XXVII
REJOICE IN THE LORD
Gaudete
in domini, iterum gaudete etc. (Philip. 44). St Paul says:
'Rejoice in the Lord and have no more care: the Lord is present with your
thoughts which are known unto God in prayer and thanksgiving.' 'Rejoice in
the Lord always,' he says. Jerome declares that none receives knowledge nor
wisdom nor honour from God except he be a virtuous man. No virtuous man is he
who, changing not his ways, does not receive from God knowledge and wisdom and
joy. He says again: 'Rejoice in the Lord.' Not in our Lord but in the Lord.
I have repeatedly explained that God's lordship consists not alone in his being
lord of all creatures: his lordship consists in having the power to create a
thousand worlds and to transcend them every one in his pure essence: therein
lies his lordship.
'Rejoice in the Lord (always),' he
says. And here we note two precepts. First, that we must remain all within
in the Lord, not looking for him outside whether in knowledge or in love: simply
rejoice within in the Lord. The other precept is: rejoice in his innermost in
his first, whence all things get their joy and take their being. That is the
meaning of 'Rejoice alway.' As St Augustine hath it, 'He rejoices all the time
who is rejoicing above time and timelessly.' Then he goes on to say: 'Have no
more care. The Lord is present, is at hand.' The soul must needs cast off all
care what time she is rejoicing in the Lord, leastwise on her union with God.
And hence his words, 'Have no more care: the Lord is present, he is nigh.' In
other words, God is with us in our inmost soul, provided he finds us within and
not gone out on business with our five senses. The soul must stop at home in her
innermost, purest self; be ever within and not flying out: there God is present,
God is nigh.
Another meaning of the participle by
which he employs. He is in himself, not going far out but remaining all by
himself. Quoth David: 'Rejoice, my soul, O Lord, for unto thee have I lifted her
up.' The soul must put forth all her strength to lift herself above herself and
be translated beyond time and place into the void where God is in and by
himself, not going out nor eke in touch with any outside things. Jerome remarks
that 'God can no more have recourse to time and temporal things than stones can
have angelic wisdom.' He says: 'The Lord is nigh.' Quoth David: 'God is nigh
unto all them that call upon him, that call upon him in truth and invoke him.'
How to call upon him, to call upon him in truth, to invoke him, that I leave
aside. But he uses the words 'in truth.' The Son alone is the truth and not the
Father, save in the sense that they are one truth in their essence. That is
truth which reveals what I have in my heart without likeness. This revelation is
truth. The Son alone is the truth. The whole content of the Father's love he
speaks at once in his Son. This utterance, this act, is the truth.
He goes on to say: 'Your thoughts are
known unto him in the Lord,' i.e., in this truth with the Father. Faith
inheres in intellectual light and sight in the combative faculty which is always
aspiring to the highest and the purest: to the truth, where God is in himself. I
have sometimes said, watch me these souls: their power is too free, too
passionate to bear restraint of any kind.