Sermon 44: in all things I seek rest

In omnibus requiem quaesivi (Ecclesiasticus 24:11): in all things I seek rest.

The masters tell us that God made the powers of the soul by nature receptive to the things that are like them, so the ear is always hearing and the eye is always seeing. What my eye sees is one with it, just as air is one with light. It belongs to the nature of the eye to see color, otherwise it would not be an eye. And in the same way color by nature affects the eye, or it would not be color. To think of something as color yet unable to reach the eye would be to deny that it is color at all. I can see the cathedral. But no one sees it inside me. For a thing to be visible in me, it has to be placed so that its reflection can appear in me. Standing in front of me, face to face, a man could see his image in my eye. Stand over running water and you cannot see yourself. But if the water is clear and gathered somewhere still enough to hold a reflection, you can see your shape in it. They say glass is transparent, like crystal. But cover it with lead or wax and it becomes a mirror: it gives back an image of whatever stands before it, exact in every detail.

God made the soul, her highest power, her best part, so that he could beget himself within it. There, says a philosopher, the one who begets and the one begotten are the same, and there is no time, no place, no matter. Matter here means gross, bodily things; it resists and gets in the way. That is why it has been said that if the Father could, he would make himself. But he cannot, so instead he makes what is like himself.

Our Lord said, I dwell in Jacob and I rest in Israel. Jacob stands for stripping away. God is found nowhere except in the soul that has put all creatures beneath her feet. Saint Augustine says that God is being born within the soul constantly, without stopping, but not born to us, to whom he remains hidden rather than shown. As long as God is hidden in the soul behind anything at all, he is not born to us, and you can be sure that God is never born in any soul unless she has put all creatures under her feet. Where there is nothing else present, there God begets himself, not a likeness of himself but his very self: God and God. So the Son can rightly say, I dwell in Jacob and in Israel I rest. And he said: My Father sent me, and he brought forth in me what is my own nature, so that I am being born constantly within the soul who is pure enough for him to see himself in her. There God is at rest, and the soul rests in God. To take from God his resting in the soul would be to take from him his deity. To rob him of it even in thought is to rob him of his Godhood, since it pleases him to rest in all things. David says: My Lord said to my heart, you are my Son, this day I have begotten you in the reflection of the Holy Ghost, and again he said: I have begotten you in my innermost heart, in the depths of my soul; I have spread my roots, I have established myself in the city of Zion and my power in Jerusalem. The soul in Zion, who has risen above things and dwells in her own central depth, in her God gives birth to his innermost self. The heavenly Father said to his only Son: As I begot you in my inmost heart, so I charge you by your divine nature that you come to birth nowhere except in the innermost depths of the soul. Whoever would deny that God begets himself in the soul in this way would be denying him his God-nature. May God thus beget himself in us. So help us God. Amen.