Since it is God's nature not to be like anyone, we have to come to the state of being nothing in order to enter into the same nature that He is. So, when I am able to establish myself in Nothing and Nothing in myself, uprooting and casting out what is in me, then I can pass into the naked being of God, which is the naked being of the spirit.
*
To be one with God, there must be in you nothing imagined or imaged forth, so that nothing is covered up in you that is not discovered or cast out.
*
If you grieve in your heart for anything, even on account of sin, your child is not yet born. If your heart is sore you are not yet a mother - but you are in labor and your time is near. So do not despair if you grieve for yourself or your friend -though it is not yet born, it is near to birth. But the child is fully born when a man's heart grieves for nothing: then a man has the essence and the nature and the substance and the wisdom and the joy and all that God has. Then the very being of the Son of God is ours and in us and we attain to the very essence of God.
Christ says: "Whoever would follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt. 16:24, Mark 8:34). That is, cast out all grief so that perpetual joy reigns in your heart. Thus the child is born. And then, if the child is born in me, the sight of my father and all my friends slain before my eyes would leave my heart untouched.
*
'Virgin' is as much as to say a person who is void of alien images, as empty as he was when he did not exist. Now the question may be asked, how a man who has been born and has reached the age of rational understanding can be as empty of all images as he was when he was not; for he knows many things, all of which are images: so how can he be empty of them?
Note the explanation which I shall give you. If I were possessed of sufficient understanding so as to comprehend within my own mind all the images ever conceived by all men, as well as those that exist in God Himself- if I had these without attachment, whether in doing or in leaving undone, without before and after but rather standing free in this present Now ready to receive God's most beloved will and to do it continually, then in truth I would be a virgin, untrammeled by any images, just as I was when I was not.
*
...for God is in this power as in the eternal Now. If a man's spirit were always united with God in this power, he would not age. For the Now in which God made the first man and the Now in which the last man shall cease to be, and the Now I speak in, all are the same in God and there is but one Now.
Observe, this man dwells in one light with God, having no suffering and no sequence of time, but one equal eternity. This man is bereft of wonderment and all things are in him in their essence. Therefore nothing new comes to him from future things nor any accident, for he dwells in the Now, ever new and without intermission. Such is the divine sovereignty dwelling in this power.
*
...so truly one and simple is this citadel, so mode- and power-transcending is this solitary One, that neither power nor mode can gaze into it, nor even God Himself!
In very truth and as God lives! God Himself never looks in there for one instant, insofar as He exists in modes and in the properties of His persons. This should be well noted: this One Alone lacks all mode and property. And therefore, for God to see inside it would cost Him all His divine names and personal properties: all these He must leave outside, should He ever look in there. But only insofar as He is one and indivisible, without mode or properties, (can He do this):7 in that sense He is neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost, and yet is a Something which is neither this nor that.
See, as He is thus one and simple, so He can enter that One that I here call the citadel of the soul, but in no other mode can He get in: only thus does He enter and dwell therein. In this part the soul is the same as God and not otherwise. What I tell you is true: I call the Truth as a witness and offer my soul as pledge.
*
Therefore I declare that no saint ever lived or ever will attain to the state where pain cannot hurt him nor pleasure please. Now and then it happens, through love and favor and divine grace, that though a man's faith be impugned or the like, if he were suffused with grace, he would be indifferent to joy and sorrow. But with the saints it may well occur that nothing whatever can bring them from God, so that, although the heart be wrung while a man is not in a state of grace, yet the will remains solely with God, saying, 'Lord, I am thine and thou art mine.' Whatever then occurs cannot impede eternal bliss, so long as it does not invade the summit of the soul up yonder where it is at one with God's sweet will. (...)
Now our good people imagine they can reach a point where sensible things do not affect the senses. That cannot be: that a disagreeable noise should be as pleasant to my ear as the sweet tones of a lyre is something I shall never attain to. But this much can be attained: that when it is observed with insight, a rational God-conformed will submits to the insight and bids the will stand back from it, and the will answers, 'I will, gladly.'
*
There is one, the highest peak of the soul which stands above time and knows nothing of time or of the body. All that happened a thousand years ago, the day that was a thousand years ago, is in eternity no further off than this moment I am in now; or the day which shall be a thousand years hence, or in as many years as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than this moment I am in.
Now he says, "That the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." What is truth? The truth is such a noble thing that if God were able to turn away from truth, I would cling to truth and let God go; for God is truth, and all that is in time, and that God created, is not truth.
*
Alas, how many are there who worship a shoe or a cow and encumber themselves with them - they are foolish folk! As soon as you pray to God for creatures, you pray for your own harm, for creature is no sooner creature than it bears within itself bitterness and trouble, evil and distress. So they get their deserts, these people who reap distress and bitterness. Why? They prayed for it.
*
The masters say the soul has two faces: her upper face gazes at God all the time, and the lower face looks down somewhat and guides the senses. The upper face, which is the apex of the soul, is in eternity and has nothing to do with time: it knows nothing of time or of the body.
*
Oh, how noble is that power that transcends time and transcends place! For, being above time it both contains all time and is all time, and however little a man might have of that which transcends time, he would be rich indeed, for what lies beyond the sea is no more distant to this power than what is here present.
*
The more you give of yourself to God, the more God gives Himself to you in return, and the more you divest yourself of self, the greater your eternal bliss. It occurred to me just now as I was saying my Paternoster (which God Himself taught us), that when we say 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,' we are praying to God to deprive us of ourselves.
Selected from sermons VII - XII
Translation: Maurice O'C. Walshe
No comments:
Post a Comment