The flow into the Father and the soul's fall into nothing

Concerning the flow into the Father, note the following.

The Godhead is contained in the Father as nature, which is why [see Spamer's Texte, B. 2, from which the words in brackets are taken].

he is all-powerful and receives nothing from anything that he is not already himself in his divine potential, since he has it in himself in essence, as his own. Still, when we speak of the Father we mean the Person of the Father, and when we speak of the Godhead we mean his nature, his undivided substance, that is to say. Now since this nature stays brooding in settled, unmoving stillness, moving all things which have proceeded in eternity in the word of his power (or potential Word), it follows that, as power, it has always been flowing into the Father, making him able to beget a Son like himself. We can prove it this way. The Persons are powerless as Persons; whatever they do is done by virtue of their nature, which is their real being. So much for the flow into the Father which he has from his own nature, in which he is all-powerful.

Now mark this. The soul has received two powers by nature. The first of these powers is understanding. This grasps the Trinity, although it is beyond grasping, and all its works. Notice how understanding grasps the Trinity and all its works, even though the Trinity cannot be grasped. The soul in her understanding is the image of the Son, and the Son is the Father's understanding. So when the soul is empty of her own understanding, and only the Son is her understanding, she understands with the Son the Son and the Father and their shared Spirit. That is how the soul grasps the Trinity and all its works.

Her other power is will. Its nature is to throw itself into the unknown, which is God. God is said to be unknown because no creature knows him as he knows himself; known to himself, he is unknown to all creatures. This is why we call God agnosia. Now the chief power of the soul is too particular to spend itself on temporal, known things, so free will boldly leaves behind the known and holds to what it does not know. As St Paul says, 'I do not know, God knows.'

Christ says, 'When I am lifted up I will draw all things to myself.' He means that when he dawns on our heart and understanding, he gathers us up into himself. In this sense all creatures are one man, and that man is God. [In this sense man is all things, for he has the nature of all creatures, and souls joined to Christ are in this sense one man with him. He is the head and they are his members, who live in his love.] In Christ everything was gathered into one. His higher and his lower faculties, and the senses of his outward and his inward man, were in harmonious union with his highest power, conceived there by divine conception, which was united with him in one Person. And so it is with the man in whom all creatures end, in whom all the many things have been reduced to one in Christ: such a man is then one in God with Christ's humanity. In this way all creatures are one man, and that man is God

in the Person of Christ. As one master says, 'One spirit with God and one body with Christ, that is unity indeed.'

With the powers received from the Trinity, the soul knows the ordering of all things as God has arranged them, in such an exalted way. But those who turn their eyes away from God fall back into the very same nothing they were in before they received the likeness of the Trinity, this likeness of the Trinity always reminding them of the dark nothing they are returning to. In this darkness all the pains of hell gather. The darkness wraps around them and hides the sight of God; it burns them beyond any comfort from their created being. This is bitter to their conscience, which condemns them for all time. In this pit of nothingness they sink forever, unable to grasp the nothing they were before they had the likeness of the Trinity.

And now, my children, let us look carefully at these dark sayings. You will see the plain meaning concerning the damned. But another, spiritual, sense lies hidden in them, which you should note especially. This applies to the chosen, who turn their mind away from God and flow back into that same nothing, for when the soul is carried by her understanding above all things and beyond the reach of her own understanding to the understanding of the highest good, she sees that to all creatures this is beyond understanding. So down she goes with her own understanding.

The particular soul can rest her understanding on nothing that has a name. She escapes from every name into the nameless nothingness. Escaping her own nature she falls clear of anything of her own. The nothing she falls into is the unknowing, which is called the dark. In this dark all the pains of hell gather, where the soul is plunged straight into the void. This only happens when she is completely without knowledge. The slightest trace of knowledge or understanding of the nothing she is plunged into would be torment to her like hell. All sense and knowledge of the nothing ends in this darkness. The darkness burns them beyond healing by anything of their own kind. Bitter is this conscience which condemns them for all time. In this abyss of nothingness they sink forever, unable to grasp the nothing they were before they took on the likeness of the Trinity. By virtue of this they have their being. To fathom the nothing in which they drown, they are as helpless as they were when they did not exist. All sense and knowledge end in the darkness of their nothing. For this darkness is the incomprehensible nature of God. She sinks forever into the depths of this nothing. She sinks and drowns; she drowns to anything of her own. What remains of her own being sinks as nothing into nothing. But the nothing that sinks can never grasp the nothing it sinks into. Once every virtue is mastered and gone beyond, the soul cries out: even

so I cannot glorify and love God fully. I die then to the virtues that cast me into the nothing of the Godhead, to sink forever from nothing into something.' The highest reward of love and praise the soul can give the highest good is given in the knowledge that all her love and praise fall short of God. So down she goes through the little she can call her own, and dying to her virtues, she is cast into the nothing of her own self.

Note two points here. She casts herself in with the nothing of herself when, stripped of her exalted power, she always regards her own insignificance.

The other nothing she plunges into is the nothing of the Godhead. Seeing that she herself is nothing and has no wish to settle on anything, the soul casts herself into the nothing of the Godhead and so comes with nothing to nothing. She wants whatever she recognizes in herself to perish into the nothing that is its true being, and so to exist in unity. She sees that we cannot love and glorify God any better than by recognizing how inadequate all our love and glory are. This is why she keeps silent. St Dionysius, setting out to praise Mary's virtues, found them so far beyond conceiving that he fell silent. By his silence the worthy Dionysius paid Mary the highest honor. This is what happens to the soul when she is caught up into God's incomprehensibility. With her lips struck dumb, 'O groundless Truth,' she cries, 'how poor our praise is!' In this way she comes into a union close enough for God to pour himself into her completely and draw her completely into himself, leaving no trace of either vice or virtue; nor does the soul know any difference.

