By Henry Aloysius Barry
As Newman says of the heart, "He who is infinite alone can be its measure. He alone can answer to that mysterious assemblage of feeling and thoughts which it has within it." "Created nature cannot open to us or elicit the ten thousand mental senses, which belong to us and through which we really live. None but the presence of our Maker can enter us, for to none besides can the whole heart, in all its thoughts and feelings, be unlocked and subjected." To whom is the human heart revealed? Yes, who knows the heart like the lover? If we do not love God these internal senses of ours must lie dormant. In time they become paralyzed or practically dead; the spiritual instinct suffers decadence. The psalms evidence the reality of the mystic sense. Who but an out and-out lover of God filled to the brim with the Holy Ghost can understand the love-songs of the Canticles? What I say then is that the procession of the Holy Ghost being such a pure essence of mystery appeals to the mystic sense and feeds the spiritual mind and heart. These profound truths of heaven and God become more opaline to us as we grow in love, under the increasing communication of the Holy Ghost, Who is Love, the fountain-head of love, Love itself. The mysteries of God, besides, far from warping man and stealing away his liberty, on the contrary, expand him and his whole being with its thousand mystic chords, that vibrate to the subtle touch of the deep and hidden things and provide the inner man with music, that has no counterpart even in the languid strains of the Aeolian Harp. Is the heart of Christ really known by one who is not really in love with the Master? When an inamorata is full of his tender passion he sees the object of his affection everywhere; she stands always between him and the object upon which he would set his gaze, she is before him at work, at play, riding, walking, dreaming. "I can no longer," says Lacordaire, "love anyone, without the soul stealing behind the heart so that Jesus Christ stands between us." To be so filled with the Holy Ghost as to love our Lord so that He would be a sort of immovable eyeglass and we should look through Him at all things, see Him in every place, measure and value everything by Him, in Him, with Him—Ah! this indeed were knowing Christ, for we shall have had the "Spirit" of Jesus, the Holy Ghost; this indeed were cultivating the spiritual soul within us. St. Gregory, St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Teresa were types of the very highest mysticals, who from the most clever execution of functions and ministrations, merely secular, commonplace and external, withdrew themselves directly therefrom and dipped into ecstatic moods. Love in them had made all things serve it in the capacity of handmaid.
The example of these saints demonstrates that the every day life of the least among us may be preeminently spiritual and that the man of affairs can, and ought to be, in his own measure, also a spiritual man, and that, not simply in an indifferent way, but in a refined, methodical and strenuous fashion, cultivating the religious faculties as the foremost and the noblest pursuit and the only one absolutely worthy to preoccupy the mind gotten up in God's own image. "In his heart, he hath disposed to ascend by steps." (Ps. lxxxiii, 6.)— Yes, of course, it is not done all at once; it is daily work, it is accomplished by steps. There must be mystery because there is a Creator and a Creature, an infinite and a finite being. Reason convinces us that we cannot find happiness except in our end. Experience makes it clear that we inwardly sigh and languish for that which is infinite and immutable. St. Augustine has expressed the foundation of this, when he said: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, Lord, and our heart is disquiet until it rests in Thee." (Conf. lib. i, c. 1.) These mysteries unfold themselves to the soul as the soul grows in the perfection of love. The final complete repose of the soul will come, and can only come, however, in heaven. Ah, then, the full bloom of vision, the eternal realization of the beautiful and true. Of that moment Bossuet has said, "We shall see the true Son of God coming forth eternally from the bosom of the Father, and remaining eternally in the bosom of His Father, we shall see the Holy Ghost, that torrent of flame, proceeding from the mutual embrace, which the Father and Son give to one another, or rather, Who is Himself the embrace, the love and the kiss of the Father and Son; we shall see that unity so inviolable that number can bring it no division, and that number so well ordered that unity does not put confusion in it. My soul is wrapt, christian men, with the hope of so sublime a spectacle, and I can but cry out with the prophet "How lovely are Thy tabernacles, oh! Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord." (Ps. lxxxiii, 1,2.) Take the man of idols, the ambitious man, the money grubber, the sensualist and let the flame of the Holy Ghost "make sweet music with the enamelled stones, giving a gentle kiss to every sedge,"—to all passions and attachments, and how truly may the transformed spirit say, "For now My love is thawed, which like a waxen image against a fire bearest no resemblance to the thing it was." (Two Gentlemen of Verona.) Change the name of Silvia to God, to Whom alone belong such words as the poet has put in the lover's mouth and how true —apart of course from the despondent touch and allowing of course for the poet's license,—it were then, in this torpor of evil habits and of sin. Wake, before you are awakened by the trump of the archangel! Hear the holy angels sing, 'Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men;' see those bright and pure spirits, longing to be rejoined by you and desiring your coming; and then look down on the passions which are holding you captives, the desires which you are serving, the cares and unsatisfied longings which are destroying your peace, the petty troubles about which you are repining, the petty gains and enjoyments, for which you are bartering your souls, and then say, whether they be worthy of your new origin, your second birth, whether these suit the characters of the Sons of God and heirs of everlasting life, and make your choice." (Dr. Pusey.) Without this cleansing of the soul, as we have remarked again and again, without these burnings of the fetid loves that hamper, debase and becloud and keep the soul a prisoner behind bars with ball and clanking chains, the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a dead language, a secret, a riddle more or less dark, according to the extent of our evil passions, out of which the captive soul gazes in an impotent stare. St. Paul says, "My speech and my preaching was not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the showing of the spirit and power. That your faith might not stand on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Howbeit, we speak wisdom among the perfect: yet not the wisdom of the world, neither of the princes of this world that cometh to naught, but we speak the wisdom of God, in a mystery, a wisdom which is hidden, which God ordained before the world, unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew, for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of Glory, but as it is written, 'That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what thing God hath prepared for them that love Him.' But to us, God hath revealed them by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of man, but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things also that are of God, no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world but the Spirit of God, that we may know the things that are given us from God, which things we also speak, not in the learned language of human wisdom, but in the doctrine of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man judgeth all things." (I. Cor. ii, 4, 15.) Says St. Jerome, "Whoso, for the faith of Christ and the Gospel preaching shall bid farewell to all lusts and shall have cast under their feet the riches and pleasures of this world shall receive in an hundredfold, besides, life-everlasting — Whoso, for the Saviour's sake, shall have driven forth carnal things shall receive spiritual." (Lib. 3 in Matt i, 19, Cap. xix.)
