How we become the sons of God

Videte qualem caritatem dedit nobis Pater, ut filii Dei nominemur et simus (1 John 3). It must be understood that this is all the same thing: knowing God and being known by God, and seeing God and being seen by God. We know God and see him because he makes us know and see. Just as the luminous air cannot be told apart from the light that fills it, for it is luminous only through what illumines it, so we know by being known, by his making us conscious. Christ said, 'Again you shall see me.' That is to say: by making you see I make you see me, and your heart will rejoice, rejoice in the vision and knowledge of God, and your joy no one will take from you.

St John says: 'Behold what manner of charity the Father has given us, that we should be called and should be the sons of God.' He does not say only 'should be called' but 'should be.' Now I maintain that we can no more be wise without wisdom than be Son without the filial nature of God's Son: without having the very same nature as the Son of God himself. Do you want to be the Son of God? You cannot, without having the same nature as the Son of God. But this is hidden from us here, as it is written, 'Beloved, now we are God's sons (and it does not yet appear what we shall be), but we know that he is our pattern and we shall be like him.' That is, the same as he is: the same life and enjoyment and understanding, exactly the same as he is, when we see him as God. I say, God cannot make me the Son of God unless I have the nature of God's Son, any more than God can make me wise without my having wisdom. Though we are God's sons, we do not yet realize it: it does not yet appear to us, but this much we do know, he says, we shall be like him. Various things in our souls lie over this knowledge and hide it from us.

The soul has something in her, a spark of intellect, that never dies; and in this spark, as at the apex of the mind, we place the pattern of the soul; and there is also in our souls knowledge of outward things, sensible and rational perception, present there as images and words that obscure it from us. How are we God's sons? By having one nature with him. But any realization of this, of being God's sons, is inward knowledge, not outward. The inner awareness strikes down to the very essence of the soul. It is rooted there and is in a measure the life of the soul, her intellectual life, the life, that is, in which a man is born God's Son, born into eternal life, for this knowledge has no time in it, no extension, no here and no now. In this life all things are the same thing and all things are shared; all things are all in all and all are reconciled.

I will give you a picture of it. In the body the members are joined together so that eye belongs to foot and foot to eye. If the foot could speak, it would say that the eye seems to belong more to the foot than to the head, and the eye would say the same thing the other way round. In the same way, I believe that the grace which is in Mary really belongs to an angel and is more his, even while it is in Mary, than if it were in him or in the saints. For everything that Mary has belongs to every saint, so the grace in Mary is his own and he enjoys it more than if it were actually in him.

But such a comparison is too crude and bodily, depending as it does on physical images. So I will give you another, more subtle, less material one. I say that in heaven all is in all and all one and all ours. The grace our Lady has exists in me (when I am there), not as welling up out of Mary and flowing into me, but as in me as my own, not as something foreign. I hold that there, what one has another has, not as coming from another or as existing in another, but in its own right, so that the grace in one is at the same time in another as his own grace. In that way spirit is in spirit. And that is why I say I cannot be the son of God unless I have the very nature that the Son of God has there; and that having this same nature makes us the same as he is, when we see him as God. 'But it does not yet appear what we shall be.' I take this to mean that there is then no likeness and no difference, but that, wholly without distinction, we are the same in essence and in substance and in nature as he is himself. This is not plain now: it will be plain when we see him as God.

God makes us know him, and his knowing is his being, and his making me know is the same as my knowing, so his knowing is mine, just as, in the teacher, what he teaches is the same thing as, in the student, what is taught. And because his knowing is mine, and his knowing is his substance and his nature and his essence, it follows that his substance and his nature and his essence are mine. And since his substance, his nature and his essence are mine, therefore I am the Son of God. Look, brothers, 'what manner of love God has given us, that we should be called and should be the Son of God.'

Notice by what we are sons of God: by having the same nature as the Son of God. How can one be the Son of God, or know it, seeing that God is not like anybody? True, Isaiah says, 'To whom will you liken God, or what likeness will you compare to him?' Since it is God's nature to be unlike anyone, we too must become unlike in order to be the same as he is. When I manage to see myself as nothing and to see nothing in myself; when I succeed in rooting up and throwing out everything in me, then I am free to pass into the bare being of the soul. All likenesses must be driven out before I can be transplanted into God and be the same as he is: the same substance, the same essence, the same nature, and the Son of God. Once this happens, there is nothing hidden in God that is not revealed, that is not mine. I am wise and mighty just as he is, one and the same with him. Then Zion is a true seer, true Israel, one who beholds God, since nothing in the Godhead is hidden from him. Man is turned into God. But for nothing to be hidden from me, for everything to be revealed, there must be in me no likeness, no image, for no image can show God's nature or his essence. While any image or likeness remains in you, you are never the same as God. To be the same as God there must be nothing in you, hidden or defined, nothing covered over in you that is not uncovered and cast out.

Notice what sin is. It is born of negation. This brood of negation must be wiped out in the soul; while there is a 'not' in you, you are not the Son of God. We weep and mourn for want of something. This minus quantity must go, must be cancelled, if man is to become the Son of God and weep and mourn no more. Man is not wood or stone, and yet he is imperfection and nothingness. We will not be like him until this lack is made good and we are all in all as God is all in all.

There are two births of man: one into the world, the other out of the world and spiritual, into God. Do you want to know if your child is born, and if he is bare? That is, whether you have been made God's Son? If your heart is heavy over anything except sin, your child is not born. In your pain you are not yet a mother, you are in labor and your hour is near. Make no mistake, if you are laboring for yourself or for your friend, no birth has taken place yet, though the birth may be close. The birth is not finished until your heart is free from care, then man has the essence and nature and substance and wisdom and joy and all that God has. Then the very being of the Son of God is ours and in us, and we come to actual Godhood.

Christ says: 'If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.' That is: cast away care and let lasting joy reign in your heart. That is how the child is born. And when the child is born in me, seeing friends or father dead before my eyes will leave my heart untouched. If my heart were moved by that, the child would not be born in me, even though its birth might be near. I maintain that God and his angels take such deep delight in every good act a man does, that there is no joy like it. And so I say, the birth of this child in you brings you the deepest delight in every good deed done in this world, and your joy is so continuous that it never ends. That is why it is said, 'Your joy no one will take from you.' When I am carried up into God, then God is mine and all that he has.

'I am the Lord your God,' he says. Then I have a real delight which neither pain nor sorrow can take from me, for then I am set within God, where sorrow has no place. We will see that in God there is no anger and no sadness, only love and joy. Though he may at times seem wrathful toward sinners, this is not really wrath, it is his kindness, the working of his great love: 'Whom he loves he chastens,' for he is love, the Holy Spirit. God's anger comes out of love; he corrects us without passion. When nothing is painful or hard, when all is pure joy, then truly your child is born. Strive that this child be not merely coming to birth but actually born in you, just as in God his Son is forever being born and is forever born. May this come to pass. So help us God. Amen.