Ecce ego mitto angelum 7neum etc. {Matt, llo, Luc. 737 ). ‘ Behold, 1 send my angel before my face to prepare my way before me. And he whom we seek shall suddenly come into his temple. Who knoweth the day of his coming ? For he is as a fire that blazes up.’ Suddenly, he says, he shall come into his temple. The soul shall come with all of her possessions, be they sins or be they virtues, and offer them all up at once, lifting them up in the Son into the Father. As the love of the Father is the loveliness of the Son. The Father loves nothing at all but the Son and such things as he finds in the Son. Let the soul then rise up in her whole power and offer herself to the Father in his Son so that she with the Son may be loved by the Father.
He says, ‘ Behold, I send my angel.’ The word behold suggests three things. Something great or marvellous or rare. Behold, I send my angel to refine the soul and prepare her for divine light. Divine light is always in the angelic light and of the angelic light. The soul would be troubled and distressed if God’s light were not shaded therein. God, clouded by angelic light is always waiting to come out and shine upon the soul. I am wont to say, when I am asked what God is doing, that he is begetting his Son, bearing him ever fresh and new and with such delight that he does nothing else besides this work with his Holy Ghost and all things in it. Hence his words, ‘ Behold I.’ He who says I does the very best work. None but the Father can say this word right. The act is peculiar to him and there is no issue thereof but his Son. In this act God tells forth his all. When God does this work in the soul, that is his birth ; his birth is his work and his work is his Son. God performs this operation in the innermost depths of the soul so secretly that neither saint nor angel knows, nor is the soul herself a party to it save that she is the patient ; God does it by himself. It is really the Father who says, ‘ I send my angel.’
Now I maintain we cannot be content with this and will have none of him. It was Origen who said, ‘ Mary Magdalene sought our Lord ; she sought for one dead man and was disappointed to find two living angels.’ She was right, for she expected God. Dionysius says of the august principalities of angels, that divine order reigns there and divine activity and divine likeness or divine truth, as far as that is possible. What is divine order but divine power and from them both springs love which is ardour and wisdom and truth and power. For love is burning in the realm of essence : transcendental, actual being, free from nature. It is its nature to be natureless. To think of goodness or wisdom or power dissembles the essence and dims it in thought. The mere thought obscures essence. Such is divine rule. And where God finds its like within the soul there docs the Father give his Son birth. The soul’s whole power bursts alight. Out of this power, out of this light, leaps the flame : love. The soul with all her might ascends to the order of God.
Now to speak of the order of the soul. According to a heathen doctor, the supernal light of the soul is very bright and clear and dearly loves itself, whereas the soul dislikes herself and never sheds this natural light upon herself unless her lower powers are ordered to her highest ; her natural light being high enough to reach angelic nature, but all averse from her inferior powers, it will not pour therein nor will it drench the soul unless these lower powers will give way. When a lord rules over a peojfle the serf is under the knight and the knight is under the baron. They all desire peace and to that end they will all help each other. And even so each several power is subject to the others and helps to keep peace in the soul, perfect rest. Our doctors define perfect rest as absolute freedom from motion. In it the soul can rise above herself to the order of the gods. In this absolute rest the Father gives the soul his only Son. Now he ranks first in order of divinity.
The other members take somewhat lower rank as I was saying of the angels who have God’s likeness very strong in them and illumination. In this interior light they soar above themselves into the divine image, all face to face with God in his divine light and so much the same that they do God’s work. Angels illumined like this and who are so like God, absorb and suck in God. I often say that were I void and had this fiery inner love and likeness I should absorb God altogether. Light streams out and lights up what it falls on. To call a man enlightened as we sometimes do, means little. Where it comes in it is far better ; where it breaks through into the soul and makes her Godlike, divine, as far as may be, and light inwardly. In this interior light she
Sermons Ani> Collations
towers above herself in the light of God. Now she has come home and is at one with him and is his fellow-worker. Nothing is wrought by creature, the Father works alone. The soul shall never stop until she works as well as God. Then she and the Father shall do his work together : she shall work as one with him, wisely and lovingly. That we may be in unity with him, God help us. Amen.