Being about the Father's business: the birth of God and the active life

In quae patris mei sunt, oportet me esse (Luke 2:49), 'I must be about my Father's business.' This text fits well what we have to say about the eternal birth which took place here in time and is still happening daily in the innermost recesses of the soul, in her ground, far from all corners. To become aware of this interior birth it is above all necessary to be about our Father's business.

What belongs especially to the Father? Power is attributed to him beyond either of the other Persons. And I tell you, no one can experience this birth without a mighty effort. No one can attain this birth unless he can withdraw his mind entirely from things. It takes real force to drive back all the senses and hold them in check. Violence must be done to them all, or this cannot happen. As Christ said, 'The kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force.'

Regarding this birth a question arises: does it happen continuously, or only at intervals, when one is disposed for it, when one is exerting oneself to the utmost to forget things entirely and become conscious in this way?

Here let us make a distinction. A person has an active intellect, a passive intellect, and a potential intellect. The active intellect is always in action, always doing something, whether in God or in creatures, to the honor and glory of God. That is its territory, and so it is called active. But when God takes up the work, the mind must remain in a state of passivity. The potential intellect, again, looks toward both of these, toward the action of God and the passion of the soul, toward its acting in a potential way. In the one case the mind is active, that is, when it is functioning; in the other it is receptive, when God takes up the work, and then the mind should, indeed must, stay still and let God act. Now before this is begun by the mind and finished by God, the spirit has a foreknowledge of it, a potential knowledge that it is going to happen. This is what the potential intellect means, though it is often neglected and bears no fruit. When the mind is exerting itself in real earnest, God turns his attention to the mind and its work, and then the soul sees and experiences God. But since the soul in this body cannot bear the uninterrupted vision and experience of God, God withdraws from the soul from time to time, as it is said, 'A little while and you see me, and again a little while and you do not see me.'

When our Lord took his three disciples with him up the mountain and showed them the transfiguration of his body through union with the Godhead, which we too shall have in our archetypal body, Peter, seeing it, wanted at once to stay there forever. Truly, where we find good we are reluctant to leave it, insofar as it is good. Where perception finds something, love follows, and memory, and the whole soul besides. Our Lord, knowing this, hides himself at times, for the soul is the undivided form of the body, and so she turns as a whole toward whatever she turns toward. If she were conscious of the good, that is, of God, immediately and without interruption, she would never be able to leave it to attend to the body.

So it happened with Paul. Had he stayed a hundred years there, where he knew the good, he would never have returned to his body, he would have forgotten it completely. Since this is entirely foreign to this life and incompatible with it, the good God veils it when he wills and unveils it again when he chooses, and when he knows, like a trustworthy physician, that this is best and most useful for you. This withdrawal is not yours to control, but his, whose the work also is. Let him do it or not as he wills. He knows what is good for you. It is in his hands to show it or not, according as he knows you able to bear it. God does not destroy nature, he brings it to completion, and he does this more and more as you become fit for it.

Perhaps you will object: Alas, sir, if this requires a mind entirely free of images and without activity, even though both are natural to its powers, then what about those outward works we must sometimes do, works of charity, outward ones, such as teaching and comforting those who need it? Are we shut out from this great good because of these things, things which occupied our Lord's disciples so much, Saint Paul above all, who bore a father's care for the sake of others? Are we to be deprived of this great good because we are engaged in works of charity?

The answer is this. The one is perfect, the other very useful. Mary was praised for choosing the best, but Martha's life was very useful, serving Christ and his disciples. Saint Thomas says the active life is better than the life of contemplation so far as we actually spend, in works of charity, the income we draw from contemplation. It is all one thing. We have only to root ourselves in that same ground of contemplation so as to make it bear fruit in works, and the purpose of contemplation is fulfilled. True, there is motion, but only one motion. It comes from one end, God, and returns to the same. It is as if I walked from one end of this house to the other. That would indeed be motion, but motion of one and the same person. Even so, in this activity we remain in the state of contemplation in God. The one is centered in the other and brings the other to completion. God's purpose in the union of contemplation is fruitfulness in works, for in contemplation you serve yourself alone, but in good works you serve the many.

