Chapter XX: The True Adorers

We have just seen the soul arrive at the full expansion of the supernatural life, at a kind of success in realizing our heavenly Father's desire revealed in express terms by His Divine Son, at the state which ought to be the one object of our ambition.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who, as the psalm says, is placed at the head of the book, that is to say who is the firstborn of every creature, took His mortal life with no other aim. Through His Incarnation itself, and in all the actions of His earthly career, His repeated self-abasement, His preachings, His miracles, His prayers, His sufferings, His death, His resurrection, Jesus Christ had no other purpose than to give to His Father all the glory that His holy humanity was capable of offering to Him. And He did not confine His zeal to this effort on His own part; He plainly wished to draw after Him all those of whom He was constituted the Head. He made known this rule by example and by word, revealing to us the hidden plans and secret desires of the ever-blessed Trinity.

One circumstance in particular of His earthly pilgrimage is of special importance in view of this, and deserves to be studied in its minutest details.¹ Our Lord, leaving Judea and going to Galilee, passes through Samaria, and stops, wearied by His journey, at Jacob's well. He was weary, and this weariness was real, while at the same time it was a condescension, for by it our Lord would show to all men the reality of His human nature, and that He would not use His power of working miracles on every occasion.

The well, being near at hand, was a suitable place at which our Lord might halt; for in the time of figures, wells were, for mysterious reasons, the places chosen in preference to all others for concluding alliances. The midday hour, that is to say the fulness of the light of day, was the time marked for the new revelation which Jesus was to make of the secret designs of His Father.

By the mouth of the Psalmist, Christ had sworn to take no rest until He had found a temple for God: "Until I find out a place for the Lord, a tabernacle for the God of Jacob."² But today the hour, the fulness of time having come, He sits in the road of wayfarers, and awaits the human race. Presently that human race, defiled and unconscious of its defilement, appears under the figure of the Samaritan woman, from whom Jesus deigns to ask a drink. Ah, poor sinful humanity, what could it offer to its Creator to slake His thirst?

Hence this request, full of deep mystery, disconcerts and astonishes the woman. However, through the mists of her ignorance, she catches a confused glimpse of the obstacles standing in the way of God's advances; and if the reasons which she gives are not the truest and best, they nevertheless express exactly the feeling of her powerlessness as well as of her astonishment. An abyss lies between the woman and the Lord, who asks a drink of her; but scarcely has she humbly acknowledged the obstacles than the Lord Himself offers to remove them. "Si scires donum Dei!—Didst thou but know the gift of God!"³ Our Lord in His eagerness to open out new horizons before this poor blind humanity begins by striving to bring home to her her miseries: "Go, call thy husband, and come hither.”⁴

This “husband—vir” is interpreted by the Fathers, and in particular by St. Augustine, as being the intellect which ought to rule the rational creature. In the first place our Lord wishes to see the intellect reign in the Samaritan woman; He seeks to illuminate, to teach and to all these things happened to them in figures; and they are written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come.”⁵ The New Covenant, beginning with Christ our Mediator and Pontiff, brought, as our Lord Jesus informs the Samaritan woman, a new way of going to God: “Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh when you shall neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem adore the Father.”⁶ This mysterious hour which Christ announces is the time of His life on earth, in the course of which He teaches man the things that are real. It is the time when God will no longer be adored on Mount Garizim nor at Jerusalem, but interiorly in the secret temple of the heart and of the mind. As St. Augustine says: “If perchance thou seekest some high place—some holy place—make thee a temple for God within thyself. For the temple of God is holy, which thing are ye. In a temple wouldst thou pray? Pray within thyself. Only first be thou a temple of God, because He in His temple will hear him that prayeth.”⁷

Our Lord was not satisfied with revealing to mankind that the Old Covenant was to last but for a time; He would make known also the lasting glory of the new alliance.

"The hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore Him. God is a spirit, and they that adore Him must adore Him in spirit and in truth."⁸ Such is the mysterious secret of the new relations of mankind with God its Creator. It is no longer a promise, "it now is—nunc est"; the time for the fulfilment has come, the fulness of supernatural life is about to be bestowed here below, and the sign by which the new race will be recognised is by its way of adoring God.

