101. Con the Light or the Son. — Second Sermon for the Feast of the Nativity ..I" St. John the Baptist

Synopsis — God's love best shoicn in the conception of His Son in Mary's womb — The interior virtues of Mary — Her purity of body and soul — Her humility — How her soul experienced a mystical generation of God's Son — Close application of this event to our own interior life.

BLESSED LADY.

Hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee. — Luke i, 28.

In this feast we celebrate the eternal and overflowing love of God, the Lord of lords and the Master of all, by which He had mercy on us poor men, sinful and condemned, brands of hell fire. As St. Paul says: "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross" (Phil, ii, 6-8). Of such a love as this can no man rightly discourse, nor can we praise and thank God enough for it. It surpasses the power of angelic and human reason to comprehend it — that our God and our supreme Judge should become our Father, our Brother, and our Spouse. He has taken our debt and our condemnation on Himself; He has redeemed us by His bitter death; He has made us His children, giving us eternal life; He has restored us to our first high place of honor; yea more than that: He has made us like unto the angels themselves, even granting us a heavenly righteousness and a divine kinship, even nearer to God than that of the highest of the angels.

O God, all perfect Good! Who can hold back his deepest love in return for this great love of Thine — his deepest love and praise with all his powers of soul and body. And this Thy work of our redemption has made Thee lovable to us above all things — a work unimagined and unexampled, a humility without limit, a grace so wonderful and so unmerited, a gift without recall. This work of Thine quickly excites our love, sweetly draws our will, binds us to Thee gladly and firmly in all our desires. But oh! sweetest Jesus, what shall we give Thee in return for this gift, so great, so divine? Thou didst give me in my creation a soul, and that soul I ruined by sin ; Thou dost now restore it to me, making me doubly indebted to Thee for its possession. And that Thou hast pledged Thy soul in the place of mine, dearest Lord Jesus, what shall I give Thee in return for that favor? Alas, if I gave my poor soul a thousand times over for Thy sake, how could that compare with Thy giving Thyself up to death for me, my Lord and my God?

Dear children, although we can never fully recompense this great love, yet we should earnestly apply ourselves to make at least some partial return by giving ourselves to Jesus, ourselves with all we are and all that we can do; as did His most beloved mother, the Blessed Virgin, out of a heart most perfectly true to Him. Therefore I will show you some illustrations of how we may rightly serve our Lord, helping you to become as it were spiritually our Saviour's mother, God granting us the grace to generate and to bring forth His divine Son. And although your holiness is too little to enable you to comprehend perfectly the mind of the angel when he said to Mary : "Hail, full of grace," yet you can gain some plain notion of how well prepared the Blessed Virgin was for the conception of the Son of God in her womb.

According to her name, Mary was rapt into God and made one spirit with Him in the three powers of her soul. And she was all moved and guided by Him, being absorbed in His blessed will, intensely devoted to His honor — moved and guided by Him as a tool in the hand of a workman. She was poor in spirit. She was lifted up to God from a fathomless humility. She was self-annihilated, willess, passive, and without any longing except for God. And it was by reason of this state of her soul that God found an entrance to her in soul and body. She was clean of spirit ; for she did not cleave to any gifts of God, nor did she use them for her joy. She was clean of soul : she felt no attraction towards any created thing, but her soul was adorned with alF virtues. She was clean of heart and pure of body : she was never moved' to sin, being like the shining angels of heaven. Although she was the fairest among women, yet never could any man look upon her with bad desires, and this was on account of her angelic purity. She was an interior spirit: her sweet affectionate yearnings were all upward towards Hod, and the outgushing waves of the divine love poured down front the Holy Trinity into her soul. She was deeply recollected: all the powers of her soul were constantly employed in God's praises. She was a faithful heart: her heart was enflamed with love's fiery longings to be lost in the incomprehensible abyss of the Godhead.

