Peace, Jacob's nameless place, and rest beyond will

Stetit Jesus in medio discipulorum et dixit: pax etc. (Luke 24, John 20). St John tells us in his gospel that on the first day of the week, at evening, when the doors were shut, our Lord came and stood in the midst of the disciples and said: 'Peace be with you!' and again, 'Peace be with you!' and a third time, 'Receive the Holy Spirit!' Now evening never comes unless morning and midday have gone before. We say that the middle of the day is warmer than the evening. But in so far as evening takes in midday and stores up its heat, it is the warmer, when, too, before the evening there goes a whole bright day. Late in the year, again, after the summer solstice, when the sun is drawing near to earth, the evenings grow warm. But midday never comes until morning goes, nor evening until noon has passed away. The meaning of this is that when the divine light breaks forth in the soul, growing brighter and brighter toward the perfect day, morning does not vanish before noon, nor noon before evening: they close up into one. So the evening is warm. There is perfect day in the soul when the whole soul is full of divine light. But it is evening in the soul, as I said before, when the light of this world fades and the soul goes in to rest.

God said, 'Peace!' and 'Peace!' again, and 'Receive the Holy Spirit!' Jacob the patriarch came to a place, in the evening, and putting under his head some stones that lay about, he sank to rest. In his sleep he saw a ladder reaching up to heaven with angels ascending and descending, and God leaning down over the top of the ladder. This place where Jacob slept had no name. Which is as much as to say: the Godhead alone is the place of the soul, and is nameless. Concerning this our teachers say: a thing which is another's place must be above it, as heaven is the place of all things, and fire is the place of air, and air the place of water, and water, in part, the place of earth, and earth is not a place at all. An angel is a heavenly place, and any angel who has received the least drop more of God than another is the place, the dwelling, of that other, the most exalted angel being the place, the room, the measure of the rest, while he himself is without measure. But although he is without measure, still God is his measure.

Jacob rested in the place which is nameless. By not naming it, it is named. On reaching this nameless place the soul will rest: where all things are being God in God, there she shall rest. The dwelling of the soul, which God is, is unnamed. I say, God is unspoken. But St Augustine says that God is not unspoken; were he unspoken, even that would be a kind of speech, and he is more silence than speech. One of our most ancient philosophers, who found the truth long, long before God's birth, before there was Christian faith at all as it now is, it seemed to him that whatever he managed to say of things only conjured up something monstrous and unreal within him, and so he refused to speak at all. He would not even say, give me meat or give me drink. He declined to name things because he could not say them as perfectly as they sprang from their first cause: he chose rather to be mute and to make his wants known by pointing with his finger. How much more fitting it is for us, if he did not know how to speak of things, to be utterly silent concerning him who is the origin of all things.

We say that God is a spirit. Not so. If God were truly a spirit he would be spoken. According to St Gregory, we cannot rightly speak of God at all. Anything we say of him is bound to be a stammering. This place which is not named, in which all creatures thrive and bloom in orderly array, this dwelling place of all creatures, arises suddenly out of the ground of this orderly place, the seat of the soul proceeding out of this ground.

Jacob wanted to rest: notice that, he wanted to rest. Whoever rests in God, his rest is free of will. We say that will is without habit. Will is free, it takes nothing from matter. In this sense it is freer than intellect, and some rash people, seizing on this, would place it above knowledge. That is not so. Intellect also is free, even though intellect does take from matter and from bodily things in the locality of the soul, for, as I pointed out on Easter Eve, various of the soul's powers are linked to the five senses, for instance sight and hearing, which convey to them the things we know. A master says: 'God would never choose that eye or ear should sense what crowns the summit of the soul: none other than the nameless place, which is the place of all things.' It gives a fair reflection, and is useful in that way, but it is marred by colour and by sound and bodily things. It is only through the senses that the soul is stirred and the idea of wisdom, naturally imprinted in her, is awakened. Plato says, and with him St Augustine: the soul has all knowledge within, and all we can do from without is awaken that knowledge. Jacob rested in the evening. Let us pray always for the now, it is a small thing we ask, just for one evening. May it be granted to us. So help us God. Amen.