Crooked Finger (crookedfingers) wrote,
Crooked Finger
crookedfingers
  • Mood: contemplative

push directly for divine and heavenly formation

"30. Come to him and be enlightened, and so forth (Ps 33:6 [34:5]). Since God most blessed inhabits light inaccessible (1 Tim 6:16), as the Apostle Paul says, and since an infinite number of degrees separates every rational creature from him, if the soul is to be bathed by the super-beautiful brilliance of eternal light, she must, as it were, depart from herself and be raised above by the Creator's freely bestowed favor until an approximate similarity and conformity between the creature, who receives, and the benevolent Creator, who flows into her, is established. Therefore the divine prophet says, Come to him and be enlightened, so that this might precede and illumination might immediately follow. With this we fully enter upon the theme of the present book. For, by a roundabout path, contrary to all writers on matters of theology and divinity, it teaches that one attains unmediated cognition of the Creator not by the mirror of creatures nor by genius in research nor by exercise of intellect, but through flaming gasps of unitive love. By these, although living in sin and misery, we have an unfailing foretaste not only of the fact that God is but indeed of how the blessed God himself is the beginning and origin of all beatitude. As we shall see later, this foretaste exceeds the knowledge gained by reason as much as the sun's beauty exceeds that of all other planets and as much as the morning star outshines all the other gleaming stars. Unitive love reveals the hidden things and unlocks secrets. Rather than making the lover pursue earthly and human things, these secrets make him (now raised above himself) push directly for divine and heavenly formation.

31. Because boiling love aspires to union with the Beloved, it more ardently carries the spirit on high so that she might draw close to the source of light, and it alone gives access to the one who dawns from on high, enlightening those that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death(Lk 1:79). Through him things in motion and things known obtain their full and complete perfection, permitting the human spirit to be adorned by her merciful Beloved with the ardor of love and the beauty of light.

Unitive love not only brings the soul to possess the glory of eternal beatitude as she retreats from the body, not only brings her to live the celestial life on earth, not only do lower things no longer make the soul anxious and divert her from her actions stretching toward the heights-more than all that, the yearnings of unitive love leave behind in the soul a perfection of knowledge that is incomparably more complete than any sought out by study, hearing, or exercise of reason." pg. 118, 119 Hugh of Balma

wildflower
Subscribe

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    switch
    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    Help
  • 0 comments