Thus had she found her Beloved. She had penetrated the sovereign majesty with her sweetness; she had wounded the eternal wisdom with her comeliness; she had drawn to herself the eternal goodness with her love. Thus had God been poured into her with all His infinitude of being, and thus had He placed her over all His Kingdom. She <lid not live her own self, but she lived only to Him who is the life of all the living. All her beginning and ending, all her doing and not doing, was in God, and was full of purely divine intention. For she was ever united to God, turning away from His holy presence never a single instant. Hence no creature left any impression on her soul or, ever entered there, for like the angels she saw all things singly in God. God alone did she find in her soul's depths, in its essence, in the inmost recesses of her spirit. Hence she was not turned outward with her soul's powers,' looking for high things and multiplicity. She has ever turned inward in all single-mindedness — away from self and towards <Jod, as God was towards her and in her. She was most perfectly and with all her faculties turned to her origin. Poor, clean, interior, Godlike, more a creature of heaven than of earth was Mary. In her spirit she was the paradise of God, God's heaven in her soul, God's palace in her body. God's light shone through and through her. Between her soul and God there was union without a medium.

Now consider that God would be born of this holy virgin in three ways, in her spirit, in her soul, and in her body. And she was not so blessed by the birth in her body as by that in her spirit, as St. Augustine says; and as our Lord in the gospel answered the woman who said: "Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the paps that gave Thee suck." But He said : "Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it" (Luke xi, 27, 28). Therefore had she first conceived and brought forth God in her spirit. By her purity she pleased God well; by her humility she prepared Him a fit dwelling place; by her love did she constrain God to descend into the depths of her spirit, a place all restful in the quiet silence of perfect detachment from created things. There did God unite her spirit to His, there did He utter to her His hidden Word, begetting His only begotten with unspeakable joy and love. This is the eternal generation in Mary; this is the obscure night of the spirit wherein the darkness of the human intelligence receives the dawning of the uncreated brightness. Because where the divine light shines, no created light can remain, for the night is changed into day. That means that the created light of the soul is changed into the uncreated light of eternity. Thus it happened that Mary gave over her spirit into the uncreated being of the Godhead, and her soul sank away into the depths of humility.

And now she drew down into her soul the all-lovely sweet streams of the light of eternal wisdom; for as the Father brought forth His only begotten Son in her soul, He in turn new-formed her in Himself. The Father willed that she should consent that His only begotten Son should assume human nature, and should be born of her in bodily form by the act of the Holy Ghost. From this she shrunk away out of unfeigned humility, and she answered Him fearfully in her spirit: Heavenly Father, I am not worthy. O I had rather be the handmaid of that mother of God's Son. But God willed that she herself should be that mother, and so insisted. Then did she sink into deep self-abasement; and she was given to understand that she was chosen indeed for that high motherhood — God must have her and no one else for His mother. Instantly she was encircled and enshrined in the light of the holy Trinity, and penetrated through and through with the divine glory ; the arrows of divine love pierced her soul to its inmost depths ; and thus was she made willing to be the mother of God.

At the same moment as she was thus absorbed in the Holy Ghost, the angel Gabriel stood before her and greeted her: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee" (Luke i, 28). But she was troubled at these great words, both on account of her true humility, and because she was yet entranced in God. But when she said: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," then the Holy Ghost took from the virginal heart of Mary her purest blood, all on fire with the flames of divine love, and with it He created the perfect body and members of Jesus; and then He created His pure and perfect soul ; and He joined body and soul together in Mary's womb. Then at the same instant the person of the Son of God, the Eternal Word, the splendor of the Father's glory, out of merciful love for us and for our eternal blessedness, joined this body and soul to Himself in unity of person. Thus uthe Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us" (John i, 14).

Now this is the third generation of God in the body of Mary, without any injury to her virginal integrity. Thus she became the daughter of the Father, the mother of the Son, the spouse of the Holy Ghost, the queen of heaven, the empress of the world and of all created things, the mother and intercessor of all mankind who desire her aid. Mary's womb is the temple of God and His sweet place of repose as a Bridegroom in His bride chamber, rejoicing with joy in the virginal body of Bis mother as in a sweet garden full of fragrant flowers, namely every kind of virtues and graces.

