The angel who prepares the soul for God's birth

Ecce ego mitto angelum meum, etc. (Matthew 11:10, Luke 7:27). Behold, I send my angel before my face to prepare my way before me. And he whom we seek shall suddenly come into his temple. Who knows the day of his coming? For he is like a fire that blazes up. Suddenly, he says, he shall come into his temple. The soul shall come with all her possessions, whether sins or virtues, and offer them all up at once, lifting them up in the Son into the Father. For the love of the Father is the loveliness of the Son. The Father loves nothing at all but the Son and whatever he finds in the Son. Let the soul then rise up in her whole power and offer herself to the Father in his Son, so that she with the Son may be loved by the Father.

He says, 'Behold, I send my angel.' The word 'behold' suggests three things: something great, or marvelous, or rare. Behold, I send my angel to refine the soul and prepare her for divine light. Divine light is always in the angelic light and of the angelic light. The soul would be troubled and distressed if God's light were not shaded within it. God, veiled by angelic light, is always waiting to come out and shine upon the soul. I am used to saying, when asked what God is doing, that he is begetting his Son, bearing him ever fresh and new and with such delight that he does nothing else besides this work with his Holy Spirit and all things within it. Hence his words, 'Behold, I.' He who says 'I' does the very best work. No one but the Father can say this word rightly. The act belongs to him alone and nothing comes of it but his Son. In this act God tells forth his whole self. When God does this work in the soul, that is his birth; his birth is his work and his work is his Son. God performs this operation in the innermost depths of the soul so secretly that neither saint nor angel knows of it, nor is the soul herself a party to it, except that she undergoes it; God does it by himself. It is really the Father who says, 'I send my angel.'

Now I maintain we cannot be satisfied with this and will have none of him. It was Origen who said, 'Mary Magdalene sought our Lord; she sought for one dead man and was disappointed to find two living angels.' She was right, for she expected God. Dionysius says of the high principalities of angels that divine order reigns there, and divine activity, and divine likeness or divine truth, as far as that is possible. What is divine order but divine power, and from both of these springs love, which is ardor and wisdom and truth and power. For love burns in the domain of essence: transcendent, actual being, free from nature. Its nature is to be without nature. To think of goodness or wisdom or power disguises the essence and dims it in thought. The mere thought obscures essence. Such is divine rule. And where God finds its likeness within the soul, there the Father gives birth to his Son. The soul's whole power bursts into light. Out of this power, out of this light, leaps the flame: love. The soul with all her might rises to the order of God.

Now let us speak of the order of the soul. According to a pagan teacher, the supernal light of the soul is very bright and clear and loves itself dearly, whereas the soul dislikes herself and never sheds this natural light upon herself unless her lower powers are brought into order under her highest power. Her natural light is high enough to reach angelic nature, but it is entirely turned away from her lower powers; it will not pour into them nor will it fill the soul unless these lower powers yield. When a lord rules over a people, the serf is under the knight and the knight is under the baron. They all desire peace, and toward that end they all help one another. In just this way each several power is subject to the others and helps keep peace in the soul: perfect rest. Our teachers define perfect rest as complete freedom from motion. In this rest the soul can rise above herself to the order of the gods. In this complete rest the Father gives the soul his only Son. Now he ranks first in the order of divinity.

The other members hold somewhat lower rank, as I was saying of the angels, who have God's likeness very strong in them, and illumination. In this interior light they rise above themselves into the divine image, all face to face with God in his divine light, and so much the same that they do God's work. Angels illumined in this way, who are so like God, absorb and drink in God. I often say that if I were empty and had this fiery inner love and likeness, I would absorb God altogether. Light streams out and lights up whatever it falls on. To call a man enlightened, as we sometimes do, means little. Where light comes in, that is far better; where it breaks through into the soul and makes her godlike, divine, as far as this is possible, and inwardly light. In this interior light she

towers above herself in the light of God. Now she has come home and is at one with him and is his fellow worker. Nothing is accomplished by the creature; the Father works alone. The soul shall never rest until she works as God does. Then she and the Father shall do his work together: she shall work as one with him, wisely and lovingly. That we may be in unity with him, God help us. Amen.