To think that we can come to God and know Him by means of our intelligence or reason is as unwise as to suppose we can eat our dinner with our feet; it is as necessary to use our teeth to eat our food as it is to use our heart to find God, and it is nothing but the natural vanity of the human mind which blinds us to this fact. The human reason is too small to stand the greatness of God, and could it ever reach to Him would be withered in the awfulness of His magnetic light. Even the soul in her contacts with God whilst still in the flesh is of necessity totally blind, and yet, blind as she is, is pierced by this terrible intensity of light and energy. How then shall the reason stand naked before God without madness or frenzy? To reason out upon paper where God is, why He is, what He is, and how precisely He is to be discovered, will take us no further up into the mysteries of the actual knowing of the wonders of His love than the ink and paper we employ might do. To know this love in our own heart is the necessity, for the soul and the heart live hand in hand as it were and together can find and know God. God once found by the heart, we can dwell upon Him with our reason, and feed our reason with the knowledge we have acquired of Him through the heart and soul.
The Holy Ghost aids us in this deep search, quickens us, gives us impulses. At first in our natural state we are able only in a very dim way to perceive these impulses, but we can become so sensitive to God that He pierces us, brings us to the ground with a breath, and we bend and yield before His lightest wish as a reed bends and quivers to the wind.
When the heart and soul are greatly set upon God and we have become true lovers of God, there comes a danger of falling into so deep a pining for God that the health both of the mind and of the body is weakened by it. We should aim at cheerful and willing waiting: anything else is a falling short; if we examine into it, we shall see that pining savours of unwillingness and discontent—there is in it something of the spirit of the servant who designs to give notice of leaving. The lover of God is the most blest of all creatures and should show himself serenely glad, waiting with patience, knowing as he does from his own experiences that who has God for a Lover has no need of any other.
Of how to receive from God, and of the Blessed Sacrament
Nothing is of a deeper mystery or difficulty or disappointment to the soul and the heart well advanced in the experience and in the love of God than to find that in the ceremony of the Blessed Sacrament it is possible for them to be less sensible of receiving from God than at any time. How and why can this be? is it the Ceremonial causing the mind to be too much alert to guide the body now to rise, now to kneel, now to move in some direction? Is it this distraction which prevents perception—for in all communion with God the mind is closed down, the heart and soul only being in operation? On the other hand, it is easily possible to be in closest communion with God in all the noises and distractions of a great railway station amongst a crowd of shifting persons. No, it is some imperfection in the attitude adopted by the heart and mind in approaching this Sacrament. In what way have we perhaps been approaching it? In an attitude of awe accompanied by a humble expectancy or hope of receiving. We hope and believe we shall receive God's grace. Now, the experienced soul and heart know so well what it is and how it feels to receive God's grace that they are all the more disappointed at not receiving it upon this holy occasion. What were our Lord's words? He said, "Do this in remembrance of Me," or more correctly translated, "Do or offer this as a memorial of Me before God." This implies an act of giving upon our part, whereas we have come to regard this ceremony as an act of receiving.
Now though the attitude of humble expectancy to receive is of itself a worthy one it does not fulfil the exact command, which is to commemorate, offer, and hold up before God the Perfect Love and Sacrifice of our Saviour, as a living memorial of Him before God. It should be accompanied by an offering of great love and thanks upon our part without regard to anything we may receive. But because first we give we then receive.
About nothing are we in such a state of ignorance as about the laws which govern the give and take between God and Man. On the one hand is God the All-Giving, longing to bestow, and upon the other is Man the all-needing, aching to receive, and between them an impasse. Failure to fulfil God's laws is the cause of this impasse. There is both a law of like to like, and a law of like to opposite. We cannot know God without in some small degree first being like God, and to be like God we must not only be pure in heart but also conform to the God-like condition of giving. First we obey this law that the second may come into effect—that of like to opposite, or positive to negative, the All-Giving immediately meeting and filling the all-needing. We have nothing to give to God but our love, thanks, and obedience; but of these it is possible to give endlessly, and the more we give the more God-like do we become, and the more God-like the higher and further do we enter into the great riches and blisses of God. Therefore the more we give to God the more we receive.
On going to partake of the Blessed Sacrament we do well to banish from the heart and mind all thought of what it may please God to still further give us and to make an offering to God. The only way we can make an offering to God is upon the wings of love, and upon this love we hold up before Him the bread and wine as the Body and Blood of our Redeemer, repeating and repeating in our heart, "I eat and drink This as a memorial before Thee of the Perfect Love and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ." When we so do with great love in our heart we find that we are able sensibly to receive great grace.
Of Prayer
Of the many kinds and degrees of prayer first perhaps we learn the prayer of the lips, then that of the mind, then the prayer of the heart, and finally the prayer of the soul—prayer of a totally different mode and order, prayer of a strange incalculably great magnetic power, prayer which enables us to count on help from God as upon an absolute and immediate certainty.