By Henry Aloysius Barry
The venerable Bede similarly asserts the law of mystic enlightenment and spiritual refreshment, namely, the cost of self-denial, "Whoso shall have made renunciation of earthly longings or passions out of regard for the teachings of Christ, by how much he shall advance in the love of Christ, insomuch will he find more that are wrapped in eternal desire and are upheld on its solid substance."
"And why not death, rather than living torment;
To die is to be banished from myself;
And Silvia is myself, banished from her,
Is self from self; a deadly banishment:
What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?
Unless it be to think that she
And feed upon the shadow of perfection.
Except I be by Silvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale;
Unless I look on Silvia in the day,
There is no day for me to look upon."
—Two Gentlemen Of Verona.
The intensity of human, passionate love is but the spasmodic and disorderly breaking out of this mighty force of the heart which was created and destined for God. There is a tinge of idolatry in it, for, the full powers of the soul must not be spent except on God, Who alone is worthy of them and Who alone has a right to them in their fulness, Who alone is a proper object for them.
Thus earthly loves prove, however, that there is a God and something higher than creatures to love and in that love to find peace and happiness. "A world which respects nothing but physical facts and material forces, which turns away from the super sensuous, the ideal, the divine, as a dream of its childhood, is surely doomed to decadence and decay. The known and natural cannot suffice for man as a moral being. Without a spiritual horizon the whole value of life, which is its ethical value, fades away." (Quarterly Review.) Of the spiritual love, of that deep, pure love, which the human heart has for its Creator, it cannot be said, as it must be said, of passionate earthly love,
"This weak impress of love is as a figure
Trenched in ice, which with an hour's heat,
Dissolves in water and doth lose its form."
Humility is an essential predisposition to the efflorescence of this spiritual, mystical soul. "The knowledge of our sins and of ourselves," says St. Theresa, "is the bread which we have to eat with all the meats however delicate they may be, in the way of prayer." So is a courageous self-denial, a daily, relentless war against one's disorderly attachments. "Oh! wake then, ye that slumber.
Prayer and bloody war against self are hinges held fast by an humble frame upon which the door of love hangs opening to the hidden things; but, the hand that opens that door is the hand of the soul, the hand of the spiritually strong and mighty, aye, even though they should be puny and utterly weak in bodily frame; and that door must remain locked to those who, though rugged in the body and affluent in this world's goods, are weak in the spirit. It is not each man's lot to be trans shifted in holy trance nor to be of the contemplative life, of whose members it is more readily said, "When holy and devout religious men are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence, so sweet is zealous contemplation." (King Rich, iii.) At the same time, all men of faith, you and myself, are called to know in a relative degree of spiritual perfection the voice of God in revelation and to understand on general principles of the inner sense the language of the Holy Scripture, —/ repeat, interiorly, "According as God hath divided to everyone the measure of faith." (Rom. xii, 3.) It was to the rank and file of christian men that St. Paul gave his message, "we speak wisdom among the perfect." No, it was not to priests nor religious men as such but to the broad christian world that he addressed these words. It is a profound blunder, in fact absurd, to assume that the spiritual sight is withheld from any christian man. Such an assumption paralyzes spiritual effort in others as well as in ourselves. No indeed, the one barrier that stands between any christian man and the perfection of spiritual understanding alluded to by St. Paul when he spoke to the Corinthians, is that man's own disorderly affections and lusts, and such a man as gallantly struggles against these enemies arrayed against his soul will have as his heritage and reward a perception of life and of God, a power to hear and understand the inner voice of the Gospel, that is to say, in proportion to his gallantry he shall receive a generous measure of the outpourings of the Holy Ghost. "Taking account, dearly beloved, of what so many leaders of the people have taught us," says St. Augustine expiating upon the apostles and saints, "let us strive to act out the fulfilment of their injunctions. Let us learn from their example how to have contempt for worldly riches, how not to love worldly pleasures, how to desire the heavenly kingdom, how never to prefer anything at all before Christ, but, to obey His commands in all things, to
cultivate a love for the poverty of present things, to heap up the treasures of virtue, to long for the riches of wisdom, to go in search of spiritual joys, to envy no one but to love all men, our friends in God and our enemies for God's sake; this alone is true love, these are princes most perfect in the love of God, and having fulfilled the duty of neighborly love, they have been able hence to overcome the powers of the world and to subdue the cruel life, inasmuch as they have never, in anything, loved aught but the will of God. So let it be with us, brethren, let us delight in doing in all things the will of God and let us love our Creator in Himself, but creatures in their Creator, and, in so doing we shall have the most orderly charity, because God is charity, and he who loveth this charity loveth God, and if so we have loved, God Himself will love us, the holy apostles, our judges, will love us and pray for us that we may be crowned forever in the general judgment of Christ." (Serm. xiii, de Sanctis.) We know then our part; let us play it like men, like real actors on the stage of life filled with the divine art of the Holy Ghost, with all the unselfishness of losing one's self in the temperament of the truly divine artist in the love of God, an art not acquired but born in us in baptism and only awaiting development by our own spiritual activity to make us perfect saints.
"Love courses as swift as thought in every power, And gives to every power a double power.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye. A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind, A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, Love's feeling is more soft and sensible Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.
Is not love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were tempered with love's sighs."
—Love's Labor Lost.
The Holy Ghost will make our bleak life now
hid "in sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow, and
all the conduits of my blood froze up"
beautiful spring "when daisies pied and violet blue, and
lady-smocks all silver-white, and cuckoo-buds of
yellow hue do paint the meadows with delight."
The Holy Ghost is "Love Whose month is ever
May"—Come, Holy Spirit!
