XCII
GOD-PARENTS AND GOD-CHILDREN
Posui
vos ut eatis et fructum afferatis (John. 1516). Christ said
to his disciples, 'I have set you to go and bring forth fruit.' God spake
to them and to us all who are in darkness. Being in the dark we need a light to
walk by. But Christ says: 'I am the light of the world.' If we keep in the
true love of our heard we shall be lighted by Christ. For a taper goes on
burning at the tip in virtue of its contact with the flame which consumes the
matter it supplies and changes it into itself.
Observe. When Christ said to
his disciples, 'I have set you to go,' he referred to our being taken up into
the light of grace. The prophet says, 'I was sitting when he took me up into
himself.' Sitting, we stop groping and, in the light, can see our way. To wit,
the way of virtue. That is the meaning of Christ's words, 'I have set you to
go.' Sitting is not going. We cannot go the right way without first sitting in
the light of contemplation and making out the way to take; all our works must be
a light to lighten our neighbor's darkness.
No Dionysius says: 'These, who have
thus gone out of themselves and are living in the light of truth, these (I say)
are the christened, they are god-children and godfathers.' Bishop Albertus
expounds this as follows: God-children are they who, reading or hearing holy
scriptures read, take them to heart and show them forth in good works, whereby
they ultimately find the truth in God. The christened again are dead in God,
there is no longer anything alive in them but God. As St Paul says, 'We are dead
and our life is hid with Christ in God.' But the most perfect of all are the
godfathers, who are drowned in the unfathomableness of God; not only does God
live in them but they are alive in God and there is now in them the beginning of
eternal life.
Consider now those who are
god-children. Comprehending the scriptures in the light of faith they come into
the dew of grace and in this gracious dew inhale the fragrance of the path of
life eternal. As said the Bride in the Book of Love, 'Take me along with thee,
out in thy desert, within in thy fastness.' Out in the desert means detached
from creatures; the inner fastness is the subjective certainty of truth which
neither life nor death can alter. Such are these god-children, sons of power and
wisdom and goodness. To them our Lord cries in the Book of Love, 'How beautiful
are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter!' The shoes being the holy life put
on the feet of love and knowledge in the desire to work therein. But the
christened are in mystical union with God and are actually leading the life of
God. What shall I say of these? In their eating and drinking, their sleeping and
their entire wont there is nothing found but God, did we but know it? Burn them,
they yield but the test of divinity, the sweetness of the Holy Ghost, wherein
they are gotten full of sap. But this none knoweth save the children of true
light and him they dwell in, namely God. The children of darkness know it not,
whose hearts are filled with the poison of everlasting death. Wherefore the
light is turned to darkness in them and the eternal sweet to bitterness. God
light us with the light we used to bask in his Son eternally, so shall we escape
from darkness into the true light!
But the third class, yclept
godfathers, these climbing hill and mountain have followed the tract of the true
sons with will and knowledge, and the flaming heat of the Holy Ghost having
burnt up all their matter, they show now only the one light in God. In this
light they have come to rest, at peace after their labours, the peace of
absolute consciousness, a peace which is never disturbed. Thought fails in
speaking of these fathers, for they have reached the goal of virtue. This goal
set John, the soaring eagle, wondering in the Apocalypse. And Christ answered
him saying, 'I am the first without beginning and the last that has no
end.' Amen.