Third Day

" In Whom we are also called by lot, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him Who worketh all things according to the counsel of His will. That we may be unto the praise of His glory-" t

It is St. Paul who makes known to us this divine election — St. Paul, who penetrated so deeply into the secret hidden within the Heart of God. Let us listen to him as he enlightens us regarding "this vocation to which we are called."

"God," he says, "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity." \

On comparing these two explanations of the divine plan, I conclude that, if I am worthily to fulfil my office of Laudem gloria •, I must keep myself, whatever happens, in the presence of Gcd. The Apostle also says " in charitate^ that is to say, in God, " Deus charitas est" and it is contact with the Divinity which will make me " holy and unspotted in His sight."¹

I apply this to the beautiful virtue of simplicity

" which gives to the soul the repose of the abyss "

that is, rest in God — the unfathomable abyss, the prelude to the eternal Sabbath of which St. Paul speaks : " For we who have believed shall enter into rest."²

Glorified souls have this "rest in the abyss" because they contemplate God in the simplicity of His Essence. "They know even as they are known "f by Him — that is, by intuitive vision, and they are "transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. "J There they are a ceaseless praise of glory to the Divine Being, Who contemplates His own splendour in them.

"God created man to His own image/' § Such was the plan of the Creator, that He might view Himself in His creature, and might see His own perfections and beauty reflected through him as through a pure and flawless crystal. Is not that a kind of extension of His own glory ?

The soul, by the simplicity of gaze which it fixes upon its Divine Object, is separated from all around it, and above all from self. Henceforth it is resplendent with "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God," || because it allows the Divinity to reflect Himself within it. Such a soul is truly "the³⁴

Praise of glory " of all His gifts ; it sings without cessation whatever happens, and during the most commonplace employments, the "canticum magnum" the " canticum novum" and this canticle thrills God to His very depths.

w Thy light," we may say to this soul, " shall rise up in darkness, and thy darkness shall be as the noonday : And the Lord will give thee rest continually, and will fill thy soul with brightness, and deliver thy bones : and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a fountain of water, whose waters shall not fail. ... I will lift thee up above the high places of the earth."*

Footnotes

1. Phil. iii. 8. t Eph. i. 11, 12. X Ibid., 4. ↩

2. believe that we should give an immense joy to the Heart of God by imitating, in the heaven of our soul, this occupation of the blessed, adhering to Him by the simple contemplation which resembles the state of innocence in which man was created. ↩

3. Heb. iv. 3. f I Cor. xiii. 1 2. % 2 Cor. iii. 18. ↩

4. Gen. i. 27 II 2 Cor. iv. 6. ↩