The young man of Naim and the soul's own resurrection

Adolescens, tibi dico: surge (Luke 7), "Young man, I say to you, get up." Our Lord went to a city called Naim, and many of his disciples went with him, and a great crowd of people. And when they came to the gate, a dead man was being carried out, a young man, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And our Lord came and touched the bier on which the body lay, and said, 'Young man, I say to you, get up!' Life spoke life into the dead man. The young man got up and at once began to speak: his rising again by the eternal Word.

He went to a city. I say that this means the soul that is well ordered and made strong in the Holy Spirit and, having set a watch against sin and shut out multiplicity, is safe and whole in Jesus, surrounded and walled round by the light of God. As the prophet says, God is the wall around Zion. The eternal wisdom says, 'In the holy and in the sanctified city I shall have equal rest.' Nothing gives so much rest, nothing so unites, as likeness, and so with sameness, and in, and near, and by. That soul is holy in whom God alone dwells and in whom no creature finds rest. He says, 'I shall have equal rest in the holy and in the sanctified city.' All holiness comes from the Holy Spirit. This nature nothing goes beyond, it begins with the lowest and works it up into the highest. Philosophers say that air only turns to fire when it is thinned out and made hot. The Holy Spirit seizes the soul and, making her clear in its light and grace, draws her up to the highest. He says, 'In the sanctified city I shall have equal rest.' As the soul rests in God, so God rests in her. If she rests in him only partly, then he rests in her only partly; if she rests in him wholly, he rests in her wholly. That is why the eternal wisdom says, 'I shall rest equally, or alike.'

According to philosophers, the green and yellow colors of the rainbow blend into one another so gradually that no eye can follow it, however sharp its sight. And nature works just as gradually when it resolves itself into its first outpouring, which is so much the same as the angels that Moses did not dare write about it, for fear that the fainthearted would worship them, so close is it to the first emanation. One great authority states plainly that the highest angel is so near to the first outbreak, and has in him so much of God's likeness and God's power, that it is he who cares for and watches over this whole world as well as all the angels under him. The meaning of this is that God, the high, the pure, and the undivided, works through his highest creature, who exercises his power the way a viceroy rules the land in the name of the king. He says, 'In the holy and in the sanctified city I rest equally.'

As I was saying recently, the gate or door through which God melts and flows out is goodness. Essence is turned in on itself, not an outpouring but an inward fusion. And unity is one and self-contained, apart from everything and free from any dealing with the outside. But goodness is the melting and running out of God, his pouring out to the whole of creation. Essence is the Father, unity is the Son, and goodness is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit seizes the soul, the sanctified city, at its purest and highest, and draws it up into its first source, which is the Son, and the Son carries it further into his source, namely his Father, into the ground, into the first, where the Son has his being, where the eternal wisdom has equal rest in the holy and in the sanctified city, in the innermost part.

He says our Lord went to a city called Naim. Naim means son of a dove, which points to simplicity. The soul will never rest in her power, or her nature, until she is made simple in God. It also means a flow of water, and points to the soul's openness, or passivity, toward sin and imperfection. The disciples stand for the divine light that will flow in and fill the soul. The great crowd of people are the virtues I spoke of recently. The soul will rise in burning longing and pass above the many kinds of merit of the angels to the greater virtues. So she comes to the gate and enters into love and unity, the gate through which they carried out the young man, the widow's son. Our Lord came and touched the bier on which the body lay. How he came and how he touched it I will not dwell on, but I will dwell on the words, 'Young man, get up!'

He was the son of a widow, her husband was dead. So her son was dead too, the only son of the soul, the will and all the powers of the soul, for all these are one in the innermost mind, and mind, that is, the intellect, is the man in the soul. Her husband was dead, and so her son was dead too. 'Young man, I say to you, get up!' When the Word speaks to the soul and the soul answers in the living Word, then the Son is alive in the soul.

Philosophers ask which has the greater power, plants, or words, or stones. Let us consider this. Words get their power from the original Word. But the overuse and the piling up of words weakens their force. Plants hold great power. I have heard that a snake was fighting a weasel, and the weasel ran off and fetched a small plant, and wrapping it in another plant it threw it at the snake, and the snake broke apart and lay dead. What gave the weasel this wisdom? The power of plant lore. There is much wisdom in that. Words too have tremendous power, with words we can do wonders. And stones also are very powerful, through the likeness worked into them by the force of the stars and the heavens. Like works most strongly on like, and that is why the soul, by lifting herself up in the natural light, can rise into the light of the angels, and in the angelic light can enter the divine light, and so stand in the three lights, at the crossing point, at the summit, where the lights run into one. There the eternal Word is speaking life into her, and there the soul is living and answering back in the Word. So may we be those who answer back in the eternal Word, with God's help. Amen.