5. This Is the Fifth Step

Now comes the fifth step on the

Ladder of Heavenly Love. It is

Love's Gradatory entitled the Nobility of Virtue and Good Works and consists in desiring the praise of God above all else. It is this that first of all was practised by the Angels of Heaven, and this was the first homage paid by the Soul of the Christ at the instant of the In carnation. If we, too, wish to please God, it is the first Virtue to offer Him, since therein is found the ground and origin of all Holiness ; where it is lacking, there is nothing good. To desire God's Glory, to seek after and love it, is actually eternal life, and, at the same time, what God requires of us as the first and highest sacrifice. He who, on the contrary, honouring himself, seeks and follows after his own glory, cannot please God. When

Love's Gradatory

He bestows on us His gifts, God honours Himself, forHe exercises His own goodness ; and when we respond to His gifts by the practice of Virtue to His honour, then we are pleasing to Him, because we enter into His views. Any other conduct that we hold, to whatsoever height of spiritual life and good works we appear to attain, if we are seeking self, and not the Glory of God, we are in error, for we lack Charity ; while if we seek and humbly desire His Glory with all our soul, with all our being and all our strength, we possess that Charity which is the root and foundation of every virtue and all sanctity. But whosoever has no care for the Glory of God, seeking only his own, is pos-

Love's Gradatory sessed by Pride, the root of all sin and malice.

When the Spirit of God touches a humble heart, He pours out on him Divine Grace, and claims in return a likeness in Virtue, and, above all, that he is one with Him in Love. A living soul and loving heart rejoice in this exigency without well knowing how to satisfy it, or pay the debt taught and claimed by Love. The loving soul will understand, however, that in honour and reverence towards God consists the noblest virtue and at the same time the shortest way to go to Him. Consequently the soul prefers, above all good works and vir tues, a constant, unending exercise of Praise and Reverence to

Love's Gradatory the Divine Majesty. It is a Celestial Life pleasing to God; and this demand on His part, as well as the response given by the living soul, uplifts all the powers, the heart and affections, and all that is in man, and exalts at the same time the vital forces : the veins swell, the blood boils with vehement desire to procure the greater Glory of God.

The Christian faith reveals that God, our all - powerful Father, created and established Heaven and Earth and all that are therein for His eternal Glory ; that, through His Son, Who is Eternal Wisdom, He created us by Nature, and recreated us by Grace; that, lastly, all is finished and perfected by the Holy Spirit, the Will and Love of the Father

Love's Gradatory and the Son, for the eternal Glory of God. Thus, Trinity of Persons in Unity of Nature, and Unity of Nature in Trinity of Persons, one God Almighty, to Whom we owe Praise, Honour, Adoration.

The same Honour and Adoration are due to our Lord Jesus Christ, God and Man in one Person : for His Sacred Humanity, forming but one with ours, is honoured, blessed, uplifted above every creature by God with Whom it is united. And by reason of this high union with God, the Soul and Body of the Christ are filled with all gifts and graces, even unto plenitude. Of this plenitude all His dis ciples receive who follow in His footsteps, graces and countless

Love's Gradatory assistance and all that is necessary to them for holy living. In return, the Sacred Humanity of our Lord, with all the immense family united to Him, give Honour, Thanksgiving, Praise, and Reverence eternally to the Father, in the power of the Christ and all who are His.

Thus God the Father honours the Son, and with Him all who walk in His following and are one with Him. For whoso honours God is honoured of God. To honour and to be honoured is but exercising the same Love : not that God has need of the honour that we render Him, for He is Himself His own honour, His veritable Glory, and infinite Felicity ; but He wills that we both honour

Love's Gradatory and love Him, to the end that being one with Him, we enter into His Beatitude. Now, see in what way we can honour and love God. When He reveals Himself to the eyes of the mind by light bestowed, He gives us power to recognize Him athwart similitudes, as in a mirror, where we see shadows, images, like nesses of God. But the Substance, God Himself, we cannot see except through Himself, and this is above and beyond every exercise of Virtue.

We must, therefore, love to look at God, to seek Him under these forms, images, and Divine resemblances, so as to be lifted by Him above self even unto that union with Him which passes all likeness. For the

Love's Gradatory present, as in a glass darkly, by means of images and resem blances, we already see that He is Greatness, Power, Strength, Wisdom and Truth, Justice and Mercy, Riches and Liberality, Goodness and Pity, Fidelity and Love without bounds, Life, Reward, Joy without end, and Eternal Felicity. He has many other Names still, far more than we can understand or enumerate. Human reason and intelligence are overwhelmed in astonishment, and Love, full of Desire, wishes to Praise and Honour God in a manner worthy of Him.

Love's Gradatory