Sharing Christ's nature and living without a why

In hoc apparuit charitas dei in nobis etc. In this was the love of God made plain to us, that he sent his only begotten Son into the world, so that we might live with the Son, that is to say,

in and through the Son. Those who do not live through the Son are truly in error.

If a mighty king had a beautiful daughter and gave her in marriage to a poor man's son, every member of that family would rise in rank and be made noble. So one learned doctor says: by God becoming man, the whole human race has been made noble and lifted up, and so we ought to rejoice greatly that Christ our brother has, by his own particular power, risen above the choir of angels and sits at the right hand of the Father. This is well said, though I myself do not think much of it. What good does it do me that my brother is rich, if I am poor, or that he is wise, and I am a fool?

I will say something more, and something more important. God became man, and even more than that, he took on human nature itself. The doctors agree that all people are equal in nature. But I will go further and say that every good thing possessed by the saints, and by Mary the mother of God, and by Christ in his human nature, is also mine, in this very same nature. Perhaps you will ask me: if I already possess in this nature everything that Christ possesses in his humanity, why do we set Christ so high above us and honor him as our Lord and our God? Because he was a messenger sent from God to us, carrying our happiness to us. The happiness he brought us was already our own. When the Father begets his Son in the innermost ground, whatever stirs there shares in this nature. This nature is one and cannot be divided. Anything separate within it, or merely attached to it, is not this one nature.

I will say something else, harder still. To stand immediately in this pure nature, a person must be so entirely dead to self that he wishes as well to someone across the sea whom he has never set eyes on, as to his own close and familiar friend. As long as you still wish better for your own person than for someone you have never seen, you are off the mark, and you have not even for a moment looked into this simple ground. Perhaps in some distant image you have glimpsed the truth as in a picture, but that was not the best way. Second, you must be pure in heart, and the only heart that is pure is one that has rooted out all creatureliness. And third, you must be free of "not."

The question is asked, what is it that burns in hell? The doctors answer, as one, that it is self-will. But I say: "not" burns there. Here is a comparison. Suppose I take a burning coal and set it on my hand. If I then say the coal is burning me, I do it a great injustice. To say precisely what is burning me, it is the "not" that burns, because the coal has in it something that my hand does not have. Notice, it is this very "not" that burns me. If my hand contained what the coal is and what it can give, it would have the nature of fire entirely within it. In that case all the fire that ever burned could be heaped upon my hand without it burning me at all. In the same way I say that

because God, and those who stand in the sight of God, have in them something belonging to true happiness which those apart from God do not have, it is this "not" alone that torments the souls in hell more than any self-will or any fire whatsoever. I hold firmly that to the extent "not" remains in you, to that extent you are incomplete. So, to be complete, you must be free of "not."

Further, my text says, God sent his only begotten Son into the world. By this you are not to understand the outer world. It must be taken as meaning the inner world. Just as surely as the Father, by his simple nature, begets the Son within himself, just as surely he begets him in the innermost depths of the mind, which is the inner world. Here God's ground is my ground, and my ground is God's ground. Here I live out of my own, as God lives out of his own. To someone who has seen into this ground even for a moment, a thousand ducats of pure gold are worth no more than a counterfeit coin. Out of this innermost ground your works should be done without a why. In fact I hold that so long as you do your works for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, or for God, or for your own eternal happiness, working as it were from outside yourself, things are not right with you. It may be tolerable, but it is not the best way. Whoever imagines he can get more of God through thoughts, prayers, devout practices, and the like than by the fireside or out in the stable, is really acting as if he took God and wrapped his head in a cloak and shoved him under the bench. For whoever seeks God under a fixed form grasps the form while missing the God hidden within it. But whoever seeks God without clinging to any particular form grasps him as he truly is in himself, and such a person lives with the Son, and is life itself. If we questioned life for a thousand years, asking, why do you live, it would only answer, if it answered at all, I live because I live. Life lives out of its own ground and wells up from its own source. It lives without a cause for its living, because it lives itself. And if you asked a genuine person, one who works out of his own ground, why do you do your works, he too, if he spoke the truth, would say: I work because I work.

Where the creature stops, there God begins. All God wants from you is that you go out of yourself in so far as you are a creature, and let God be God in you. The smallest of creaturely images that ever takes shape in you is as large as God.

How can that be?

Because it shuts out the whole of God. The moment this image appears, God disappears, with all his Godhood. As soon as this image fades, God enters in. No image bound to time is so holy that it does not harm the soul in three ways. First, it troubles the spirit. Second, it stains its purity. Third, it disturbs detachment.

What does God do to my mind, then?

He draws you beyond yourself and holds back creatures: that is what God does to your mind.

God longs just as urgently for you to go out of yourself, so far as you are a creature, as if his entire happiness depended on it. Why, friend, what harm is there in letting God be God in you? Go entirely out of yourself for God's sake, and God will go entirely out of himself for your sake. When both have gone out, what remains is simply the One. In this One, the Father gives birth to his Son, in his own innermost source. From there the Holy Spirit blossoms forth, and from there arises in God the will that belongs to the soul. As long as this will stays untouched by creatures and by creatureliness, the will is free. Christ says: no one goes to heaven except the one who came from heaven. All things are made out of nothing, and so their true origin is nothing. This noble will, to the extent that it turns toward creatures, falls away with them into nothing.

The question is, does the will fall so far that it can never return? The doctors agree that it does not return as far as it fell in time. But I say that if this will turns back, even for a single instant, away from itself and from created things, and gathers itself again into its own source, then in that free origin the will is free, and in that instant whatever time was lost is entirely regained.

People often say to me, pray for me. And I think to myself: why do you go outward at all? Why not stay at home and dig into your own treasure? For in truth the whole of truth is already native in you.

May we be able to remain thus in ourselves, and to possess the whole truth immediately and undivided, in true happiness. So help us God. Amen.