The rod out of the root of Jesse

Egredietur virga de radice Jesse et flos de radice ejus ascendet et requiescet super eum spiritus domini (Isaiah 11:1), 'A rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise from his root, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.' We read this today in the Mass: a rod comes forth from the root of Jesse, and out of the root comes a flower, and on this flower the spirit of the Lord rests and reposes. Jesse means a burning brand; it stands for love in the abstract, where it is no longer called love, where nothing added-on exists, and in this ground where nothing yet grows, it germinates just as the coming shoot does within the root. The shoot has three properties: it is like what it shoots from, it shares its nature, and it is of exactly the same kind; third, it is free of all attachments, simply an outflowing. So the Son proceeded from the Father, as another Person alongside the Father, though in the Father essentially the same. So he says, 'Out of the root came a rod, and on the rod came a flower.' My loving is a heavenly matter, for like things all end in sameness, and sameness is in the ground, and a thing that grows out of another is in every way the same kind. A graft of apple on a pear tree tastes of both. It is not so here: this has the flavor of the one alone; it is not in itself contained there and yet it is there. It could never come out if it were not first within, in the abstract, in brooding essence. The wine is in the vine: it is and it is not.

I say of God's freedom that it yields no nature but one. God begins with the Son, and the Son is other than the Father who is power, and from the two of them the Holy Spirit blossoms forth. Our philosophers teach that the sun draws the flowers out of the roots through the stem, almost outside time and too subtly for any eye to follow. The soul, which has no nature in her ground, the ground of love, where she is love, comes forth from this nature where she is stored in God. Whatever enters this being shares much the same being. At the coming of the bride he gives himself to her and works with all his might within his ground, in his innermost, where nothing exists, where all activity stops. The tree of the Godhead grows in this ground, and the Holy Spirit springs from its root. The flower that blossoms, love, is the Holy Spirit. In this Holy Spirit the soul flowers with the Father and the Son, and on this flower the spirit of the Lord rests and reposes. He could not rest had he not first rested upon the Spirit. The Father and the Son rest on the Spirit, and the Spirit rests upon them as its cause. What is rest? Augustine says rest is a complete absence of motion, body and soul stripped of their own nature. One philosopher says, God's distinguishing mark is changelessness. That is, all creatures. Man as transcending motion. Jesse means a fire and a burning; it stands for the ground of divine love and also for the ground of the soul. Out of this ground the rod grows, that is, in the purest and highest part; it shoots up out of this virgin soil when the Son breaks forth. On the rod a flower opens, the flower of the Holy Spirit. We ask the Lord our God that we may rest in him and he in us, to his glory. So help us God. Amen.