Christ urges this upon us by his whole life and by the lives of all his saints, every one of whom he sent out into the world to teach the people. Saint Paul said to Timothy, 'Beloved, preach the Word.' Did he mean the outward word that beats the air? No, certainly not. He meant the inborn, hidden Word that lies hidden in the soul. It was this he exhorted them to preach, so that it might be made known to, and nourish, the powers of those who spend themselves wholly in the outward life. So that when your fellow man has need of you, you may be found ready to serve him to the best of your ability. It must be within you, in thought, in intellect and will, and shine out in your deeds. As Christ said, 'Let your light shine before men.' He was thinking of those people who care only for the contemplative life and neglect the virtuous uses of it, which, they say, do not concern them, since they are past that stage. It was not these Christ had in mind when he said, 'The seed fell on good ground and yielded fruit a hundredfold,' but these he meant when he declared, 'The tree that bears no fruit shall be cut down.'

You may object: But sir, what of that silence you spoke so much about? All this means images in plenty. Every one of these acts has its own image, whether the act is internal or external, whether it is teaching someone or comforting another or arranging this or that, so what quiet can I get out of it? If the mind sees and forms ideas, and the will wills, and memory holds it fast, does not all this require images?

Let me explain. We were speaking just now of the active intellect and the passive intellect. The active intellect draws out the images of outward things, stripping them of matter and accidents, and presents them to the passive intellect, giving birth to their mental likenesses there. And the passive intellect, made fruitful by the active intellect in this way, knows and holds onto these things with the help of the active intellect. The passive intellect cannot go on knowing things unless the active intellect keeps on enlightening it. Now notice this. What the active intellect does for the natural man, that and far more does God do for the solitary soul. He sets the active intellect aside and, taking its place, takes on the work of the active intellect himself.

When a person is entirely idle, when his intellect is at rest within him, then God takes up the work. He himself is the agent who brings himself forth in the passive intellect. What happens is this. The active intellect cannot give what it does not have. It cannot hold two ideas together, but only one after another. Even though light and air display many forms and colors all at once, you can only take them in one after another. So it is with your active intellect, which is like the eye. But when God acts in place of your active intellect, he brings forth many images together at one point. Suppose God moves you to some one good deed. All your powers are offered up for all virtuous things, your mind being set at once on good in general. All your possibilities for good take shape and come into your mind together, gathered to one point. Clearly this is not the work of your own intellect, which has nothing like the fullness or completeness for it. Rather it is the work and product of him who holds all forms together in himself at once. As Paul says, 'I can do all things in him who strengthens me, in him I am undivided.' Know then, the ideas behind these acts are not your own. They belong to the author of your nature, who has planted in it both their power and their form. Lay no claim to it, for it is his, not yours. True, you receive it in time, but it is conceived and born of God beyond time, in eternity, above all images.

You may say, perhaps: From the moment my intellect is stripped of its natural activity and no longer has any form or action of its own, what is holding it together? It must have some hold somewhere. The powers, whether memory, intellect, or will, must have some place to rest, some ground to work in.

The answer is this. The intellect's object and food is essence, not accident, pure unmixed being in itself. On finding something real, the intellect at once settles upon it, comes to rest there, and pronounces its intellectual word about the thing it has reached. As long as the intellect has not found the actual truth of things, has not touched bottom in them, it remains in a state of seeking and expectation, never settling down to rest, but laboring without end to trace things back to their cause, that is, it goes on seeking and waiting. It may spend a year or more studying some natural fact, finding out what it is, and then work just as long stripping away what it is not. Through all this it has nothing to rely on, it makes no final judgment at all, lacking direct knowledge of the ground of truth. The intellect never comes to rest in this life. However much God shows himself in this life, it is nothing compared to what he truly is. Truth lies in the ground, but hidden and concealed from the intellect. And meanwhile the mind has nothing permanent to rest on. It gets no rest at all, but goes on expecting and preparing for something still to come, something so far hidden. There is no knowing what God is. Something we do know, namely, what God is not. This the discerning soul sets aside. The intellect, meanwhile, finding no satisfaction in anything mortal, waits, as matter waits for form. As matter is never satisfied without form, so the intellect is not satisfied except by the complete, all-embracing truth. Only the truth will do, and this God keeps withdrawing from it step by step, meaning to stir up its longing and draw it on to seek and grasp the true, causeless good, so that, not content with anything mortal, it may cry out more and more for the highest good of all.

But you will say: Alas, sir, you laid such stress on quieting our faculties, and now this calm turns into longing and lament, into a great outcry for something not yet possessed, which puts an end to peace and quiet. This may be desire or intention or praise or thanksgiving or something of that kind, but it is not perfect peace and complete stillness.

