Peter's angel and the soul's sure knowing

THE LORD HAS SENT HIS ANGEL Nunc scio vere, quia misit dominus angelum suum, now I know for certain. Freed from his prison chains by the power of the supreme God, Peter exclaims, "Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel and has delivered me out of the power of Herod, out of the hand of the enemy."

We will turn the words around and say, "The Lord has sent his angel, therefore I know for certain." Peter stands for intuition. As I have often said, intuition and intellect do not unite the soul with God. Intellect has to do with pure being. Intuition, its forerunner, goes ahead and reaches what is born there: God's only-begotten Son. Our Lord says, in Matthew, that no one knows the Father but the Son. Now, philosophers say that understanding comes through likeness. Some of them say the soul is made of all things, since she is capable of understanding all things. That sounds absurd, but it is true. They say that anything I know must

be wholly present to me in the likeness of my understanding. But according to the saints, power belongs to the Father, likeness to the Son, and union to the Holy Spirit. So if the Father is wholly present to the Son, and the Son is wholly like him, then no one knows the Father but the Son.

Peter says, "Now I know for certain." Why does he know for certain? Because it is divine light, and divine light does not deceive. And because in it we see quite clearly, with nothing to block the view. Paul says of it, "God dwells in light inaccessible." Doctors say that the wisdom we learn here stays with us there. St. Paul says it will pass away. A philosopher once said, "Real knowledge, even in this body, is in itself so delightful that the sum of all created things is nothing compared to the joys of pure perception." Yet noble as it is, it is still limited. Like one small word set against the whole world, that is how small all the wisdom we learn here is compared to the whole and perfect truth. Look, Paul says it passes away. And even if it stayed, it would turn to foolishness and amount to nothing beside the actual truth we see there. Third, we know for certain, because things we see here as changing we see as changeless there, where we grasp them as a whole and undivided, nearly as one. Things widely separated here are close together there, where all things are at hand: both the first day and the last are happening at the present instant there.

"Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel." When the Lord sends his angel to the soul, she becomes sure in her knowing. Not without reason did God ordain that Peter should hold the key. For Peter stands for intuition, and it is intuition holding the key that unlocks, goes in, and finds God face to face, and then tells her partner, the will, of what she has found, since she already had the will before, for what I will I seek. Perception leads the way. It is like the princess seeking the prince on the mountaintop, in untouched country; she announces him to the soul, the soul to nature, and nature to the passions of the body. So noble is the soul at her highest and best that the doctors cannot find a name for her. They call her anima because she animates the body.

Theologians say that next after the first emanation of the Godhead, when the Son breaks forth from the Father, this angel is most like God. It is true that the soul is like God in her highest part, but this angel is even more like God. Everything that belongs to this angel is godlike. The angel was sent to the soul to bring her back to the very form in which he himself is formed, for knowledge comes through likeness. The soul is capable of knowing all things, and she never rests until she reaches her original form, where all things are one; it is there she finds rest, in God. In God, one creature is no better than another. According to the masters, being and knowing are the same, for

things that are not, are not known, and things that most fully are, are most fully known. God has being beyond all being, and so he is beyond all knowing, as I said in my first sermon two days ago. The soul, shaped by primal light, sealed with the seal of pure being, tasting of God before truth and knowledge, stripped of every named nature: the soul, I say, at this stage of complete knowledge has gained a being to match. As St. Paul says, "God dwells in light inaccessible." He hangs suspended in his own pure being, to which nothing is attached. He is simply a presence in himself, where neither this nor that exists, for what is in God is God.

A pagan says, "Those who hang under God are hanging in God," and while having real existence in themselves, they still depend on him who has neither end nor beginning, for nothing foreign enters into God. Heaven gives us an example. It never takes in strangers as strangers. And in the same way, whatever reaches God is changed: however base it may be, once brought to God it sheds its baseness. For instance, I may have wisdom but not be wisdom itself. I can gain wisdom and I can also lose it. But what belongs to God is God, and it cannot leave him. It is planted in God's nature, and God's nature is so settled that anything joined to it is fixed there forever, or else it stays outside altogether. Now think about this and marvel. If God turns base things into himself, what do you suppose he will do with the soul, which he has honored with his own image?