What is it to adore God in spirit and in truth? This question which presents itself at the outset is of vital importance for the human race, and calls for exact elucidation.

Like all things else that were to be consummated in the New Testament, this perfect adoration and these true adorers were prefigured in the Old Testament. As a skilful architect God foresaw His work, and laid the stepping stones. Moses was a true adorer; and the Lord Himself, having summoned Aaron and his sister to come before the Tabernacle, explained to them what this meant: "Hear My words: If there be among you a prophet of the Lord I will appear to him in a vision or I will speak to him in a dream. But it is not so with My servant Moses, who is most faithful in all My house; for I speak to him mouth to mouth; and plainly and not by riddles and figures doth he see the Lord."⁹ The Lord here clearly marks out the line of demarcation between His ordinary servants, even those whom He prevents with His favours, and those who are in the state of true adorers in spirit and in truth.

Christian tradition has universally recognised and defined this state. The holy ambition of being numbered among these adorers by excellence, whom the Father so greatly longs for, has ever been proposed to souls as the object of their noblest desires. We will bring forward only two examples. St. Cyril of Alexandria, who has devoted a whole treatise to the subject of adoration in spirit and in truth, commenting upon this passage of the Gospel, says: "Rightly therefore does God accept the spiritual worshipper who does not in form and type carry in Jewish-wise the form of godliness, but in Gospel-manner, resplendent in the achievements of virtue and in rightness of the Divine doctrines, fulfilleth the real true worship."¹⁰

The learned Abbot Rupert goes farther still. "The true adorers," says he, "are not those who are ignorant of the object of their adoration, but those who have the true knowledge of it. They adore the Father not upon the mountain, not in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth. The adorers of the Father are they who receive from Him the spirit of adoption of sons and who become the members of His only Son. For to adore in spirit is to have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry: Father, Father! To adore the Father in truth is to abide in the Son, who said: 'I am the Truth.' Therefore the true adorers adore one only God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in the manifest and necessary distinction of persons."

"True adoration is the operation proper to the Holy Spirit; for it is first requisite that men should receive the Holy Spirit by means of a preventing grace, in order by Him to know and to confess that our Lord came in the flesh. This is the direct way of going to the Father. This is precisely why He says that they shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth, and not in truth and in spirit.”¹¹

From this teaching we may conclude that the true adorers whom the heavenly Father seeks are the children of God, the brethren of our Lord Jesus Christ, the temples of the Holy Spirit. The Father seeks them, because He knows that He will find them; and He will find them, because all things have been by eternal wisdom, strongly and sweetly disposed to bring about their existence. Seeing them so greatly desired by the Father, objects of such solicitude on the part of the Son, so tenderly loved by the Holy Ghost, we might be tempted to think that they form a species apart, a privileged caste, as it were, among mankind. They are however nothing of the kind. All men have been redeemed at the price of that most Precious Blood, the sovereign virtue of which more than suffices for the ransom of ten thousand worlds; all men are called to become those true adorers who worship God in spirit and in truth.

Nevertheless our Lord knew our innate powerlessness to attain those regions whose approach He pointed out to the Samaritan woman. No human effort can produce that union with God which is the essence of holiness. “Without Me you can do nothing,”¹² said our Lord. The Master Himself must advance towards His creature, He must uphold her, must raise her to Himself by anticipating and accompanying all her acts, that this poor creature may be able to give Him the return which He expects and which He seeks.

Plainly, though by true adorers we do not mean souls made blessed for ever by the vision of God, neither do we mean weak souls nor mere beginners in the service of God. The true adorers are those who live in God, for God and with God, persevering in the only attitude which befits intelligent creatures, whose whole activity unceasingly tends towards God; they are those who are commonly called “saints.”

Saints are men like the rest of us; only they seriously take to heart the conditions of their creation and the end which God had in view in creating them. Faithfully, and in the measure granted to them, they use all the graces that our Lord puts at their disposal. The very tenor of the Gospel narrative clearly shows that at the baptismal font the true adorers are born to the supernatural life by being made Christians. For it is at Jacob’s well that our Lord makes known God’s intentions to the Samaritan woman, and His first advance to her is the offer of a mysterious water, which is to be placed within the reach of all men and is to quench their thirst for ever. At our Baptism then we become true adorers, and in that Sacrament we are provided with all the forces requisite to make us those adorers, in spirit and in truth whom the Father seeks.

