“See, then, how we shall thus always remain what we are in our created essence, and yet by the ascent of our spirit we shall continually pass into our super-essence. In it we shall be above ourselves, below ourselves, beyond our breadth, beyond our length, in an eternal wandering which has no return.”
I shall say little of the small work entitled Four Temptations, which deals with the very subtle dangers which threaten the contemplative mind, the most formidable of them all being quietism. With the exception of certain discoveries in the unknown psychology of prayer, this work, which, as I have said, is very short, does not present any very exceptionally lofty summit to our souls.
The other little work, which is about the same length—that is to say, about twenty pages—is called The Book of Supreme Truth, or, according to Surius, Samuel. He adds:—“Qui alias de alta contemplatione dicitur, verius autem apologice quorumdam sancti hujus viri dictorum sublimium inscribi possit.” But this book is so marvellous that one would need to translate the whole. At present I shall make no extract from it, since we can no more divide it than we can divide that essence whose perpetual effusion is displayed in its unique and awful mirror.
I come, therefore, to The Book of the Kingdom of Lovers, the strangest and most abstract work of the sage of the Green Valley, in the midst of which the soul stretches itself, and is filled with terror in a spiritual void which is doubtless normal, and which for the mind that does not follow it is like some dark glass bell, in which there is neither air, nor image, nor anything that can be exactly conceived, except uninterrupted stars in the eternal spaces.
The work is founded on that verse in Wisdom, “Justum deduxit per vias rectas et ostendit illi regnum Dei,” and includes the three virtues of theology and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost I proceed at once to translate, and more fully than ever.
Let us look first at this passage on the deserts of being:—
“The soul of man being made of nothing, which God took from nowhere, man has followed this nothingness, which is nowhere, and he has gone out of his ego into wanderings, by immersion in the simple essence of God, as in his own ultimate source; and he has died in God. To die in God is to be blessed; and, for each one according to his own merits, it involves a great difference both in grace and glory. This blessedness is to understand God and to be understood by God, in the joyful unity of the divine persons, and to have flowed by this unity into the super-essence of God. Now this unity brings joy when we look inward, and bears fruit in our outward life, and so the fountain of unity flows; that is to say, the Father begets the Son, the eternal truth, who is the image of the Father, in which He sees Himself and all things. This image is the life and cause of all creatures, for in this image is everything, according to the divine mode of being; and by this image all things are perfectly made, and all things are wisely ruled upon that model; and according to this image everything is set apart for its own end, so far as it is possible for God to do so; for every creature has received the means of attaining blessedness. But the reasonable creature is not the image of the Father, according to the effluence of his created mode of being, for that effluence flows forth in as far as it is a creature, and that is why it enjoys and loves with measure in the light of grace or of glory. For no one possesses the divine nature actively according to the divine mode, except the divine persons themselves, since no creature can work according to an infinite mode, for if it worked thus it would be God and not a creature.
“By His own image God has made His creatures like unto Himself in their nature, and in those who have turned to Him, He has made the likeness even greater—higher than nature in the light of grace or of glory, each one according to the capacity which he has by the state of his soul or by his merits. Now all those who feel this inward contact, who have an enlightened reason and the eagerness of love, and to whom love’s infinite freedom has been revealed, enter into joyful contemplation in the super-essence of God. Moreover, God is united to His essence in a joyful manner, and contemplates that very essence which He enjoys. According to the mode of the enjoyment, the divine light constantly fails in the infinite essence; but in contemplation and in a fixed and steady gaze the vision cannot be darkened, for we shall forever behold that which we enjoy. Those for whom the light constantly fails are those who rest in enjoyments, in the midst of those wild solitudes where God possesses Himself in perpetual joy; there the light grows dim in rest and in the infinitude of the sublime essence. There God is His own throne, and all those who possess God in grace and in glory in this degree are the thrones and the tabernacles of God, and they have died in God in an eternal rest.
“From this death there arises a super-essential life—that is to say, a life of contemplation—and here the gift of intelligence begins. For God, who without ceasing contemplates the very essence which He enjoys, and who grants the impatience of love to those whom He makes like unto Himself, gives also rest and enjoyment to those who are united with Him. But where there is union of being and complete immersion, there is no more giving or receiving. And because He grants an enlightened reason to those whom He makes like unto Himself, He also gives a boundless splendour to those who are united to Him. That boundless splendour is the image of the Father. We are created in this image, and we are capable of being united to it in a grandeur more lofty than thrones, if we only contemplate, above our own human weakness, the glorious face of the Father—in other words, the sublime nature of deity. Now this unfathomed splendour is a common gift to all spirits who rejoice in grace and in glory. It thus streams forth for all like the splendour of the sun, and yet those who receive it are not all equally enlightened. The sun shines more clearly through glass than through stone, more clearly through crystal than through glass, and each precious stone shines and shows its beauty and its power and its colour in the light of the sun. Even so is each man enlightened both in grace and in glory, according as he is capable of receiving so sublime a gift; but he who is most enlightened in grace yet has less than he who is least enlightened in glory. Nevertheless the light of glory is not an intermediary between the soul and this unlimited splendour, but our spiritual condition, our earthly state, and our inconstancy disturb us, and so we have to gain merits, which those who dwell in glory have no need to gain.
“This sublime splendour is the simple contemplation of the Father, and of all those who behold and rejoice, and look fixedly in one direction by means of an incomprehensible light, each one according as the light is bestowed upon him. For that measureless light shines ceaselessly into all our thoughts; but the man who lives here, in this earthly state, is often overwhelmed with images, so that he does not always actively and steadily behold the super-essence of God by means of this light. But in receiving this gift he virtually possesses it, and he can contemplate whenever he wills. Since the light by which we contemplate is unlimited, and that which we contemplate of an unfathomed depth, the one can never reach the other; but this fixed gaze of our contemplation remains eternally turned towards the infinite, in the joyful presence of the sublime Majesty, where the Father, by His eternal wisdom, gazes fixedly into the depths of His own infinite being.”