Eleventh Day
" The Lord . . . brought me forth into a vast space . . . because He was well pleased with me."f
The Creator, seeing that silence reigns within His creature which is deeply recollected in its interior solitude, greatly desires its beauty. He leads it into that immense and infinite solitude, into that "vast space " of which the Psalmist sings, which is His very Self: u I will enter into the powers of the Lord."1
The Lord said by His prophet : " I will allure her, and will lead her into the wilderness ; and I will speak to her heart." § The soul has now entered that vast solitude in which God will make His voice heard. " The word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword : and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow." ||2
It is, then, this word itself which will finish the work of stripping the soul, having for its characteristic and peculiar property the operation and creation of what it makes known, provided the soul yields its consent.
To know, however, is not all that is requisite. The soul must keep the word, and by this keeping it is sanctified in the truth, according to the will of the Divine Master : " Sanctify them in thy truth. Thy word is truth."3 To those who keep His word He has promised : " My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode in himr\
The Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity dwell within the soul which loves Them " in truth " — that is, by keeping Their word. And when this soul realizes what riches it possesses, whatever natural or supernatural joy it feels only induces it to enter within itself to enjoy the substantial good it owns, which is nothing else but God Himself. So that St. John of the Cross declares " it has a certain resemblance to the Divinity."
"Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." St. Paul tells me that He " workefh all things according to the counsel of His will," J and my Master asks me again to render Him homage in this manner : " To do all things according to the counsel of My will " ; never to let myself be led by my impressions, by the first impulses of nature, but to control myself by my will. For this will to be free, it must be " enshrined within the will of God "; then I shall be " led by the spirit of God."§
% Eph. i. 11. § Rom. viii. 14.
All that I do will partake of the divine, the eternal, and, like Him Who changes not, I shall dwell here on earth in an eternal present.
Footnotes
Chapter 11 of 16