In diebus suis placuit deo et inventus est Justus {Eccl. In these words which I quote in Latin we celebrate the saint, Germanus by name, whose virtuous life so much is written of and whose festival is kept to-day in holy Christendom.
‘ In his days,’ that means there is more than one day. There is the soul’s day and God’s day. Days here, all that have passed for seven thousand years, are as near God’s day, to-day, as is yesterday. Why ? Because time yonder is in the present now. The heavens revolve, hence time ; day started when the heavens began to spin. Yonder the soul’s day is passing in the present, in her natural light where all things are, where there is perfect day, God’s day, day and night in one. Yonder in the day of eternity the soul is in the essential now ; there the Father is begetting his (one-begotten Son) in the here and now, there the soul is being reborn in God. As often as this birth takes place she is giving birth to the only Son. Full many are the sons of virgins born who travail in eternity, superior to time. But however many sons the soul gives birth to in eternity she has no more than the one Son, for it is supcrtemporal ; it comes to pass in the eternal day.
Just indeed is he who lives in virtue and in virtuous deeds ; who seeketh not his own in any thing, iicithcr in God nor creature. That man dwells in God and (iod in him. He takes delight in flouting and getting rid of things, in being done with things as far as that is possible. St John says, ‘ God is love and love is God and he who dwells in love dwells in God.’ Doubtless he is well lodged as heir to God, and he in whom God dwells has a good lodger. One of the masters says, God gives the soul a gift which moves her lo interior things. And it has been explained that the soul is moved directly by the Holy Ghost, for in the love wherein God loves himself, in that same love he is loving me, and the soul loves God in the same love wherein he loves himself; and were there not this love wherein God loves himself there would be no Holy Ghost at all. It is the heat, the blowing of his holy Breath that the soul loves God in.
In one of the Evangelists we read, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ In another we read, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom all things please me.’ And in a third we find, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleasing to myself.’ Whatever pleases God is pleasing to him in his only Son : whatever God loves he is loving in his only Son. So it behoves a man to live so that he is one with his only Son, so that he is his only Son. Between the only Son and the soul there is no difference. Between the servant and his lord there is no like love. As long as I am servant I remain unlike, remote from his only Son. If T could see God with my eyes the same as I see colours, that would not be right, for that which is visible is temporal. The temporal taken according to time is taken at its lowest value. Noxv is time and place in itself. While man has time and place, number and quantity, he is not as he should be, is not just, and God is remote and not his own. Our Lord says, ‘ Whosoever would be my disciple let him forsake himself,’ as though to say, no one can hearken to my teaching till he is rid of his own self. All creatures in themselves are naught, ami that is why I counsel you to abandon naught and enjoy the perfect state where the will is just. His own will once relinquished man relishes my doctrine and can listen to my word. One master says, All creatures have their being straight from God, therefore by nature God must love them better than they do themselves. Did the soul know its own detachment it would not stoop to any thing.
We say about this bishop, ‘ He was well-])leasing to him in his days.’ The soul’s day and God’s day are different. In her natural day the soul knows all things above time and place ; nothing is far or near. And that is why I say, this day all things are of equal rank. To talk about the world as being made by God to-morrow, yesterday, would be talking nonsense. God makes the world and all things in this present now. Time gone a thousand years ago is now as present and as near to God as this very instant. The soul who is in the here and now, in her the Father bears his one-begotten Son and in that same birth the soul is born back into God. It is one birth ; as fast as she is reborn into God the Father is begetting his only Son in her.
I have spoken about one power in the soul ; in her first issue she lays hold of God not as being good nor yet as truth : delving deeper still she grasps him in his loneliness, in his solitude ; she finds him in his desert, in his actual ground. But being still unsatisfied, on she goes in quest of what it is that is in his Godhead, of the special property of his peculiar nature. They say no property (or, union) is closer than that of the three Persons being one God. And next they put the union of the soul with God. When the soul, being kissed by God, is in absolute perfection and in bliss, then at last she knows the embrace of unity, then at the touch of God she is made uncreaturely, then, with God’s motion, the soul is as noble as God is himself. God moves the soul afte his own fashion. God contemplating creature gives it life ; creature finds life in contemplating God. The soul has intelligent, noetic being, and therefore where God is there is the soul and where the soul is there is God.
Of this saint we say, ‘ he was found just.’ Just means equable, alike in joy and sorrow, in bitter and in sweet ; one to whom nothing comes amiss, whom nothing keeps from feeling himself one in righteousness. Like to like. Love loves its like alway and God loves the just man like himself. May we find that we are in this case in the time, in the day of understanding, in the day of wisdom, in the day of beatitude. So help us O undivided Trinity. Amen.