Moreover, the divine Food prepared for our nourishment contains within itself all that is calculated to stamp us with the character of true adorers. For our Lord Jesus Christ as Man, the Adorer by excellence, in strict obedience offered Himself, and unceasingly offers Himself to the glory of His Father. He never comes into us to inoculate us with His divine and human virtues until He has paid the debt of an adoration which surpasses the homage of all creatures. How then will He not form us to become true adorers who “being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself.”¹³ And He humbled Himself to the death of the cross in order to offer to His Father a tribute of adoration and of praise.

The true adorer follows his Master even unto the entire abnegation of himself, practising to the letter all that our Lord Jesus tells him, when He says: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me."¹⁴ This way thus marked out is widely thrown open to all who are baptized; and if we persevere in thus following our Saviour, it will lead us to that perfection which will fulfil our heavenly Father's desire in our regard.

But above all things we must be convinced that no one can pretend to be an adorer in spirit and in truth if he has not resolutely broken with all idolatry. Now idolatry, if we are to believe the Apostle, is not confined to the worship of false gods. We can raise within ourselves many idols, and blindly offer sacrifice to them: "For know ye this and understand that no fornicator, or unclean or covetous person (which is a serving of idols) hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."¹⁵ To be true adorers we must have destroyed all these idols, we must have entirely purified our hearts of them, and have established within ourselves the dwelling place of God: "For you are temples of the living God, as God saith: I will dwell in them, and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people."¹⁶

Hence in the true adorer the separation between darkness and light must be complete, for the special characteristic of such a one is solidity in good. All Christians adore God, and yet not all, strictly speaking, can claim the title of "adorers." In the Scriptures this appellation is so rare that, so far as we know, it does not appear anywhere except in the fourth chapter of St. John's Gospel, in which is related the meeting of our Lord and the Samaritan woman. Adoration is the most noble act that an intelligent and free creature can perform. It is the form of divine love making a return to God in a created spirit; it is the homage of submission, of perfect subjection and obedience, offered by a contingent being to the necessary Being. Again, it is an act of solemn donation, and as it were an universal recognition by a most perfect holocaust, of the sovereign dominion of God.

But adoration in spirit and in truth is something more still; it is the only response of the intellect to the revelation which God makes of Himself in the unity of His essence and the Trinity of Persons. Such an act is only possible for a soul baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. It was to such a one that St. Athanasius said: "We must adore God the Father in truth—that is to say, in the Son and in the Holy Ghost; that is, we must adore the triune God—we must adore the holy Trinity, God in three Persons."¹⁷ This act of adoration in spirit and in truth, which Baptism enables the Christian to offer, does not however constitute him as an adorer properly so called, unless this adoration becomes in him not a passing and rare act, but a sort of permanent disposition, a kind of professional state and a constant attitude of soul.

The true adorer is he who, having abandoned all multiplicity, is brought back to perfect simplicity; the true adorer is he who, by a sustained effort, has been able to establish perfect harmony in his soul, there being now no discord arising from contradictory elements or rival claims, and thus he regains the primary unity of his being. The simple soul has but one look, one love, one intention, one pretension, one end. One look, she sees but God; one love, she loves but God; one intention, she tends but to God; one pretension, to please God; one end, to possess God. She neither falls back upon the past, nor anxiously forecasts the future; she peacefully concentrates all her forces into the unity of the present hour, and in the present moment she sees but the unity of God's good pleasure. The simple soul lives in peaceful detachment and holy indifference—times, places, employments, successes, events of any kind never trouble the peace and security in which the total surrender of herself to God's good pleasure establishes her.

It is to express this kind of unity and simplicity, which implies the perfect restoration of man to that integrity in which God created him, that the holy Scriptures often speak of holy souls under the names of doves and virgins. When this restoration has been attained, the whole life becomes one continued homage of adoration to the most holy and ever-peaceful Trinity.

