XVI
THE SIXTH BEATITUDE
Beati
qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiam (Matt. 56). Just went up
a mountain to a valley, into a field, and power went out of him preaching to the
multitude: 'Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for
they shall be filled.'
Methinks this text is apt to my
discourse. Blessed are they that hunger for righteousness and endure work
and poverty here, for this is but a moment and will surely pass. They are
blessed though not most blessed. Blessed are they that hunger not to be
deprived of God, albeit the wonder is that man can be without him without whom
he cannot be. St Augustine says it is amazing that anyone should live
apart from him whom he cannot live at all. They are blessed and yet not
most blessed. More blessed those who so hunger that they cannot live without
God; that is a fiery affection which transforms their nature. The while a
man yet finds in his desire or in his hope or his affection anything
impermanent, he is not most blessed. He is blessed but not most blessed.
Blessed, supremely blessed, are they who are installed in the eternal now,
transcending time and place and form and matter, unmoved by weal or woe or
wealth or want, for in so far as things are motionless they are like eternity.
[The heaven adjoining the eternal
now, wherein the angels are, is motionless, immovable. But the heaven next
to that which touches the eternal now, wherein angels are, and betwixt (that
and) the heaven where the sun is, is set in motion by angelic force, revolving
once in every hundred years. The heaven the sun is in, moved by angelic
force, goes round once a year. The heaven the moon is in, again, is driven by
angelic force and goes round once a month. The nearer the eternal now the more
immoveable they are, and the further off and more unlike to the eternal now the
easier to move. The heaven of the sun and moon and stars is moved by the
impulse of their angel, so that they are spinning in this temporal now; and the
eternal now imparts their motion, that being so energetic that from the motion
of the eternal now imparts, all things derive their life and being. Now the
lowest powers of the soul are nobler than the highest part of heaven, where it
adjoins life and being from the motion there imparted by the eternal now; and if
that is so noble, then what would ye expect where the soul in her superior
powers contacts the ground of God? How exalted, thin ye, that must be? -- Follow
then after this now, and reach this now and possess this eternal now. May
we stand next the eternal now and so be in possession of it. So help us O
divine power.]
[One master says: Grace springs from
the heart of the Father and flows into his Son and in the oneness of them twain
it proceeds from the Wisdom of the Son into the Gift of the Holy Ghost and in
the Holy Ghost is sent into the soul. Grace is the face of God which is clearly
stamped in the soul without any means by the Spirit of God, giving the soul the
form of God. St Dionysius says: The angels are the divine mind. Moreover St Paul
declares concerning those who live the angelic life here in the flesh, that into
them there flows the mind of God as it does into the angels. He also says the
intellectual light, God namely, has given likeness to the rational soul. Quoth
St Paul: He who cleaves unto God with his whole being becomes one spirit with
God. So help us God. Amen.]