Young man, arise: understanding, love, and the soul's rebirth

Adolescens tibi dico: surge (Luke 7): Young man, I say to you, arise. We read in the gospel that a woman came to our Lord Jesus Christ. She said, Sir, I am a widow, and had an only son who is dead. Our Lord said, Young man, arise!

The widow, this woman whose husband was dead, and her only son: by this woman is meant the understanding, her husband is the man of the soul, and the youth the highest intellect, for that is the young man. When the soul is dead in imperfection, the higher mind, awakening into understanding, cries to God for grace. Then God gives it divine light and it becomes self-knowing. In this it sees God. I said that intellect alone can receive divine light. The other powers of the soul are instruments and agents for raising the intellect to its fullest clarity.

It is a question among the theologians which ranks higher, understanding or love. One school says understanding, the other school says love. It is a lively subject of debate. Understanding says: How can you love a thing you do not know? Love says: What good is your knowledge to you without love? Without love you will never find eternal happiness. Understanding says: I am born in the clear light of self-knowledge. Love says: Great knowledge without love is worthless. Understanding says: Step aside, you are only my servant, you help me to rise and then you stay behind. Love says: I am the good that God himself is. Knowledge says: Your claim is high, but without me you fall to the ground. Love says: It would be well for you to keep me more in mind. Understanding says: I can rise higher without being tied to you, my vision is clearer, in fact I want none of you. I have what I will as long as I know what I have already glimpsed and into which I have now flowed, to remain forever in perfect unity. Here I am above love and beyond all activity. Here I have intuition, and my real knowledge of all things, everything I believed, has now come true. Faith and hope and all the powers of the soul remain where they are, they can go no further. True love says: I must remain with you, for I am eternal. Our sisters stay behind, and that is fitting, for they are our servants who have brought you to the actual enjoyment of your eternal happiness. Now comes the highest intellect, which receives all things directly from God, and says: I have grasped the highest good, in which there is nothing but unity. Intuition says: I will cling to you, my place is at your side. Intellect says: Knowledge and love must stay behind. Intuition says: It is fitting that I should enjoy what I have grasped. The highest intellect replies: What you have brought me to, and what I formerly knew, now knows itself in me. So I find I need nothing else. All created things must stay behind, along with everything I ever was. I stand before my cause.

Returning to the widow and our Lord's command, Young man, arise: we must keep in mind that anything not far from its birth is young. So it is with intellect standing in the presence of its cause. Forgetting the aids that brought it to this height, it imagines it has been there forever and will remain there forever. But that cannot be.

Take the words again: the widow stands for the understanding, her son for the intellect, and her husband for the man of the soul. Now you should know that when the man of the soul begins to rise, the masters say it is another man. By this you should not understand that it is another soul, but that it is another mode of being of the soul. The old mode is finished, it is dead. The soul, taking on her real mode, stands in her virgin innocence. The man of the soul, going beyond his angelic mode and guided by the intellect, pierces through to the source from which the soul flowed. Intellect itself is left outside with all named things. So the soul is merged into pure unity. This we call the man of the soul, and having reached this consummation, he needs no further help. What he once did, God now does in him. God knows him as God knew him, God loves him as God loved him. God does all the work, and the man of the soul is entirely idle.

When a man has reached this point we may well say, this man is God and man. Everything Christ has by nature, he has won by grace. His body is filled with the noble nature of the soul, which she receives from God, with divine light, so that we may truly say, Behold, a man divine! Have pity on them, my children, they are away from home and no one knows them. Let those who seek God be careful not to be deceived by appearances in these people, who are unusual and hard to place. No one truly knows them except those in whom the same light shines, namely the light of truth. Yet it may well be that travelers toward that same good, who have not yet reached it, will meet these perfect ones of whom we have been speaking. Believe me, if I knew one such person, and had a monastery full of gold and precious stones, I would give the whole of it for a single chicken for him to eat. I say further, if everything God ever made were mine, I would give it all at once for the enjoyment of that man, and rightly so, for it all belongs to him. More than that, I say: his too is God in the fullness of his power, and if everyone who is hungry in their imperfection stood before me, I would not withhold from that man's need a single feather of the chicken, even though I might feed that whole crowd. For you must remember, for one still in imperfection, anything he eats or drinks drags him down and makes him prone to sin. But not so the virtuous man: what he eats and drinks he lifts up in Christ to the Father. So look well to yourselves.

You know Christ's words, Where two are gathered together in my name, I will be with them. Here Christ is speaking of the harmonious union of the body and the soul, where the body wants nothing except what the soul wills. God is with these people, they are the ones we have been speaking of. Here the man of the soul is in actual possession of his eternal happiness, and the soul, stripped of all her powers, meets no opposition at all. I warn you, you must watch closely, for they are hard to recognize. If the need arises, while other people fast they will be eating, while other people keep watch they will be sleeping, while other people pray they will be silent. In short, the things they say and do seem unaccountable, for what God makes plain to people on the way to their eternal happiness is foreign to those who have already arrived there. These have no wants whatsoever, they are rich in the possession of a city of their own. I call that my own which is mine forever and which no one can take from me. These people, you should know, do the most valuable work. They work within, you understand, in the man of the soul. Blessed is the kingdom where one of them dwells. In an instant they will do more lasting good than all outward actions ever done. See that you do not withhold anything that is theirs. May we recognize these people and, loving God in them, possess with them the city they have won. So help us God. Amen.