The true adorer therefore is he who, having cast forth out of his life all other cares, lives before God sheltered from human fears and passions: "Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face."¹⁸ Such a one now knows no darkness other than the darkness of faith; but faith is so pure that in speaking of it St. Laurence could boldly say: "There is no darkness in my night, but everything is resplendent with light."¹⁹ The faith of the true adorer becomes his very life. God—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—becomes master of all his activity, directs and governs it so completely that, though applied by God to manifold duties and missions, the true adorer ever does but one work—the work of adoration.

To him may well be applied that beautiful sentence of St. Nilus in his book on prayer: "If thou be a theologian, thou wilt pray truly; and if thou dost pray truly, thou art a theologian.”²⁰ And how is it possible that he should not be a theologian who lives before the face of God, and whose interior activity is ordained by God, is subject to God, and is entirely directed to God? The state of such a one is again described by the same holy Abbot when he says: “This state, this repose is a tranquil habit of prayer which, in strong love, carries away the spiritual soul into the heights of God.”²¹

All the ancient Fathers look upon “true adorers” as those who have attained the summit of the supernatural life; their Baptism is, as it were, all in act: they work less by what they do than by what they have become. Restored to perfect unity, they go to God by a process less human than angelic: “Whither the impulse of the spirit was to go thither they went; and they turned not when they went.”²² It is what St. Nilus again says: “Dost thou desire to pray? Flee away from earth, and henceforth let thy conversation be in heaven, not by simply conversing with God but by angelic acts and by a more elevated knowledge of divine things.”²³ Thus living in the immediate application of their souls to God, these true adorers should, like the blessed spirits who live in God’s presence, ever strive to urge and draw to Him those souls that still have need of symbols, or that have not yet succeeded in freeing themselves from the tyranny of the flesh, of the senses and of the passions, and that, being only beginners in the spiritual life, are still in the midst of multiplicity and division.

These are the adorers whom God the Father seeks. He is proud of having obtained them; for, being closely united to His only Son, they carry on and with superior force and vigour complete His work on earth. It is of them that St. Denis speaks when he says: "The perfection of the members of the hierarchy is by a courageous imitation to approach God, and what is still more sublime, to become His cooperators, as holy Scripture says: 'For we are God's coadjutors,'²⁴ and to show forth in themselves, according to the power that is in them, the marvellous effects of God's working."²⁵

Again, it is to the true adorers in spirit and in truth that may be applied this passage of the same author, speaking of the angelic intelligences: "They are inundated with the light which surpasses all spiritual knowledge, and admitted, as far as their nature permits, to the vision of that supereminent Beauty, which is the cause and origin of all beauty which shines forth in the three adorable Persons; they enjoy the humanity of our Saviour otherwise than under the veil of certain figures in which His august perfections are portrayed; for by their free access to Him, they directly receive and comprehend His holy lights; finally, it is given to them in a higher way to imitate Jesus Christ, since they participate, according to their capacity, in the first outpouring of His divine and human virtue."²⁶

And lest we should be reproached with falsely attributing to man that which is the privilege of angels only, we will again borrow these lines from the glorious Areopagite: "There are among us," says he, "some spirits called to a like grace, as far as it is possible for man to compare with an angel; they are those who, by the cessation of all intellectual operation, enter into intimate union with the ineffable light.”²⁷ They are the true adorers in spirit and in truth; they literally carry out the order of the Apostle St. Paul: “Be ye followers of God, as most dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath delivered Himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness.”²⁸

Such are the true adorers whom the heavenly Father seeks, after employing all His divine skill to form and fashion them. For if in the beginning the august Trinity seemed, as it were, to pause and reflect before the work of man's creation, this same God, one in substance and three in persons, in recreating man, does a still more admirable work, for by it He recovers and perfects His first work and the new creature receives a more faithful and noble impress of the divine Image and likeness.