You should know that for the soul in her perfection, goodness would come quite naturally; she would not merely practice virtues, but virtue as a whole would be her life, and she would give it off naturally. We seem to be sinful or virtuous because we are sometimes one and sometimes the other. This should not be so: we ought to be always in a state of perfection. That is one thing to note.

Further, God absorbs the soul, leaving no trace. This means that the soul, caught up by God into the peace and quiet of his hidden self, shows little of this except to those of her own kind. There the soul knows no separation, for the one who has absorbed her has merged her into himself. She knows well that she is, but does not know what she is. The sun in certain countries is too hot for fruit to grow well on the surface of the earth, yet that same sun produces gold in abundance deep in the earth. So it is with the soul in whom the bright sun of the divine nature shines: it produces its own likeness there, scattering the darkness and bringing about perfect unity. Notice this: we should be very gentle with such souls, for, withdrawn into his hiding place, they are out of touch with the world around them.

St Chrysostom says, 'It is not yet clear what we are, but when we are changed into him we will show what we are.' Whatever she may take herself to be, to God she is still a creature.

The Godhead is a spiritual substance, so impenetrable that no one can say what kind of thing it is. It is said that God in the Trinity is the living light in its visible brightness. In other words, the three Persons are one in nature though distinct as Persons, in the same way that the source of light is not the light itself, nor is the source its shining. Applying this to the three Persons: the source is the Father, the Son is the light, and the Holy Spirit is the shining. The Father is the living source in whom all things have lived eternally outside themselves, as in their cause. The light is the Son, in whom all things appear eternally as in their idea. The shining is the Holy Spirit, in whom all things are one eternally as in their nothing. This does not mean that one Person is the life and another the light: the three Persons are one life, one light.

The Trinity is the heart of the divine nature, as you can show. In human life it is the heart that beats in all the limbs, giving them energy and bringing them into order. Because the limbs receive from it, it is called the heart. Now as for the Godhead, this is not active in its own nature, but whatever it does, it does through the Persons, and the Trinity is called the heart of the divine nature because the Godhead works by means of it, and because the Trinity is the origin of all things, and all things flow back into it and come to rest there. This heart of the heart, again, is the highest power of the unity in which and through which it is all-powerful. Human nature flows in love into the Trinity as into its common origin. The unity of the Trinity is without bottom, and nothing is contained in it. In the embrace of this unity the naked soul sinks down forever and never touches bottom. Her temporal powers, that is, the created natures of her faculties, stop at the Persons, while her pure essence is received into the pure unity of God without return.

Look at the soul separated from everything. For whoever stoops to anything that is not God can never be received into God's unity. This unity has no cause; it is its own cause. Its floor has no bottom, its roof has no top, its space has no edge. I am speaking here of the Trinity of Persons: the unity lies beneath it, holding it together; it rises above it, giving it energy; it surrounds it, bringing its distinctions to an end. So the Trinity is in the unity and the unity is in the Trinity. As the psalm Quicumque vult says.

That we should know ourselves and God as far as we are able, this is God's will. If we want to know ourselves, we have to recognize that we are nothing but the raw material of God, for the blessed Trinity to work in. We should therefore take great care not to hinder in any way the work which the exalted

workman intends to carry out in us for his glory, but to keep ourselves ready so that the material is always available for the workman to do his work in us. St Paul says, 'The spirit of the Lord descends from above in secret, working in whoever it wishes, and when and where and how it wishes, in anyone who puts up no hindrance.' This is true in the children of God. They are led by this spirit. This is how you shall know yourselves. Next, we have to know God. To this end St Dionysius urged one of his disciples, saying, 'Rise up, friend, strip yourself of things and put off yourself, so that you may understand the Sovereign Good.' Three things are said of it. First, it is a unique force, whole in everything; second, a unique good embracing everything. Third, to really know God you must know him as the unknown. So Dionysius says.

God's will is our welfare, and our welfare consists in knowing God and acting accordingly. Here timidity murmurs in the soul, both she will and she will not. And hard on this comes a rage of soul. When she senses that it falls to her to be somewhat that he is not, she is carried away with anger. She would sooner come to nothing than have or take anything that belongs to him. 'Lord,' she cries, 'my welfare lies in your never calling me to mind, and I beg you, forbid any creature ever to console me. I rejoice that my powers never come before your face.'

See what the soul means by these strange words: 'my welfare lies in your never calling me to mind.' She knows very well that she has never been out of his mind for one instant, and that is her happiness. She asks not to be comforted by any creature, because she is in a poverty so complete that her very lack of comfort is her one comfort. And what does she mean when she says her powers do not come before his face? Notice what God's face is. We see ourselves best in what we call our face. In the same way God is shown to himself in the hidden stillness of his own being. This showing is called the face of the Godhead. The soul knows well that, together with her powers, she can never enter the complete stillness where he is shown to himself. So she wants her powers not to come before his face, that is, before his self-revealing. Notice, her powers stop at its reflection in the Trinity, and only the pure essence of her spirit is carried straight from the stillness of her own power into this perfect revealing. As a master says: 'Where the pure and the purified are one, the powers of the soul come to an end.' He means that in the one perfect nature the pure nature of the spirit rises above all its powers. Saint Paul says, 'He who is joined to God is one spirit with him.' Amen.