How the Father's going out becomes the soul's going in

Exivi a patre et veni in mundum (John 16:28), I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. I take this from the Gospel of John. Our Lord says, 'I came forth from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world again and returning to the Father.' He says elsewhere, 'Truly, truly I tell you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, you will receive.' Scholars say the word amen is a word for steadiness. Our Lord says, 'Heaven and earth will pass away before my word passes away,' and his word never changes. The heavens are many, and the countless stars are each a single color. The moon alone is mottled, thick and clear, dark and light, and that comes from its closeness to the earth. Our teachers tell us that in God there is no yesterday and no tomorrow, it is always today and now in God. Augustine notes that an architect who builds a house shows his skill in the house, and even if the house falls into ruin, the skill in his soul neither ages nor decays. And Augustine also says that all things are unchanging in the eternal Word, and do not wear away, even though in themselves they are subject to decay, able either to exist in some way or not to exist at all.

He says 'truly' (meaning without fail, always), 'whatever you ask of my Father in my name you will receive.' According to Augustine, to pray to God for anything other than God is not to pray at all. John of Damascus says that when the soul sees herself she sees spirit, and when she sees an angel she sees spirit, yet beside God both she and the angel are merely bodily things. Their minds are like matter compared to God. Angelic light is darkness next to him. Our Lord says, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you ask in my name you will receive,' meaning that what is in man's name is man, what is in light's name is light, and what is in God's name is fixed and unchanging. The name of God belongs to no one but the one who stands in this light. No one can say 'Father' unless he is a son, and no one is called son unless he is one with the only-begotten Word. Whoever asks in God's name can ask the Father for whatever he wants. Words have great power, and they get it from the flowing forth of the eternal Word.

Our Lord says, 'I have come into the world.' The Father comes into his Son with everything he is, he comes into his Son with everything he has, he comes into his Son with everything he gives, and fourth, he comes in an act of understanding. It belongs to the Son to dwell in the Father, and it belongs to the Father to dwell in his Son and in the Holy Spirit. The full promise of the Father is brought out in the Son so that the Son may pass it on to the soul. Here is a comparison I like to use. When you throw a stone into a pond, the impact starts a circle, small but forceful, which sets off other circles, the second one bigger than the first though less forceful, and the third bigger still. One comes out of another without stopping, and if the throw was hard enough, the ripples would reach the edge of the water before they died out. If the throw were strong enough and the whole world were a sheet of water, the water would run out before the circles stopped spreading.

Now notice how this applies. First, out of the Father there leaps the Son, small, yet so filled with divine strength that he is the cause of the whole outpouring. The second outpouring is the highest angel, following right after the first event. It moves quickly, and though it has less force than the first, and is itself small, it carries enough power that its surplus strength feeds the lower angels, while the circles that follow, spreading wider still, are larger in range than the second or the first. They keep pouring out, one after another, all busy spreading themselves from the highest angel down to the lowest, but however far it is from the first outpouring of the eternal Word to the first angel, that angel remains too high to be touched by anything bodily. Further, our master claims that even the lowest angel, because of his power flowing from God, holds so much of God's strength that the smallest trace of his activity, like a chip struck off by a carpenter's axe, makes everything grow and flourish. If that chip ever stopped falling from his work, everything would perish at once. They spread far and wide, reflecting as far as they can the first outpouring of the Son from the Father. But that first outpouring carried so much power that if there were a thousand worlds or more, they would run out of room before that first flow had been spent, just as the water's edge was reached before the ripples died out that came from the stone striking the pond.

Our Lord says, 'I came forth from the Father and have come into the world.' Here 'world' means pure, or virgin. He is speaking of the soul. Boethius says the world of the soul is called pure because she is formed like the fair, virgin world that exists in God. And God is that soul who has shaped herself into the perfect image of the divine world and stays there completely, not looking outward but, set apart from the outer world, standing still in the world of light within God. Into this soul the Son comes, begotten there with the full splendor of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all together in one perfect being. The soul that has the Son within her holds, in one perfect being, the entire promise of the Godhead. One more thing: creatures give of themselves only so far as they are good. It belongs to God alone, as the wholly good one, that whoever shares in him receives him completely, in his Son. This is another reason the soul who has the Son receives the whole Godhead. Third, the Father carries out, in his Son, an act of understanding. According to the philosophers, the highest happiness for a human being lies in the exercise of the mind in wisdom. And the Father's whole delight, his perfect joy, is this act of understanding, which is the birth of his Son. He takes such joy in this birth that he puts his whole power and his whole nature into it. So the soul who has received the Son through an act of understanding possesses, in him, everything God can give, in one perfect joy and bliss.

Our Lord says, 'I came forth from the Father and have come into this world,' meaning the world of light. The soul, the true reflection of the divine world, is the one the Son enters. Just as he comes forth from the Father, he is born in the soul. In this same birth he is born into the world, into the soul, and lifting her up he brings her to birth in the Father. As he says, 'Again I leave the world,' the outer world, 'and go back up to my Father,' taking with him the light-world of the soul, the copy of the divine world, made on the same pattern, in the same likeness. He carries her up to his Father, into the first ground, the ground from which the Son comes out and descends from the Father.

There is another meaning in his words 'I came forth from the Father,' which is this: the Father enters his Son with the whole of his divinity, for he is entirely understanding. He goes completely into his Son. If he had more sons, they would receive nothing, for he can never have more than one Son, since he is nothing other than his own understanding. If he had a thousand sons, they would all have to be the same Son.

Our Lord says, 'I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again I am leaving the world and returning to the Father.' He means that his going out is his going into the soul. But her going in is her going out. The soul moves from her outermost part into her innermost, from what is her own into what belongs to the Son. Her being lifted up to the Father is the same as his leaving the outer world and, with the soul, going up again to his Father. Mark tells of someone calling our Lord 'Good Master.' He answered, 'No one is good but God,' because in coming forth he falls entirely into the soul with everything he is. No creature can give itself completely, it gives itself in kindness and in work but keeps itself at home. His going out is his coming in. His passing out of the Father is his passing into the soul. His outpouring is truly God giving himself once and for all in his Son. We say that the only-begotten Son who comes forth from the Father is the same as the Father himself. From the moment the Father pours himself out fully in the Son, the Father returns to pure being. He has no other course, since he has spent his whole substance on his Son. If there were no time, no place, no matter, nothing left at all, the one who begets would be the same as the one begotten. So the Son, as we call him, must be the only Son, one with the Father, who speaks in a single Word the whole of what he knows and the whole of what he can give, in a single instant, and that instant is eternal.

Now our teachers say that natural acts move toward unity. God gives himself, hands himself over, whole, to the soul, so that she may be one with him. And his first outpouring is his only Son. Our teachers also tell us that the highest angel is pure, yet still belongs to nature. But the only Son never entered any nature, he remained above nature, in pure being he went into the Father. The second outpouring into nature, as our masters say, the highest spirit, stayed by nature simple, matching the closeness of his nature to its source. He broke in so that he could let us out: his going out from there is his coming in here. That is the meaning of his words, 'Let...'