth.
The first one says that if there were no means the eye could see an ant in heaven. And that is true. If nothing intervened between God and the soul she would see God every whit, for God himself is wholly free from means and brooks no sort of intervention. If the soul were stripped of all her sheaths, God would be discovered all naked to her view and would give himself to her, withholding nothing. As long as the soul has not thrown off all her veils, however thin, she is unable to see God. Any medium, but a hair’s-breadth, in betwixt the body and the soul stops actual union. That is true of corporal things and how much more of ghostly. Boethius says, Wouldst know the naked truth ? Then cast off joy and fear and trust and hope and pain. Joy is a means, fear is a means, faith and hope and pain, they all are means. While thou regardest them and they have regard to thee thou canst not see God.
The second doctor says : without means the eye would see nothing. If I cover my eyes with my hand I can see nothing of my hand. If I put it before me I sec it quite distinctly. This is due to the dense nature of the hand which must be rarefied and rendered volatile in air and light and in effigy be carried to my eye. The same thing with a mirror. If thou hast it facing thee thy image is reflected in the glass. The eye, like the soul, is a mirror, and things presented to it all appear therein. I do not see the hand, the stone, itself : I see the image of the stone, but I do not see this image in a second image or by any other means : I see it without means and without image. This image is itself the means : image without image like motion without motion although causing motion and size which has no size though the principle of size. Even so the image is in this sense imageless that it is not seen in another image. The eternal Word is the means and the image itself which is without means and without image, so that the soul in the eternal Word conceives of God and knows him without image and with nothing between.
There is one power in the soul ; intellect, of prime importance to the soul for making her aware of, for detecting, God. It has five properties. First, it is detached from here and now. Next, it is like nothing. Thirdly, it is pure and uncompounded.
Fourthly, it is in itself active or self-searching. Fifthly, it is an image.
First, it is detached from here and now. Here and now, that, in other words, is time and place. Now is the minimum of time ; not a fragment of time nor a fraction of time : a smack, a connection, an end of time. Small though it be it must go ; everything time touches has to go. Again, it is detached from here. And here means place. The spot I am standing on is small, but it must disappear before I can see God.
Secondly, it has no like. A philosopher says, God is a thing that nothing is like and that nothing can become like. But according to St John, ‘ we shall be called God’s children ’ and if we are God’s children we must resemble God. How then can this doctor say God is a thing that nothing is like ? The answer is that in being like nothing this power is like God. God is like nothing and this power is like nothing. You must understand that all creatures are by nature endeavouring to be like God. The heavens would not revolve unless they followed on the track of God or of his likeness. If God were not in all things, nature would stop dead, not working and not wanting ; for whether thou like it or no, whether thou know it or not, nature fundamentally is seeking, though obscurely, and tending towards God. No man in his extremity of thirst but would refuse the proffered draught in which there was no God. Nature’s quarry is not meat or drink nor clothes nor comfort nor any things at all wherein is naught of God, but covertly she seeks and ever more hotly she pursues the trail of God therein.
Thirdly, it is pure and unmingled. By nature God can tolerate no mingling or admixture. Nor is there in this power any intermingling or admixture : it is free from impurity and nothing foreign can occur therein. To tell a comely person he is fair and dark would do him an injustice. The soul must be without admixture. If someone hangs something to my cloak or sticks something on it then anyone who wears the eloak will wear too its attachments. If I go out hence, there will then go with me the whole of my attachments. What the spirit rests on, is attached to, takes the spirit wdth it. The man who rests on nothing, is attached to nothing, though heaven and earth should fall, will remain unmoved.
Fourthly, it is ever seeking, travailing, within. God is such that he ever abides in the innermost. And intellect is ever seeking him. But will goes out to what it loves in him. So at the coming of my friend, suddenly my heart goes out to him and he is glad. St Paul declares, ‘ we shall know God as we are known.’ And according to St John, ‘ we shall see God as he is.
Now if I am coloured I must have something in me that will take the colour. I should never colour unless I had a colour nature. And I can only see God in what he sees himself in. St Paul declares that ‘ God dwells in light inaccessible.’ It is not to be denied that keeping in the way, in the entry, though all well and good, is yet a long way from the truth, for it is not God.
Fifthly, it is an image. Mark this, it is important : it gives you the whole sermon in a nutshell. Object and image are bound up with one another so that we cannot part them. We can think of fire apart from heat and heat without the fire. We can think of the sun apart from light and of light as independent of the sun. But we cannot part the object from its image. I say more : Almighty God himself cannot disentangle them : they are born together and they die together. I do not die because my Father does. Suppose you die, then we no longer say, he is his son, we say, he was his son. Cloth that is bleached is like all whiteness in its whiteness. But if you blacken it, it is dead to whiteness. And here it is the same. If the image, God’s likeness, disappeared, there would perish also its exemplar, God. One thing I would say : ye are become two, ye are become three. Now mark my words. Intellect peers in, it searches every corner of the Godhead and finding the Son in the heart of the Father, in his ground, it takes him and sets him in its own. Intellect presses in ; she is not content with good or wisdom, nor with trutli nor yet with God himself. She is no more content with God than with a tree, a stone. She never rests until she gets into the ground whence truth and good proceed and takes them in principio, in the beginning, the fount of truth and goodness, where they rise before their coming forth : a ground far higher than truth and goodness are. Her sister (will) contents herself with God as being good. But intellect, leaving this behind, goes in and breaks through to the root whence shoots the Son and whence the Holy Spirit blossoms forth. May we discover this and be for ever blest. So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.