XXVI
THE FEAST OF THE VIRGIN
Aemulor enim vos dei aemulatione etc. (2
Cor 112). In the name of our Lord.
We read on the Feast of the Virgin the words of St Paul, 'I have espoused
you to one husband, Christ, rejuvenant.' The masters asks, 'Has the Son been
born?' We say, no! The masters asks, 'Is the Son going to be born?' We say, no!
The masters are answered: The Son is fully born, he is being born anew
unceasingly. St Paul says, 'Christ
is the power of God and the wisdom of God.' His power is his wisdom and his
wisdom is his power. Christ is the man whose youth is perennially renewed.
Now
St Paul says, 'To this man I have espoused you.'
For as marriage between man and wife is binding, so there is eternal
marriage, between your souls and God. A
maid is given to a man hoping to bear his child.
And God id make the soul intending her to bear in her his one-begotten
Son. The happening of this birth in
Mary ghostly was to God better pleasing than his being born of her in flesh.
And this same birth to-day in the God-loving soul delights God more than
his creation of the heavens and earth.
The
philosophers say the soul is bigger than the heavens.
St John says: 'He who sat upon the throne declared, "Behold, I make
all things new."' Now,
according to St Augustine, 'God's speaking in his child-bearing and his
child-birth is his Word.' God spake
never a word but one and that he holds so dear that he will never say another.
If God stopped saying his Word, but for an instant even, heaven and earth
would disappear. Augustine says: 'As the marriage of the man and woman is for
good and all, so is the marriage of the soul.' The highest power of the soul,
the one for ever straining up to God, is called the man. The lower power, the one that is condemned to wander among
mortals, is the maid. The higher power, the man, goes all uncovered.
But the lower power, the maid, is closely veiled and this power is taken
to the higher. To this nature it
belongs to be always active. It tries all the time, father-like, to beget; and were it not
prevented, a son would be always being born as with the heavenly Father.
But what God does of his free gift (man's) nature hinders and a girl is
born; but were there neither time nor place nor matter, man would rejuvenate
himself as the Son does the Father, always.
God said: 'Behold I make all things fruitful.; Then why am I myself not
fruitful? God first bears his image in the God-loving soul and afterwards
himself. If God gave himself to the
soul here in time she would be vexed. So
he gives her himself in eternity, in the perennial now, up-springing freshly
without ceasing. She is too curious
to rest until she fins her source. This is quite plain from Philip's word: 'Show
us the Father and we shall be satisfied.' As the eternal Son of God comes
welling up in his paternal heart, so he wells up in the God-loving soul.
Mortal things work outwardly, ghostly things work inwardly.
The soul this birth once happens in, that soul is nigh let into God; if
it happens twice she gets still more into God.
The more frequent this birth the deeper in God and the closer knit into
the Father's heart. This birth
transcends here and now. Here, that
is place; now, that is, time. It
befalls in eternity. May we, being
born in him, enable him to bear himself in us.
So help us Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Amen.