Two lights in the soul, and why God loves only himself

Dilectus deo et hominibus etc. (Eccl. 45), "Beloved of God and men." In this passage from the Book of Wisdom the wise man speaks of Moses, the beloved of God and men, whose memory is held in blessing. God made him like the saints in glory. And this may well be said of the saint whose feast we keep today. His name is Benedict, which means blessed, so that the words used here, cujus memoria in benedictione est, "whose memory is in blessing," fit him especially well, all the more so because we read of him too that a glory was revealed to him in which he saw the whole world gathered up as if into a ball, and our text says, God made him like the saints in glory.

As to this glory, St Gregory says that to a soul who is in this glory all things seem small and narrow. The natural light that God has poured into the soul is so splendid and so strong that God's bodily creation is all poor and meagre next to it. This light is more glorious than any physical thing God ever made, and even the meanest, most worthless physical thing, once lit up by this light, which is intelligence, is raised above mortal things. It is clearer and brighter than the sun and purifies things from both time and matter. This light reaches so far that it goes beyond the limits of space. Wider than space, it rises above the great and the good just as God rises above wisdom and goodness, for God is not wisdom or goodness itself, but wisdom and goodness come from God. Intellect does not come from wisdom, nor is intellect the result of truth or something got from it, the way will comes from goodness. Will wants what is good and is produced by it, and truth is what comes out of intellect, not intellect out of truth. This light that flows out of the intellect is intelligence, which is like a burst, an outflow, or a stream compared to what intellect is in itself. And this outburst is as far removed from the intellect as heaven is from earth.

There is another light, the light of grace, compared to which this natural light lights up no more than a pinpoint of the earth, or rather a pinpoint compared to the whole heavens, which are far vaster than all the earth put together. God's presence in the soul by grace carries more light than any intellect can give. The light of the intellect is only a drop in the ocean of this light, or less, a thousand times less. So to the soul who is in God's grace, everything, whatever her mind can grasp, will seem small and poor.

I was asked why good people who stand in God's favor are so eager to serve him. I said it was because they had tasted God, and it would be strange indeed if, having once tasted and enjoyed God, the soul could still stomach anything else. As the saint puts it: once the soul has tried God, she finds everything that is not God repugnant and distasteful.

Take the wise man's words in another sense: "Beloved of God and men." The verb "is" does not appear, for the wise man is pointing past his changing and unstable temporal nature, which his essence rises far above. Essence takes in everything and yet is too far beyond anything to ever be touched by what is created. Those who fondly imagine they have some knowledge of it know nothing at all. As St Dionysius says, anything we know, anything we can put into words or define, is not God, for in God there is no this or that which we can pull apart in thought, and he has no limit. In him there is only one thing, and that is himself. So theologians face a burning question: how does this motionless, untouchable, solitary essence come to belong to the soul, to fall within the soul's reach? And they struggle hard over how the soul receives it. All I can say is that God's divinity consists in giving himself to whatever is open to receive his goodness, and if he did not give himself in this way he would not be God.

The soul that God loves, and to whom he gives himself, must be so completely free of time and of every trace of creatureliness that in her God tastes only of himself. "In the middle of the night, when all things were at rest," the Scriptures say, "your word, O Lord, came down from your royal throne." "In the night" means when no creature looks into or appears in the soul, and it is in this stillness, this wordlessness of the soul, that the Word is spoken in her intellectual nature. This word is the word of her own understanding, the expression of the Word as it exists and abides in the intellect.

Often, when I speak about God, I feel afraid at how completely detached the soul must be to reach union with him. We must not think this is impossible to reach. Nothing is beyond the reach of the soul that has God's grace. Nothing was ever easier to leave behind: to the soul that has God's grace, everything is easy to let go of. Further I say, no task was ever more pleasant to do: to the soul with God's grace, letting go of everything is pleasant, because no creature can cause her pain. St Paul says, "I am convinced that no creature can separate us from God, not fate, not life, not death."

Consider this. Nowhere is God so truly God as in the soul. In every creature there is something of God, but in the soul God is divine, for she is his resting place. According to one master, God loves nothing but himself: all his love is spent on himself. Indeed, a man would be a fool to take only a penny when at one stroke he could take a hundred pounds. God's love in us is the Holy Spirit blossoming forth. One more word on this: God loves nothing in us except the good he himself does in us. In the words of the saint, "God crowns nothing but his own work, wrought by him in us." Let no one be alarmed at my saying that God loves nothing besides himself. It all works to our good, for in it he has our highest happiness in view. His purpose is to draw us to himself, to get us purified and take us to himself, so that with himself he may love himself in us and us in him. So, as far as our love is concerned, he must draw us to himself by every means he can, whether pleasant or hard. God, in spite of himself, is always holding out some bait to draw us into him. I never thank God for loving me, because he cannot help it. Whether he wants to or not, it is his nature to love. What I do thank him for is that in his goodness he cannot stop loving me. To know ourselves, to be settled in God, is not hard, since it is God himself who must be at work in us, for it is godly work, with man simply agreeing and offering no resistance, staying passive while he allows God to act in him. Let us wait on God so that he can take us into himself, so that, becoming one with him, he may be able to love us together with himself. So help us God. Amen.