THE CORONATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN

Peter Paul Rubens

Joann. iv. ↩
Donec inveniam locum Domino, tabernaculum Deo Jacob (Ps., cxxxi, 5). ↩
Joann., iv, 10. ↩
Vade, voca virum tuum, et veni huc (Joann., iv, 16). ↩
Hæc autem omnia in figura contingebant illis; scripta sunt autem ad correptionem nostram, in quos fines sæculorum devenerunt (1 Cor. x, 11). ↩
Mulier, crede mihi, quia venit hora quando neque in monte hoc, neque in Jerosolymis adorabitis Patrem (Joann, iv, 21). ↩
Si forte quæris aliquem locum altum, aliquem locum sanctum, in te exhibe te templum Deo. Templum Dei sanctum est, quod estis vos. In templo vis orare? In te ora. Sed prius esto templum Dei, quia ille in templo suo exaudiet orantem (August. in Joann., Tract, xv, cap. iv, 25) ↩
Venit hora et nunc est quando veri adoratores adorabunt Patrem in spiritu et veritate. Nam et Pater tales quærit qui adorent eum. Spiritus est Deus, et eos qui adorant eum, in spiritu et veritate oportet adorare. (Joann., iv, 23-24). ↩
Audite sermones meos: Si quis fuerit inter vos propheta Domini, in visione apparebo ei, vel per somnium loquar ad illum. At non talis servus meus Moyses, et in omni domo mea fidelissimus est; ore enim ad os loquor ei; et palam, et non per ænigmata et figuras Dominum videt (Num. xii, 6-8) ↩
Spiritualis adorator gratus est, qui non forma et figuris judaicis ad pietatem obumbratur, sed evangelica virtute fulgens, recta dogmatum disciplina, veram peragit adorationem (Cyril. Alex., Sup. Evang. Joann., lib. II, cap. xciii). ↩
Rup. Comment. in Joann., lib. IV, cap. iii. ↩
Sine me nihil potestis facere (Joann, xv, 5). ↩
Cum in forma Dei esset, non rapinam arbitratus est esse se æqualem Deo; sed semetipsum exinanivit (Philip., ii, 6-7). ↩
Si quis vult post me venire, abneget semetipsum, et tollat crucem suam, et sequatur me (Luc. xvi, 24). ↩
Hoc enim scitote intelligentes, quod omnis fornicator, aut immundus, aut avarus quod est idolorum servitus, non habet hereditatem in regno Christi et Dei (Eph. v, 5). ↩
Qui autem consensus templo Dei cum idolis? Vos enim estis templum Dei vivi, sicut dicit Deus: Quoniam inhabitabo in illis, et inambulabo inter eos; et ero illorum Deus, et ipsi erunt mihi populus (2 Cor. vi, 16). ↩
Oportet adorare Deum, scilicet Patrem, in veritate, id est, in Filio et in Spiritu sancto; hoc est, oportet adorare Deum trinum et unum, oportet adorare sanctam Trinitatem ac tres ejus personas (Ep. ad Serapionem). ↩
Abscondes eos in abscondito faciei tuæ (Ps., xxx, 21). ↩
Mea nox obscurum non habet; sed omnia in luce clarescunt. ↩
Si theologus es, vere orabis; et si vere oraveris, eris theologus. (Tract., de Oratione, lx). ↩
Status orationis et habitus absque passione, amore summo ad celestudinem intelligibilem rapiens mentem sapientem et spiritalem (Tract. De Oratione, lii). ↩
Ubi erant impetus spiritus, iluc gradiebantur, nec revertebantur cum ambularent (Ezech. i, 12). ↩
Cupis orare? Transferendo te hinc, conversationem jugiter in cœlis habe, non nudo verbo simplicitur sed actu angelico et diviniore cognitione (Tract. De Oratione, cxliii). ↩
Dei sumus adjutores (1 Cor. iii, 9). ↩
De Cœl. Hier., cap. iii. ↩
De Cœlest., Hier., cap. vii. ↩
De Nom. Divin., cap. i. ↩
Estote imitatores Dei, sicut filii carissimi, et ambulate in dilectione, sicut et Christus dilexit nos, et tradidit semetipsum pro nobis oblationem et hostiam Deo in odorem suavitatis (Eph., v, 1-2). ↩

Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter XX: The True Adorers

Footnotes