Rejoicing in the Lord beyond time and care

Gaudete in domino iterum gaudete, etc. (Philippians 4:4). St Paul says: rejoice in the Lord and have no more care: the Lord is present with your thoughts, which are known to God in prayer and thanksgiving. 'Rejoice in the Lord always,' he says. Jerome declares that no one receives knowledge or wisdom or honor from God except he be a virtuous person. No one is virtuous who, without changing his ways, fails to 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 explained repeatedly that God's lordship does not consist only in his being lord of all creatures: his lordship consists in having the power to create a thousand worlds and to transcend every one of them in his pure essence. That is where his lordship lies.

'Rejoice in the Lord always,' he says. Here we note two instructions. First, that we must remain entirely within, in the Lord, not looking for him outside, whether in knowledge or in love: simply rejoice within, in the Lord. The second instruction is: rejoice in his innermost, in his first ground, from which all things get their joy and take their being. That is the meaning of 'rejoice always.' As St Augustine says, 'He rejoices all the time who rejoices above time and timelessly.' Then he goes on to say: 'have no more care. The Lord is present, is at hand.' The soul must cast off all care while she is rejoicing in the Lord, at least when she is united with God. Hence his words, 'have no more care: the Lord is present, he is near.' In other words, God is with us in our innermost soul, provided he finds us within and not gone out on business with our five senses. The soul must stay at home in her innermost, purest self, always within and never flying outward: there God is present, God is near.

There is another meaning in the word he uses. He is in himself, not going far outward but remaining entirely by himself. David says: 'Rejoice, my soul, O Lord, for to you I have lifted her up.' The soul must put forth all her strength to lift herself above herself and be carried beyond time and place into the void where God is in and by himself, not going outward nor touching anything outside himself. Jerome remarks that God can no more turn to time and temporal things than stones can have angelic wisdom. He says: 'the Lord is near.' David says: 'God is near to all who call upon him, who call upon him in truth and invoke him.' How to call upon him, to call upon him in truth, to invoke him, I will leave aside for now. But he uses the words 'in truth.' The Son alone is the truth, and not the Father, except in the sense that they are one truth in their essence. That is truth, which reveals what I have in my heart without any likeness. This revealing 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 to him in the Lord,' that is, in this truth with the Father. Faith lives in intellectual light, and sight lives in the combative faculty, which is always reaching toward the highest and the purest: toward the truth, where God is in himself. I have sometimes said, watch these souls: their power is too free, too passionate, to bear restraint of any kind.