Part 2 (1/2)
When the heart and soul are greatly set upon G.o.d and we have become true lovers of G.o.d, there comes a danger of falling into so deep a pining for G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d for a Lover has no need of any other.
_Of how to receive from G.o.d, 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 G.o.d than to find that in the ceremony of the Blessed Sacrament it is possible for them to be less sensible of receiving from G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d in all the noises and distractions of a great railway station amongst a crowd of s.h.i.+fting persons. No, it is some imperfection in the att.i.tude adopted by the heart and mind in approaching this Sacrament. In what way have we perhaps been approaching it? In an att.i.tude of awe accompanied by a humble expectancy or hope of receiving. We hope and believe we shall receive G.o.d's grace. Now, the experienced soul and heart know so well what it is and how it feels to receive G.o.d'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 G.o.d.” 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d the Perfect Love and Sacrifice of our Saviour, as a living memorial of Him before G.o.d. 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 G.o.d and Man. On the one hand is G.o.d the All-Giving, longing to bestow, and upon the other is Man the all-needing, aching to receive, and between them an impa.s.se. Failure to fulfil G.o.d's laws is the cause of this impa.s.se.
There is both a law of like to like, and a law of like to opposite. We cannot know G.o.d without in some small degree first being like G.o.d, and to be like G.o.d we must not only be pure in heart but also conform to the G.o.d-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 G.o.d but our love, thanks, and obedience; but of these it is possible to give endlessly, and the more we give the more G.o.d-like do we become, and the more G.o.d-like the higher and further do we enter into the great riches and blisses of G.o.d. Therefore the more we give to G.o.d 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 G.o.d to still further give us and to make an offering _to_ G.o.d. The only way we can make an offering to G.o.d 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 G.o.d as upon an absolute and immediate certainty.
We find this about perfect prayer that it is not done as from a creature beseeching a Creator at an immense distance, but is done as a love-flash which, eating up all distance, is immediately before and with the Creator and is accompanied by vivid certainty at the heart; this latter is active faith; we have too much perhaps of that kind of faith which may be named waiting or pa.s.sive faith.
This combination of love with active faith instantly opens to us G.o.d's help. We may or may not receive this in the form antic.i.p.ated by the creature, but later perceive that we have received it in exactly that form which would most lastingly benefit us.
After a while we cease almost altogether from pet.i.tioning anything for ourselves, having this one desire only: that by opening ourselves to G.o.d by means of offering Him great love, we receive Himself.
_Of Contemplation_
To enter the contemplation of G.o.d is not absence of will, nor laziness of will, but great energy of will because of, and for, love: in which love-condition the energy of the soul will be laid bare to the energy of G.o.d, the two energies for the time being becoming closely united or oned, in which state the soul-will or energy is wholly lifted into the glorious G.o.d-Energy, and a state of unspeakable bliss and an _immensity_ of _living_ is immediately entered and shared by the soul. Bliss, ecstasy, rapture, all are energy, and according as the soul is exposed to lesser or greater degrees of this energy, so she enters lesser or greater degrees of raptures.
It is misleading in these states of ecstasy to say that the soul has vision, if by vision is to be understood anything that has to do with concrete forms or any kind of sight; for the soul is totally blind. But she makes no account of this blindness and has her fill of all bliss and of the knowledge of another manner of living without any need whatever of sight. Has the wind eyes or feet? yet it possesses the earth and is not prevented. So the soul, without eyes and without hands, possesses G.o.d.
Contact with G.o.d is then of the nature of the Infusion of Energy.
The infusions of this energy may take the form of causing us to have an acute intense perception and consciousness (but not such form of perception as would permit us to say ”I saw,” but a magnetic inward cognisance, a fire of knowledge which scintillates about the soul and pierces her) of His perfections; of His tenderness, His sweetness, His holiness, His beauty. When either of these last two are made known to her, the soul pa.s.ses into what can only be named as an agony of bliss, insupportable even to the soul for more than a very brief time, and because of the fearful stress of it the soul draws away and prays to be covered from the unbearable happiness of it, this being granted her whether automatically (that is to say, because of spiritual law) or whether by direct and merciful will of G.o.d--who is able to tell?
Such experiences are not for the timid, but require steady courage and perfect loving trust in G.o.d.
Contemplation even in its highest forms is not to be confused with spiritual ”experiences,” which are totally apart from anything else that we may know in life--they are entirely outside of our volition, they are not to be prayed for, they are not to be even secretly desired, but to be accepted how and when and if G.o.d so chooses.
In contemplation the will is used, and we are not able to come to it without the will is penetratingly used towards the joining and meeting with the will and love of G.o.d. In the purely spiritual ”experience” from first to last there is no will but an absence of will, a total submission and yielding to G.o.d, without questioning, without fear, without curiosity, and the only will used is to keep ourselves in willingness to submit to whatever He shall choose to expose us to.
G.o.d does not open to us such experiences in order to gratify curiosity--but expecting that we shall learn and profit by them. First we find them an immense and unforgettable a.s.surance of another form of living, of great intensity, at white heat, natural to a part of us with which we have hitherto been unfamiliar (the soul) but inimical to the body, which suffers grievously whilst the soul glows with marvellous vitality and joy.
