Deus charitas est et qui manet in charitate in deo manet et deus in eo (J Joh, 4jq). ‘ God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in
God and God in him.’ This is the epistle we read at Mass, and it is St John speaking.
Take the opening words : ‘ GocL is love.’ That is so, inasmuch as all that can love, all that does love, he compels by his love to love him. God is love, secondly, inasmuch as every God-created and loving thing compels him by its love to love it, willy-nilly.
God is love, thirdly, inasmuch as his love drives all his lovers out of multiplicity. The love of God in multijDlicity pursues the love which is himself right out of multiplicity into his very unity. God is love, fourthly, who by his love provides all creatures with their life and being, preserving them in his love. The colour of the cloth is preserved in the cloth : even so creatures are preserved in existence by love, that is, God. Take the colour from cloth, its subsistence is gone : so do creatures all lose their subsistence if taken from love, to wit, God. God is love, and so lovely is he that lovers all love him, willy-nilly. No creature is so vile as to love what is bad. What we love must be good or must seem to be good. But creaturely good, all told, is rank evil as compared with God. St Augustine says, ‘ Love, that in meditating love thou mayst provide the wherewithal to satisfy thy soul.’ God is love.
My children, mark me, I pray you. Know ! God loves my soul so much that his very life and being depend upon his loving me, whether he would or no. To stop God loving me would be to rob him of his Godhood ; for God is love no less than he is truth ; as he is good, so is he love as well. It is the absolute truth, as God lives. There were certain theologians who maintained that the love which is within us is the Holy Ghost, but this is false. For the bodily food we take is changed into us, but the spiritual food we receive changes us into itself, hence love divine is not preserved in us, otherwise there would be two. Divine love preserves us in itself as one in the same.
‘ God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in (iod and God in him.’ There is a difference between ghostly things and bodily things. One ghostly thing dwells in another ; but nothing bodily dwells in another. There may be water in a tub, with the tub round it. But where the wood is the water is not. In this sense no material thing dwells in another. But spiritual things dwell in each other : each several angel with all his joy and happiness is in every other angel as well as in himself, and every angel with all his joy and happiness dwells in me, and God to boot with his entire beatitude, though I discern it not.
If anyone should ask me what God is, I should answer : God is love, and so altogether lovely that creatures all with one accord essay to love his loveliness, whether they do so knowingly or unbeknownst, in joy or sorrow. Instance the lowest angel in his pure nature : the smallest spark or love-light that ever fell from him would light up the whole world with love and joy. See his innate perfection ! Moreover, as I have explained at various times, the angels are numerous beyond number. — But to leave love and come to knowledge. If only we knew God it would be easy to forsake the world. All that God ever made or shall yet make.
all this (I say), if God should give it to my soul without himself, he staying, so to speak, a hair’s-breadth off, would not content my soul nor make me happy. I am happy when all things are in me and God, and where I am God is, and where God is I am.
‘ He who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.’ Suppose I am in God, then where he is I am ; and if God is in me, then, unless the scriptures lie, where I am God is. It is the absolute truth, as God is God.
‘ Faithful servant, I will set thee over all my goods,’ ix. the manifold goodness of God in creatures will I set thee over. Secondly, ‘ I will set thee over all my goods ’ means : at the source of creature happiness, in the pure unity of God himself wherein he has his own felicity. In other words : God being the good, in that sense will he set us above his manifold goodness. Thirdly, he will set us over all his goods, means : above all nameables, all effables, all so-called good things and all intelligibles. Thus he sets us over all his goods.
‘ Father, I pray thee, make them one as I and thou are one.’ Where two grow one, one loses its nature. Ergo, for God and the soul to be one the soul has to lose her own liic and nature. They are one as regards what is left. Hut for them to be one, one must lose its identity and the other must keep its identity. Then they are the same. Now, the Holy Ghost says : ‘ I pray thee, let them be one as we are one. I pray thee, make them the same in us.’
When I pray for aught my prayer goes for naught ; when I pray for naught I pray as I ought. When I am one with that wherein are all things, past, present and to come, all the same distance and all just the same, then they are all in God and all in me. There is no lliought of Henry or of Conrad. Praying for aught save God alone is idolatry and unrighteousness. They pray aright who pray in spirit and in truth. When praying for someone, for Henry or Conrad, I pray at my weakest. When praying for no one I pray at my strongest, and when I want nothing and make no request I am praying my best, for in God is no Henry nor no Conrad. To pray to God for aught save God is wrong and faithless, and, as it were, an imperfection.. For to set up something beside God is, as I lately said, but to make naught of God and God of naught. Whoso is far and foreign to himself as the chief angel of the Seraphim is far from him, that man owns that same angel just as God docs and is God, and that’s the naked truth, as God is God. ‘ God is love, and he that is in love is in God and God in him.’
May all of us attain this love whereof I speak. So help us our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.