On Union with God Part 7

[51] Matt. xi. 6; xiii. 57, etc.

[52] This shows an excellent grasp of the meaning of the celebrated maxim "Perinde ac cadaver."

[53] Luke x. 42.

[54] _Ibid._

[55] Luke ii. 14.

[56] Nothing could be more conformable to the teaching of the Gospel than this doctrine.

At His birth Jesus bids the Angels sing that peace belongs to men of good will (Luke ii. 14); later He will declare that His meat is to do the will of His Father (John iv. 34); that He seeks not His own will, but the will of Him Who sent Him (John v. 30); that He came down from heaven to accomplish it (John vi. 38); and when face to face with death He will still pray that the Father's will be done, not His (Matt. xxvi.

39; Luke xxii. 42). Over and over again, in the Gospel, do we find Him using the same language.

He would have His disciples act in the same manner. It is not the man, He tells us, who repeats the words: "My Father, my Father," who shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of G.o.d (Matt.

vii. 21; Rom. ii. 13; Jas. i. 22); and in the prayer which He dictates to us He bids us ask for the accomplishment of this will as the means of glorifying G.o.d, and of sanctifying our souls (Matt. vi. 10).

Finally, He tells us that if we conform ourselves to this sovereign will, we shall be His brethren (Matt. xii. 50; Mark iii. 35).

When certain persons, pious or otherwise, confusing sentiment with true love, ask themselves if they love G.o.d, or if they will be able to love Him always, we have only to ask them the same question in other words: Are they doing the will of G.o.d? can they do it?--_i.e._, can they perform their duty for G.o.d's sake? Put thus, the question resolves itself.

The reason for such a doctrine is very simple: to love anyone is to wish him well; that, in the case of G.o.d, is to desire His beneficent will towards us. Our Lord and Master recalled this principle when He said to His disciples, "You are My friends, if you do the things that I command you" (John xv. 14).

[57] We must, in virtue of the same principle, keep a firm hold of the truth, as indisputable as it is frequently forgotten, that we have the merit of the good which we will to carry out and are unable to accomplish, as we have also the demerit of the evil we should have done and could not.

[58] "Upon the will depends our future of Heaven or h.e.l.l," because, given the knowledge of G.o.d, the will attaches itself to Him by love, or hates Him with obstinacy.

[59] We may notice, in particular, a three-fold benefit: first, temptation calls for conflict, and so strengthens virtue; then it obliges a man to adhere deliberately to that virtue which is a.s.sailed by the temptation, and so gain a further perfection; finally, there are necessarily included in both the conflict and the adherence to good numerous virtuous, and therefore meritorious, acts. Thus we may reap advantage from temptation both in our dispositions and our acts.

[60] Job vii. 1.

[61] 1 John iv. 8.

[62] Cant. viii. 6.

[63] The author is speaking here of the soul in so far as it is human, and it is as such that it is more where it loves than where it gives life.

[64] Without charity there is no perfect virtue, since without it no virtue can lead man to his final end, which is G.o.d, although it may lead him to some lower end. It is in this sense that, according to the older theologians, charity is the "form" of the other virtues, since by it the acts of all the other virtues are supernaturalized and directed to their true end--_i.e._, to G.o.d. _Cf._ St. Th. "Sum.," 2, 2{ae}, q. 23, aa. 7, 8.

[65] Matt. xxii. 40.

[66] Rom. xiii. 10.

[67] 1 Tim. i. 5.

[68] G.o.d can only love Himself or creatures for His own sake; if we have this love within our souls we shall be in a certain sense one being with Him.

[69] This teaching is based on the definition that prayer is essentially "an elevation of the soul to G.o.d."

[70] 1 Thess. v. 17.

[71] 1 Tim. ii. 8.

[72] Remission may be obtained in this way of the fault in the case of venial sins, of the punishment due in all sins.

[73] Ps. ix. 24.

[74] Isa. iii. 12.

[75] Luke vi. 26.

[76] St. Thomas explains as follows both the possibility and the correctness of this opinion of ourselves: "A man can, without falsehood, believe and declare himself viler than all others, both on account of the secret faults which he knows to exist within him, and on account of the gifts of G.o.d hidden in the souls of others."

St. Augustine, in his work "De Virginit.," ch. lii., says: "Believe that others are better than you in the depths of their souls, although outwardly you may appear better than they."

In the same way one may truthfully both say and believe that one is altogether useless and unworthy in his own strength. The Apostle says (2 Cor. iii. 5): "Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from G.o.d" ("Sum.," 2, 2{ae}, q. 161, a. 6, 1{m}).

[77] 1 Pet. v. 7.

[78] Ps. liv. 23.

[79] Ecclus. ii. 11, 12.

[80] Matt. vi. 31.

[81] Deut. xi. 24.

[82] _Cf._ Serm. I. in Pent.

[83] Mark xi. 24.

[84] 2 Cor. iii. 5.

[85] 2 Tim. ii. 19.

[86] The teaching of Albert the Great on Divine Providence is truly admirable. It is based upon the axiom that the actions of the creature do not depend partly upon itself and partly upon G.o.d, but wholly upon itself and wholly upon G.o.d (_cf._ St. Thomas "Cont. Gent.," iii. 70).

Human causality is not parallel with the Divine, but subordinate to it, as the scholastics teach. This doctrine alone safeguards the action of G.o.d and of that of the creature. The doctrine of parallelism derogates from both, and leads to fatalism by attributing to G.o.d things which He has not done, and suppressing for man the necessary principle of all good, especially that of liberty.

It is the doctrine of subordinated causes also which explains how things decreed by G.o.d are determined by the supreme authority, and infallibly come to pa.s.s, without prejudice to the freedom of action of secondary causes. All this belongs to the highest theology. Unhappily, certain modern authors have forgotten it.