This a.s.surance of another manner of living, though we see nothing with the eyes, is the opening of another world to us. The invisible becomes real, faith becomes transformed in knowledge. If the hundred wisest men of the world should all prove upon paper that the spiritual life as a separate and other life from the physical life does not exist, it would cause nothing but a smile of compa.s.sion to the creature that had experience. G.o.d teaches us by these means to become balanced, poised, and a complete human being, combining in one personality or consciousness the Spiritual and the Material.
But we are not given and shown these mysteries without paying a price: we must learn to live in extraordinary lowliness and loneliness of spirit. The interests, enjoyments, pastimes of ordinary life dry up and wither away. It becomes in vain that we seek to satisfy ourselves in any occupation, in anything, in any persons, for G.o.d wills to have the whole of us. When He wills to be sensibly with us, all s.p.a.ce itself feels scarcely able to contain our riches and our happiness.
When He wills to disconnect us from this nearness, there is nothing in all the universe so poor, so dest.i.tute, so sad, so lonely as ourself.
And there is no earthly thing can beguile or console us, because, having tasted of G.o.d, it is impossible to be satisfied or consoled save inwardly by G.o.d Himself. But He opens up Nature to us in a marvellous way, unbelievable until experienced. He offers us Nature as a sop to stay our tears. By means of Nature He even in absence caresses the soul and the creature, speaks to them fondly, encourages and draws them after Him, sending acute and wonderful perceptions to them, so that, quite consoled, they cry aloud to Him with happiness. And often when the creature is alone and secure from being observed by anyone He will open His glamour to the soul and she pa.s.ses into union with paradise and even more--high heaven itself. These are angels' delights which He lavishes upon the prodigal.
Another heavy price to be paid is found by the soul and heart and mind in the return from the blissful and perfect calm which surrounds even the lowest degree of the contemplation of G.o.d to the turmoil of the world. For to have been lifted into this new condition of living, this glamour, this crystal joy, to know such heights, such immensities, and to descend from G.o.d's blisses to live the everyday life of this world and accept its pettiness is a great pain, in which pain we are of necessity not understood by fellow-creatures; therefore the more and the more we become pressed into that great loneliness which is the inevitable portion of the true lover, and experience the pain of those prolonged spiritual conflicts in which the soul learns to bend and submit to the petty sordidness of life in a world which has forgotten G.o.d. It is the lack of courage and endurance to perpetually weather these dreadful storms which causes us to turn to seclusion--the cloister. To refrain from doing this and to remain in the world though not of it is the sacrifice of the loving soul--she has but the one to make--to leave the delights of G.o.d, and for the sake of being a useful servant to Jesus to pick up the daily life in the world; which sacrifice is in direct contrariety to the sacrifice of the creature, which counts its sacrifices as a giving up of the things of the world. So by opposites they may come to one similarity--perfection. How to conduct itself in all these difficult ways so foreign to its own earthly nature is a hard problem for the creature, belonging so intimately to this world which it can touch and see: and yet which it is asked by G.o.d bravely to climb out of into the unknown and the unseen. Bewildered by the enormous demands of the soul which can never rest in any happiness without she is contemplating G.o.d, adoring Him, conversing with Him, blessing and wors.h.i.+pping Him, the poor creature is often bewildered to know how to conduct the ordinary affairs and duties of life under such pressures. Of its emotions, of the tears that it sheds, of the falls that it takes, a library of books might be written. In the splendour, the grandeur, the great magnitudes and expanses of spirit life as made known to it by the soul, the creature feels like some poor beggar child, ill-mannered, ill-clothed, which by strange fortune finds itself invited to the house of a mighty king, and, dumb with humility and admiration, is at a loss to understand the condescension of this mighty lord. In this sense of very great unworthiness lies a profound pain, an agony. To cure this pain we must turn the heart to give love, to think love, and immediately we think of this great condescension as being for love's sake--as love seeking for love--we are consoled. Then all is well, all is joyful, all is divine. The more simple, childlike, and unpretentious we can be, the more easily we shall win our way through. Pretentiousness or arrogance in Man can never be anything but ridiculous, and a sense of humour should alone be sufficient to save us from such error. For the same reason it is impossible to regard human ceremonies with any respect or seriousness, for they are not childlike but childish. How often the heart and mind cry out to Him, ”O mighty G.o.d, I am mean and foolish--mean in that which I have created by my vain imaginings, my pride, my covetousness; but in that which Thou hast made me I am wonderful and lovely--a thing that can fly to and fro day or night to Thy hand!”
The difficulties of the creature should not be raised on some self-glorifying pinnacle merely because the fickle variable heart at lasts learns the exercise of Fidelity. Do we not see a very ordinary dog practising this same fidelity as he waits, so eager that he trembles, outside his master's door, having put on one side every desire save his desire to his master whom, not seeing, he continues to await; and this out of the generosity of his heart! And we? Only by great difficulty, long endeavour, bitter schooling, and having at last accomplished it we name each other saints or saintly. Let us think soberly about these things; are we then so much less than a dog that we also cannot accomplish this fidelity--so that though hands and feet go about daily duties the heart and mind are fixed on the Master?