IHlectus deo et hominibus etc. ( Eccl. 45i). In this passage from the Book of Wisdom the wise man speaks of (Moses), ‘ the beloved of God and men, whose memory is in benediction. God made him like the saints in glory.’ And this may well be said of the saint whose festival we keep to-day. Ilis name is Benedictus, blessed, so that to him are especially appropriate the words used here, cujus rnemoria in benedictione esty i.e. whose memory is in benediction, the more so as of him also we read that a glory was revealed to him wherein he saw the whole world gathered up as it were into a ball, and our text says, ‘ God made him like the saints in glory.’
As to this glory. St Gregory says that to a soul who is in this glory all things seem small and narrow. The natural light that God has poured into the soul is so splendid and so strong that God’s bodily creation is all poor and meagre to it. This light is more glorious than any corporal thing God ever made, withal the meanest, vilest corporal thing illumined by this light, which is intelligence, becomes exalted above mortal things. It is clearer and brighter than the sun and purifies things from both time and matter. This light' is so far-flung it vaults the boundaries of space. Wider than space, it transcends the great and good as God transcends wisdom and goodness ; for God is not either wisdom or good, but from God come wisdom and goodness. Intellect comes not of wisdom, nor intellect is not the outcome of truth nor is not gotten thereof as will is of goodness. Will wants what is good and is engendered thereby an(d (truth) is the issue of intellect not intellect of the truth. This light which flows out of the intellect is intelligence, which is like an outburst, an outflow or a stream as compared to what intellect is in itself. And this outburst is as far removed therefrom as heaven is from earth.
There is another light, the light of grace, compared to which this natural light illumines a mere pin-point of the earth, nay rather a mere pin-point compared with the whole heavens which are incredibly more vast than all the earth. God’s presence in the soul by grace is instinct with more light than any intellect can give : the light of intellect is but a drop in the ocean of this light, nay less a thousandfold. Hence to the soul who is in God’s grace all things, and whatever her mind can grasp, will appear small and mean.
I was asked the reason why virtuous folk who are in the good graces of God are so zealous to serve him. I said it was because they had tasted God, and it were strange indeed if, onee tasting and enjoying God, the soul could stomach aught beside. As the saint hath it. Once the soul tries God she finds the things that are not God repugnant and distasteful.
Take the wise man’s words in another sense : ‘ Beloved of God and men.’ The verb is does not appear. He does not say : he is beloved of God and men, for he is not thinking of his changing and unstable temporal nature which the essence so far transcends. Essence is all-embracing and withal too transcendent ever to be touched by anything created. They that fondly think to have some knowledge of it know nothing whatsoever. As St Dionysius says, anything we know that we are able to impart or that we can define, that is not God ; for in God is neither this nor that which we can abstract nor has he limitation. In him there is only one thing and that is himself. Hence for theologians there is the burning question : how comes this motionless, this intangible, solitary essence to be common to the soul, to be within the purview of the soul ? and they are greatly exercised as to how the soul receives it. I can only say that his divinity consists in the communication of himself to whatever is receptive of his goodness, and did he not communicate himself he would not be God.
The soul God loves and to whom he does communicate himself must be so wholly free from time and from all taint of creature that God in her smacks only of himself. ‘ In the middle of the night, when all things were asleep,’ the Scriptures say, ‘ thy word, O Lord, came down from thy royal throne.’ ‘ In the night ’ means when no creature peers into, appears in, the soul, and it is in this quiet, this inarticulateness of the soul that the word is spoken in her intellectual nature. This word is that of her own understanding : the expression of the Word as it is and abides in the intellect.
Often I feel afraid, in discoursing about God, at how utterly detached the soul must be to attain to union with him. We durst not deem this unattainable : nothing is unattainable to the soul that possesses God’s grace. To none were things ever more easy to leave : to the soul that has gotten God’s grace things are all (easy) to eschew. Further I say, none ever had pleasanter task to perform : to the soul with God’s grace all things are (pleasant) to leave because creature can cause her no pain. St Paul says, ‘ I am persuaded that no creature can separate us from God ; not fate nor life nor death.’
Look you. Nowhere is God so really God as in the soul. In every creature is somewhat of God, but in the soul God is divine, for she is his rest. According to one master, God loves nothing but himself : all his love is lavished on himself. Marry, a fool were he only to take a penny who at one stroke could seize an hundred pounds ! God’s love in us is the blossoming forth of the Holy Ghost. One word more of this : God loves nothing in us but the good he does in us himself. In the words of the saint, ‘ Nothing is crowned by God excepting his own work that is wrought by him in us.’ Let no one be affrighted at my saying that God loves none beside himself ; it is all to our advantage, for therein he has in view our highest happiness. He purposes to lure us to himself, to get us purged and take us to himself, so that with himself he may love himself in us and us in him. So he must needs, so far as our love goes, attract us to himself by every means he can, pleasant or disagreeable. God, despite himself, is ever hanging over us some bait to lure us into him. I never give God thanks for loving me, because he cannot help it ; whether he would or no it is his nature to. What I do thank him for is for not being able of his goodness to leave off loving me. To know ourselves, to be installed in God, this is not hard, seeing that God himself must be working in us ; for it is godly work, man acquiescing and making no resistance : he is passive while allowing God to act in him. Let us, waiting upon God, enable him to take us into him, so that becoming one with him he may be able to love us with himself. So help us God. Amen.