XXVIII — THE DIVINE PERFECTIONS

Presence of God. — Grant me, O Lord, to understand something of your infinite perfection.

Meditation

1 — Jesus said: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48), and in so doing he directed our gaze toward the infinite perfection of God. A perfection of which down here we can glimpse only some pale reflection through the consideration of the limited perfections we find in creatures, but which we cannot know in itself because no human idea is capable of embracing and expressing what is infinite. Ideas tell us something of God and of his infinite perfections, but they cannot show him to us as he is. God, warns St. Paul, “dwells in inaccessible light” (1 Tim. 6:16), light that infinitely surpasses the capacity of the human intellect, light too luminous, too splendid for the eye of our mind to fix upon it directly — somewhat as the sun, in the fullness of its summer radiance, exceeds the capacity of our sight, so that no human eye can gaze steadily upon it.

Yet Jesus, speaking to us repeatedly of God’s perfections, invited us to lift our gaze to such heights. And in doing so he taught us that, though we can understand very little of the divine perfections, that little will not be useless to us but, on the contrary, very precious. For the more a soul advances in the knowledge of God, the more it understands that what it knows of him is nothing compared to what he is; the more it intuits that beyond its ideas — were they the most beautiful and the most elevated — there lies an infinite ocean of splendor, beauty, goodness, and love that no human mind will ever succeed in comprehending. This awareness of God’s immensity, which infinitely surpasses the capacity of our intellect, is a great grace. “One of the greatest graces,” affirms St. John of the Cross, “that God can give to a soul in this life is to grant it to understand... or to feel so loftily of God as to understand clearly that he cannot be wholly understood or felt” (C. 7, 9). A very great grace, because it instills in the soul an ever deeper sense of God’s immensity and his infinite transcendence, and because, by contrast, it makes the soul ever better understand its own nothingness and the extreme limitedness of any human perfection.

2 — Only in heaven will it be given us to see the Divinity “face to face,” without the intermediary of ideas. Today, as St. Paul says, “we see through a glass darkly... now I know in part, but then I shall know fully” (1 Cor. 13:12). This partial knowledge of God — the only kind we can have on earth — we have through the “mirror” of creatures; in them we find a reflection of his infinite perfections: of his goodness, wisdom, justice, beauty — but a very imperfect, very limited reflection. No man, for instance, is so wise as to know everything that exists; no man is so good as never to fall short of goodness through weakness; no man is so just as never to fall short of justice through rigidity; and so on. Only by stripping perfections of the defects and limits they always bear in creatures can we form a pale idea of the divine perfections. God is good, always good, infinitely good: “God alone is good” (Mt. 19:17), said Jesus, meaning precisely that He alone possesses goodness in excellence; indeed, He is goodness itself, goodness without limits, that never wanes and never fails.

Reflect, then, how greatly you err when you become attached to some creature: however beautiful, good, or wise it may be, its beauty, goodness, and wisdom are nothing compared to the perfections of God. St. John of the Cross goes further still and says: “All the beauty of creatures, compared to the infinite beauty of God, is supreme deformity... All the goodness of creatures in the world, set against the infinite goodness of God, may be called wickedness... Therefore, the soul that sets its heart on the goods of earth is greatly guilty before God; and as ugliness cannot go together with beauty, as wickedness is not united with goodness, so a soul of this kind will not be able to unite itself to God who is supreme goodness and beauty” (cf. S. I, 4, 4). You thus understand that, if you wish to be united to God, you must not let your heart be bound by the beauties and qualities of creatures, and that in God alone can you place your affection and hope, without fear of being disappointed.

Colloquy

“When shall we arrive at You, O fount of wisdom, at You, unfailing light, at You, inextinguishable light, so that we may see You, no longer as through a mirror and in an enigma, but face to face? Then our desire will be satisfied, for we shall have nothing left to desire beyond You, O Lord, supreme Good. There we shall see, love, and praise; we shall see in your light your light, for with You is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light.

“What light? Immense light, incorporeal, incorruptible, incomprehensible light; unfailing light, inextinguishable light, inaccessible light, uncreated light, true light, divine light that illumines the eyes of the angels and rejoices the youth of the saints; light that is the source of all light and life — which is what You are, O Lord my God! You are light in whose light we shall see light, that is, You in Yourself, in the splendor of your face, when we see You face to face.

“Your vision is the whole reward, the whole prize, the whole joy we await. This is life eternal: that we know You, the only true God... Then we shall have what we seek, when we see You, the only true God, true God, living God, omnipotent, simple, invisible, uncircumscribable, incomprehensible.

“O Lord my God, permit no longer that I be drawn away from You; but gather me from outward things back to myself; give Yourself to me that I may always say to You: I have sought your face; your face, O Lord, will I seek; the face of the Lord of virtues, in whom consists all the everlasting glory of the blessed — in whose sight consists the life eternal and everlasting glory of the saints” (St. Augustine).

“Grant me to understand, O Lord, that the beauty and all the other endowments of creatures are earth, from earth they come and to earth they return; that their grace and loveliness are smoke and wind, and as such you must esteem them lest you fall into vanity. In all these things help me to direct my heart to You, with joy and gladness, thinking that You are and have in You all beauties and graces in the most eminent and infinite degree above all creatures — which, as David says, ‘shall grow old as a garment and shall pass away, while You alone remain unchangeable forever’” (cf. G.C. S. III, 21, 2).