My answer is this. When you have emptied yourself entirely of your own self and of all things and of every kind of self-seeking, and have handed yourself over, united and surrendered yourself to God in perfect faith and complete love, then everything that is born in you or comes into you, whether outward or inward, joyful or sorrowful, bitter or sweet, is no longer your own at all, but belongs entirely to your God, to whom you have surrendered yourself. Tell me, whose is the spoken word? The speaker's or the hearer's? Though it reaches the hearer, it truly belongs to the speaker, to the one who gives it birth. The sun, for example, sends out light into the air, and the air receives the light and passes it on to the earth. Now although the light seems to be in the air, it is really in the sun. The light comes from the sun, has its origin in the sun, not in the air. The air only holds it and passes it on to whatever can be lit up by it. So it is with the soul. God begets in the soul his child, his Word, and the soul, conceiving it, passes it on to her powers in various forms, now as desire, now as good intention, now as love, now as gratitude, or however it may come to you. It is his, not yours at all. What God works in this way, take as his and not your own, as it is written, 'The Holy Spirit asks for us with sighs too deep for words.' He prays in us, not we ourselves. Saint Paul says, 'No one is able to say, Lord Jesus Christ, except in the Holy Spirit.'

Above all, lay no claim to anything. Let go of yourself and let God act for you and in you as he pleases. This work is his, this Word is his, this birth is his, and all that you are besides. For you have abandoned yourself and gone out of your faculties and your personal nature. God installs himself in your nature and powers when, stripped of all belongings, you take to the desert, as it is written, a voice crying in the wilderness. Let this eternal voice cry on in you at its sweet will, and be a desert with respect to self and creatures.

Maybe you will say: But, Sir, what must one do to become this desert, void of self and creatures? Should one wait for God all the time and do nothing oneself, or should one do something in the meantime, such as praying or reading or some good occupation like going to church or studying the Bible? Not, of course, taking things in from outside, but everything from within, from one's God. Besides, is there not something we miss by neglecting these things?

My answer is this: outward works were instituted and appointed for the purpose of directing the outer man toward God and training him to spiritual life and virtues, lest he should wander out of himself into foolishness, to act as a curb on his inclination to run away from self to things outside, so that when God chooses to work in him he will find him close at hand and not have to fetch him back first from things gross and foreign. The greater the pleasure in external things, the harder it is to leave them. The stronger the love, the sharper the pain at the moment of parting.

All pious practices, praying, reading, singing, keeping watch, fasting, penance, or whatever discipline it may be, were devised to catch and keep us from things foreign and ungodly. Suppose one feels that God's spirit is not working in one, but rather that one's inner man is forsaken by God: that is the proper moment for the outward man to exercise the practical virtues, and particularly those most feasible and useful to him, not for his own selfish ends, but so that, respect for truth keeping him from being led away by what is gross, he may hold fast to God, who will not need to seek him far afield but will find him there at hand when he chooses to return and carry on his own work in the soul. But given that a man has genuine experience of the interior life, then let him boldly drop all outward disciplines, even those practices which you are vowed to and from which neither pope nor prelate can release you. From vows made to God no one can excuse you: such vows are a bond between yourself and God. But supposing one has taken solemn vows of fasting, say, or of prayer or pilgrimage, then on entering some order one is released from them at once: in the order, the obligation is to goodness as a whole, to God himself.

And so I say here: whatever your vows to many things, initiation into the real interior life releases you from them. While the interior experience lasts, maybe a week, a month, a year, no hours are neglected by the monk or nun, for God who occupies them will also answer for them. On returning to himself the religious shall perform his vows for the present time, but the time that has passed and that you think is lost is no business of yours to make good. God makes good any time he takes up. Do not think to make it good by any act of a creature, for the smallest act of God outweighs all the works of creatures put together. I am speaking here of clerks and those enlightened souls who are illumined by God and by the scriptures. But what about the poor unlearned person who, ignorant of bodily discipline, has taken on some vow or other, of prayer or the like? My view is this: if he finds it a hindrance, and that he comes much nearer to God and much more easily without it, let him boldly give it up, for whatever brings one nearest to God is best. Paul implied this when he said: but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. Vows taken before priests, vows of marriage for example, are very different from these other obligations, which amount to solemn promises of oneself to God. Vows taken with the praiseworthy intention of binding oneself to God are, for the moment, the best way. But supposing we find a better way, a way we feel and know to be much better, then the first may be considered null and void.