Videte, qualem charilaiem dedit nobis pater, ut Jilii dei nominemur et simus (/ Joh. It must be understood that this is all the same thing : knowing God and being known by God, and seeing God and being seen by God. We know God and see him because he makes us know and sec. Even as the luminous air is not distinguishable from its luminant, for it is luminous with what illumines it, so do we know by being known, by his making us conscious. Christ said, ‘ Again ye shall see me.’ That is to say : by making you see I make you see me, whereat ‘ your heart shall rejoice,’ rejoice in the vision and knowledge of God, and ‘ your joy no man taketh from you.’
St John says : ‘ Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called and should be the sons of God.’ lie says not only ‘ should be called ’ but ‘ should be.’ Now I maintain that we can no more be wise without wisdom than Son without the filial nature of God’s Son : without having the very same nature as the Son of God himself. Wouldst thou be the Son of God ? Thou canst not, without having the same nature as the Son of God. But this is hidden from us hero, as it is written, ‘Beloved, now we are God’s sons (and it doth not yet appear what we shall he), but we know that he is our exemplar and we shall be like him.’ That is, the same as he is : same life and enjoyment and understanding : exactly the same as he is, when we see him as God. I say, God cannot make me the Son of God without I have the nature of God’s Son, any more than God can make me wise without my havdng wisdom, "riiough we are God’s sons, we do not realize it yet : ‘ it doth not yet a]3pear ’ to us, but this much we do know, he says, ‘ we shall be like him.’ Sundry things in our souls overlay this knowledge and conceal it from us.
The soul has something in her, a spark of intellect, that never dies ; and in this spark, as at the apex of the mind, we place the paradigm of the soul ; and there is also in our souls knowledge of externals, sensible and rational ])erecption, present there as images and words which obscure it from us. ITow are we God’s sons ? By having one nature with him. But any realization of this, of being God’s sons, is subjective not objective knowledge. The inner consciousness strikes down to the very essence of the soul. Not that it is the soul itself, but it is rooted there and is in a measure the life of the soul, her intellectual life, the life, that is, wherein a man is born God’s Son, born into tlu' eternal life, for this knowledge is a- temporal, unex tended, without here and without now. In this life all things are the same thing and all things common ; all things are all in all and all atoned.
I will give you an illustration. In the body the members are united so that eye belongs to foot and foot to eye. Could the foot speak, it would declare that the eye seems rather in the foot than in the head, and the eye would say the same the other way about. Accordingly, I trow that the grace which is in Maiy is really more an angel’s and is more in him (yet being in Mary) than if it were in him or in the saints. For everything that Mary has belongs to every saint, so the grace in Mary is his own and he enjoys it more than if it really wore in him.
But such a simile is too gross and carnal, depending as it does on bodily imagery. I will give you another, therefore, more subtle, less material. I assert that in heaven all is in all and all one and all ours. The grace our Lady has exists in me (when I am yonder), not as welling up in and flowing out of Mary, but as in me as my own and not of foreign origin. I contend that there what one has another has, not as from another nor as in another, but in its own self, so that the grace in one is simultaneously in another as his own grace. Thus spirit is in spirit. And that is why I say I cannot be the son of God unless I have the very nature the Son of God has there ; and that having this same nature makes us the same as he is, we seeing him as God. ‘ Hut it doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ Meaning, I take it, that there is then no like nor different, but : wholly without distinction we are the same in essence and in substance and in nature as he is himself. This is not apparent now : it will be obvious when we see him as God.
God makes us to know him, and his knowing is his being, and his making me know is the same as my knowing, so his knowing is mine : just as, in the master, what he teaehes is the same as, in the pupil, the thing that he is taught. And be(ausc his knowing is mine, and his knowing is his substance and his nature and his essence, it follows that his substance and his nature and his essence are mine. And his substance, his nature and his essence being mine, therefore I am tjie Son of God. Behold, brethren, what manner of love God hath bestowed upon us that we should be called and should be the Son of God !
Mark whereby we are sons of God : by having the same nature as the Son of God.- -How can one be the Son of God, or know it, seeing that God is not like anybody? — True, Isaias says, ‘To whom will ye liken God or what likeness will ye compare unto him ?’ Sitice it is God’s nature to be not like anyone, we must needs not be so to be the same as he is. AVhen I contrive to see myself in naught and to scc naught in me ; when I succeed in rooting up and (tasting out everything in me, then I am free to pass into the naked being of the soul. Likes must be ousted ere I can be transplanted into God and be the same as he is : same substance, same essence, same nature and the Son of God. Onc;c this happens, there is nothing hid in God that is not revealed, that is not mine. I am wise and mighty just as he is, and one and the same with him. Then Sion is a true beholder, true Israel, a seer : God, since nothing in the Godhead is (concealed from him. IMan is turned into God. Lilt that nothing may be concealed from me, everything revealed, there must appear in me no like, no image, for no image can show 'is God’s nature nor his essence. While there abideth in thee any image or like thou art never the same as God. To be the same as od there must be nothing in thee, latent or defined, nothing Covered in thee that is not discovered and cast out.
Mark what sin is. It is born of negation. Negation’s brood must be exterminated in the soul ; while there is not in thee thou art not the Son of God. VVe weep and lament for want of something. The minus quantity must go, be cancelled out, if man is to become the Son of God and \veep and wail no more. Man is not wood nor stone : impcrfeetioii and naught. We shall not be like him until this minus is made good and we are all in all as God is all in all.
There are two births of man : one in the world, the other one out of the world and ghostly, in God. VVouldst know if thy child is born and if he is naked ? Whether, that is to say, thou hast been made God’s Son ? If thy heart is heavy, except for sin, thy child is not born. In thine anguish thou art not yet mother ; thou art in labour and thine hour is nigh. Doubt not, if thou art travailing for thyself or for thy friend no birth has taken place though birth be close at hand, 'fhe birth is not over till thy heart is free from earc : then man has the essenee and nature and substance and wisdom and joy and all that God has. Then the very being of the Son of God is ours and in us and we attain to actual Deity.
Christ says : ‘ If any will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ That is : east away care and let perpetual joy reign in your heart. Thus the (hild is born. And when the child is born in me, the sight of friends, of father, dead there before my eyes will leave my heart untouched. Were my heart moved thereby the child would not be born in me, though peradventurc its nativity is nigh. I maintain that God and his angels lake such keen delight in every act a good man docs, that there is no joy like it. And accordingly, I say, the birth of this child in thee brings thee most keen delight in all good deeds done in this world, thy joy being so continuous as to be neverending. Hence the words : ‘ 'our joy no man taketh from you.’ When I am transported into God, then God is mine and all he has.
‘ I am the Lord thy God,’ he says. Then I have real delight which neither pain nor sorrow can take from me, for then I am installed in Ciod where sorrow has no place. We shall sec that in God is no anger nor sadness, but only love and joy. Though he seem sometimes to be wrathful with sinners it is not really wrath, it is his kindness, the effect of his great love : ‘ Whom he loveth he chasteneth,’ for he is love, the Holy Ghost. God’s anger springs from love ; he chides us with dispassion. When nothing is grievous or hard, when all is pure joy, then verily thy child is born. Strive that this child shall be not nascent merely but be born in thee, even as in God his Son is ever being born and is ever born. May this betide, So help us God. Amen.