The just live for ever: justice, equality, and birth in the soul

Iusti autem in perpetuum vivent et apud dominum est merces eorum (Wisdom 5:16), The just (or righteous) live for ever and their reward is with God. Let us look at this carefully. It sounds quite trite and commonplace, whereas it is, in fact, a most remarkable and precious saying. 'The just live.' Who are the just? One scripture says, That man is just who gives to each his own. So the just are they that give to God his due and to the saints and angels theirs and to their fellow what is theirs. God's is glory. Who are they that glorify God? Those who, having gone out of themselves, seek not their own in anything whatever it may be, great or small; who look for nothing over them nor under them nor beside them; not mindful of possessions, of honours, comfort, pleasure, nor inwardness nor holiness nor of reward nor heaven. They have finished with all that is theirs. God glorifies them and they truly glorify God and render him what is his due.

We ought to give the saints and angels joy. Wonder of wonders! Can a person in this life give joy to those in eternal life? Yes, surely. Marvellous, incredible to tell, every saint rejoices, takes ineffable delight in each virtuous deed, each good desire or intention; their joy no tongue is able to express nor any heart conceive, as I have said. And why? Because their love for God is so immeasurably great, they hold him so dear, that his glory is to them more than their own happiness. The saints and angels, and God himself, are as pleased by this as though it touched his own happiness and mattered deeply to him, to his own delight and satisfaction. Remember then, even if we serve God for no other reason than for the great joy of those in eternal life and of God himself, we ought still to do so gladly and with all diligence. Also, we ought to help those who are in hell and give aid to those still living.

A person of this sort is just in one way, but in another sense the just are those who take everything alike from God no matter what it is, big and little, good and bad, all the same, no more nor less, but one thing like another. If one thing matters more to you than another then you are unjust. You must be rid of your own will altogether.

I was thinking just now: if God does not will what I do then I must will what he does. Some people always want their own way; that is bad, that way lies sin. Those others are a little better who would like to do God's will and have no wish to go against it, yet when they are sick they wish God would choose to make them well. These people would have God, then, conforming to their will rather than they to his. We excuse this although it is wrong. The just have no will at all; whatever God wills, it is all one to them, regardless of the hardship.

The just are so set on justice that if God were not just they would not care a fig for God; they are so loyal to what is right, so perfectly indifferent to self, that they give no thought to the pains of hell, the joys of heaven, or anything else at all. Were all the pangs of those in hell and all the pain borne or to be borne on earth to be the fruits of justice, they would not mind one bit, so true are they to God and to what is right. What is contrary to justice and to balance causes the just person the greatest pain and hardship. How is this so? If one thing can cheer you and another can depress you, you are not balanced; to be cheerful one moment and less so or not at all the next is uneven-tempered. But the devotee of what is right is so stable that what he loves is his very life, nothing can upset him, nor does he care for anything else. St Augustine says the soul dwells where she loves. Our text sounds plain and commonplace enough, but there are few who grasp the actual meaning of it. One who understands the meaning of justice and of the just will understand all I have to say.

'The just live.' There is nothing in the world so dear as life or so desirable. No life is so bad or hard that a person would not go on living it. It is written that the nearer to death, the greater the pain. But however hard life is, there is still the desire to live. Why do you eat? Why do you sleep? To live. Why do you long for good or for glory? You know that well enough. But why do you live? For the sake of living, even though you do not know for what reason you live. Life is so desirable in itself, we want it for its own sake. Those who are in hell in eternal pain have no desire to lose their life, whether devil or soul; their life is such a noble thing, flowing as it does straight from God to them. That is the reason they want to live. What is life? God's existence is my life. If my life is God's existence then God's being is my being and God's is-ness is my is-ness, neither more nor less. They live eternally with God, on a level with him, not below him nor above. All their works are done with God and God's works are done with them. St John says, 'the Word was with God.' It was exactly like him and side by side with him, neither under nor over but equal.

When God created man he took the woman out of the man's side so that she might be his equal. He did not make her out of his head nor out of his feet, meaning neither above nor below, but his equal. So the just soul is like God, beside God, on a level with him, not under nor over.

Who are those that are his equal? Those who are like nothing, they alone are Godlike. Nothing is like God's essence, there is no image nor form in it. Those souls who are his equals, to them the Father gives as equals, holding nothing back from them. All the Father has to give he gives to this soul, provided she is just and no more concerned with herself than with another. Her own honour, her own profit, anything of her own, she neither wants nor thinks of more than any stranger's. Personal belongings are repugnant to her, alien and distant, whether bad or good. All love of this world is based on love of self. Leave this and you have left the world.

In eternity the Father is bringing forth his Son just like himself. 'The Word was with God and the Word was God': the same in the same nature. I say, moreover: he has brought him forth in my soul. She is with him and he equally with her, and indeed he is in her: the Father gives birth to his Son in the soul in exactly the same way as he gives him birth in eternity, and in no other way. He must do this, whether he wills it or not. The Father is begetting his Son unceasingly, and furthermore, I say, he begets me his Son, as his very own Son. Moreover I declare, he begets me his Son, and also begets me himself and himself me: me his essence and his nature. In his deepest depth I come welling up in his holy Breath, where there is one life, one being and one act. God's activity is one; he begets me his Son then without difference. My bodily father is not my real father except for one small part of his nature and I am different from him: he may be dead and I alive. My heavenly Father is my real father; I am his and all I have I get from him; I am his son and no one else's. Since the Father performs a single act, therefore he makes me his Son without any distinction. As St Paul says, 'We are wholly transformed into God and changed.'

Take an illustration. In the sacrament the bread is changed into the body of our Lord, and however much bread there is, it becomes no more than the one body. Likewise, were the bread to be changed into my finger, it would make no more than the one finger. But suppose my finger is changed back into bread, then the one is as much as the other; for when one thing changes into another it is identical with it. So too, if I am changed into him and he makes me one and the same with himself, then by the living God it is also true that there is no distinction. The Father gives birth to his Son without ceasing. Once the Son is born he takes nothing from the Father, for he already has it all; but while in the act of being born he is receiving from the Father.

The lesson of this is that it is not right for us to ask from God as from a stranger. 'I call you not servants but friends,' said our Lord. The servant asks, the master pays. I was wondering lately whether I am willing to ask for or to accept anything from God. I must take serious counsel with myself, for by accepting anything from God I make myself inferior to God, like a servant to his master, as far as giving goes. That is not how it is with us in eternal life.

I once said here, and it is very true: when a person goes out of themselves to find or fetch God, they are wrong. I do not find God outside myself except as my own and within me. A person ought not to work for the sake of any why, not for God nor for his glory nor for anything outside them, but only for that which is their being, their very life within them.

Some simple people fondly imagine they are going to see God standing there and themselves here, but in truth God and I are one in knowing. When I take God into me in loving, I am going into God. Some say that happiness lies in will alone, apart from knowledge. They are wrong; if it were merely a matter of will it would not be one. Working and becoming are the same. When the carpenter stops working, the house stops becoming. Stop the axe and you stop the growth. God and I are one in operation: he works and I become. Fire changes to itself the fuel cast upon it, which is converted to its nature. The wood does not assimilate the fire, the fire assimilates the wood. 'We shall be changed into God so that we shall know him as he is,' says St Paul. And the manner of our knowing shall be this: I shall know him as he knows me, exactly the same, neither more nor less. 'The just live eternally, and their reward is with God': identity with him, as I have said. Let us love justice for its own sake and love God without a why. So help us God. Amen.