Rest: what the soul is really looking for

In omnibus requiem quaesivi (Eccl. 24.). We find this in the Book of Wisdom. We can picture Wisdom in friendly conversation with the soul, saying, 'In all things I sought rest.' To which the soul replies, 'He who created me rested in my tent.' And Wisdom says again, 'My rest is in the holy city.' If I were asked to say for what end the creator made creatures, I would answer: rest. And if I were asked a second time what all creatures are seeking so eagerly by nature, I would answer: rest. And if a third time I were asked what the soul seeks in all her restlessness, once again I would say: rest.

Look at how the face of divine nature drives all the powers of the soul foolish and wild with longing for it, drawing them to itself. God likes this so much, it pleases him so much, that his whole God-nature bends this way. He says, 'In the holy place too I rest.' As the soul rests in God, so God rests in her. If she rests partly in God, he rests partly in her. If she rests wholly in him, he rests completely in her. In those clear souls where God can see his own reflection, God is resting in the soul and the soul is resting in God. To take this away from God, even just in thought, is to take away from him, to deny him, his Godhood, since he is seeking rest in all things, for God's nature is rest.

Fourth, whether they know it or not, all creatures are searching for rest. No one can close or open his eyes without seeking rest: he is either ridding himself of some obstacle or finding somewhere to rest. These are the two motives behind all human action. As I often say, my love settles where I see God's likeness most clearly. But rest is more like God than any creature is.

Notice how the soul must be, for God to rest in her. She must be pure. What makes the soul pure? Holding to spiritual things. She is lifted up by these too. The more she is lifted up, the purer she becomes in her intention and the more effective in her work. As the philosopher says of the stars: they grow weaker as they come near the earth, being out of their proper course. In their own orbit, though invisible from earth, they have more pull on it. St Anselm addresses the soul, 'Withdraw yourself a little from the noise of outward things.' And again,

'Flee and hide yourself from the rush of inward thoughts which cause the soul such great disquiet.'

We can ask God for nothing better than rest. All God wants from a person is a peaceful heart; then he performs within the soul a work too godlike for any creature to reach or even see. Divine Wisdom is quietly fond and lets no creature watch. As our Lord says, 'I will lead my bride into the desert and speak to her in her heart,' into solitude, that is, away from creatures.

Fourth, he says the soul must rest in God. God cannot do divine work in the soul, because in the soul everything is governed by measure. Measure means limit, inside and out. There is none of this in God's workings, which are infinite, openly held within God's own self-revealing. David says, 'God sits above the Cherubim.' He does not say above the Seraphim. Cherubim means wisdom, the knowledge that brings God to the soul and leads the soul to God, but not into God. God does not perform his divine work in the soul's own understanding, because there it is governed by measure; instead he uses it as God, as divine. The highest power comes forward, that is, the will, and breaking into God, it draws the soul in, with her understanding and all her powers, and makes her one with God. Here God is acting above the power of the soul, not as within the soul but as within God. The soul, now immersed in God and in the divine nature, receives divine life; now she is subject to God's law and belongs to God's order. Take an illustration from natural philosophy. At the moment of conception the child in its mother's womb has neither limbs nor colour. But when the soul is poured into the body it takes on form and colour and becomes a real thing, by virtue of the soul, with the soul's created nature and the look of a living being. And the soul, when she is fully made one with God and immersed in his divinity, loses all her hindrances, her weakness and instability, and suddenly renewed with divine life, grows orderly in all her ways and virtues. Look at a flame: the closer to the wick, the dimmer and thicker the glow; as the flame rises from the wick it grows brighter and brighter. The more lifted up the soul is, the better God can do in her his divine work after his own likeness. Think of a mountain rising two leagues above the earth, carved with ancient signs and sacred letters that defy wind and rain. In the same way the truly holy soul is lifted into perfect calm, settled and unchanging in divine activity. That religious has good reason for shame who is so easily moved to gloom or anger or desire. He is no true religious.

Finally, all creatures are seeking rest, whether they know it or not. A stone is never free of motion while it is not lying on the ground. The same is true of fire. All creatures seek their natural place. The loving soul finds rest nowhere except in God. David says, 'God has appointed to everything its place: to fish the water, to birds the air, to beasts the earth, and to the soul the Godhead.' And Job says the same, 'What is in God he gives us for our joy and bliss.' May God grant us peace and rest in him. So help us the eternal truth, which is himself. Amen.

XLVII POVERTY

The truly virtuous man does not want God. What I have I do not want. He makes no plans, he sets no store by things. As God is higher than man, so he is readier to give than man is to receive. A man does not prove his progress in the virtuous life by his fasts and vigils and many outward works, but it is a sure sign of his growth if he finds eternal things more and more attractive than the things that pass away. A man who has a thousand marks of gold and gives it all away for love of God is doing a fine thing; yet I say it would be far finer and far better for him to think nothing of it, to count it as nothing, for God's sake.

A man should turn his will and all his works toward God, and keeping only God in view, go forward without fear, not asking himself, am I right or am I wrong? Someone who worked out every possible outcome before starting his first fight would never fight at all. And if, walking somewhere, we had to think about how to set the front foot down, we would never arrive. Our duty is to do the next thing: go straight ahead, that is the right way.

There are five kinds of poverty. The first is devilish poverty; the second, golden poverty; the third is willing poverty; the fourth is spiritual poverty; the fifth, divine poverty.

The first, devilish poverty, belongs to all who do not have what they wish they had, whether outward or inward. That is their hell.

The second, golden poverty, belongs to those who, in the midst of goods and property, pass through empty, coming and going. If everything they owned were burned, it would leave them quite unmoved. Heaven must be theirs, and they would have no less of it.

The third is willing poverty, and belongs to those who, giving up goods and honours, body and soul, leave everything behind with real grace. These will judge alongside the twelve apostles, and by passing judgment it becomes their own day of judgment, since, knowing what they are leaving, they set something else in their heart and work hard at their own departure. These are the willingly poor.

The fourth are the spiritually poor. These have given up friends and family, not merely goods and honour, body and soul; further, they are free of all good works: the eternal Word does all their work while they remain idle and free from all activity. And since in the eternal Word there is neither bad nor good, they are therefore completely empty.

The fifth are the divinely poor, for God can find no place in them left to work in. Theirs is emptiness within and without, for they are bare and free of all contingent form. This is the man: in this man all men are one man, and that man is Christ. Of him one master says, 'The earth was never worthy of this man, who looks on heaven and earth the same.' This man is free of objects, in time and in eternity.

Enough now of those who have no object in eternity; one more word about those who are objectless in time. What is meant by object? There are two objects: one is otherness, not-I; the other is a man's own proper self, his I.

The first, otherness, is all becoming, everything that has come into existence; such things give rise to otherness and pass away. This belongs to the passing of time.

He who knows the one matter in all things remains unmoved. For matter is the subject of form, and there can be no matter without form, nor form without matter. Form without matter is nothing at all; but matter always clings to form and is one undivided whole in every single part of it. Now since form in itself is nothing, it moves nothing. And since matter is entirely indivisible, it is unmoved. This man, then, is unmoved by form or matter and is therefore free of objects in time.

Man's other object is to possess his own proper self, to identify himself with all perfection, with that most precious treasure, his own being: that is his quest. Now when a thing has received its own form, no more and no less, that thing belongs wholly to itself and to no one else. Whoever truly grasps this is perfect in the sense that he is wholly free of objects, to eternity, and so on.