By means of these virtues, therefore, has God changed the heaven of the blessed Trinity into streams of honied sweetness and poured them over all of us poor sinners. She has made the sun of justice to shine upon us. She has reversed the curse of Eve. She has crushed the head of the hellish serpent. This second Eve has restored by her Child all that had been lost and ruined by the sin of the first Eve, and she has procured us much heavenly riches of grace beside. ( This is the beautiful star that was to rise out of Jacob, as foretold by Moses, which was to shed its beams over the whole world. Therefore says St. Bernard : "In all thy needs, lift thy eyes to this star; call on Mary J and thou canst not despair; follow Mary, and thou canst not go astray. By the strength of her Son she will hold thee fast and firm lest thou shouldst fall; she will defend thee lest thou be hurt; she will bring thee to her Son. She has power indeed, for almighty God is her Child; she has the good will, for she is most merciful. Who can doubt but that this Child shall honor His mother. Who can doubt that she, in whose bosom He who is all essential love, who is the God of love Himself, has found His happy dwelling place, shall be overflowing with love for us."

Whosoever would go very deep into God, his origin, and would be made more and more conscious of God's indwelling, fixed in God in his soul's life as the rays are fixed in the sun, — such a one must follow the example of our blessed Lady. Let him study her inner and outer bearing towards God, and soon he will receive great help from her in his own soul and body. Let him first turn himself away from all transitory things, and gathering together his soul's powers, let him transfer them into God who dwells within him, deep in the inmost depths of his spirit. There it is that his soul's three highest powers are centred, and there he will be made one spirit with God ; there will he be moved and guided by God. His memory will be made fruitful of good, his understanding illuminated, his will set on fire with divine love. To him God shall be Himself a food of the spirit, a life to the soul, a guard and defence to the body. Thus turned inward and united to God in our higher powers, we shall be made poor in spirit, clean in spirit, clean in soul and body, all our faculties working towards God in our interior life. Every work shall begin and end in God, all for God's sake alone, as we have shown was the case with Mary, God's mother.

In order that God may have our soul's powers docile in all things, they must be void of attachment to creatures, and rightly ordered towards Him, all will, all desires directed to Him alone. Thus shall a man be absorbed into the solitude of the Godhead, far above all his soul's powers; his being shall be sunk deep into the divine oneness. Therein can the divine birth be accomplished in us without hindrance ; and by means of the overflowing and exceeding great gifts of God in the spirit, even the very body shall be made partaker of its blissful privilege.

That we may be blessed in this life and saved in the next, let us beg the intercession of the beloved mother of God ; as St. Bernard prays : "Through thee, O thou first finder of divine grace, must we gain access to thy Son, thou mother of life and blessedness: so that for thy sake He may receive us, who by thy means was given to us. Thy purity must pay the debt of our excesses, thy humility — so pleasing to Him — must win His pardon for our vain glory; thy superabundant love must overflow on our sins and hide them from His eyes; thy marvellous fruitfulness must lend us a plentiful store of merits. O tb' u art our chosen queen, our mediatrix and intercessor; thou wilt commend us to thy Son, nay thou wilt answer for us before Him. O thou blessed mother, we beseech thee through the grace which thou hast found with God, through the high place of election thou hast merited, through the mercy that was born of thee, — we beseech thee to obtain that He, who by thy means condescended to share our weakness and misery, may grant us the privilege to share His blissful glory — Jesus Christ our Lord, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, praised and blessed forevermore." Amen.

§>?lf £?wlatum

(Synopsis — Temptations are permitted to reveal to us our evil tendencies —From the inward search we quickly pass to the study of our outward conduct — Need of a recollected spirit for these tasks — And of frequent meditation — On Christ's passion — Deeper penetration of soul comes in mystical prayer — Danger of deception.

FIRST SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF THE NATIVITY OF

ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST.

John is his name. — Luke i, 63.

This is the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, and scarcely any saint is more highly honored than he who baptized the Son of God. The name John means one who is in grace. Children, we have recently considered how one must prepare his soul for God's grace.

There are two human miseries to be reckoned with. One is our inclination to sin. This is planted in nature itself ever since the fall of our first parents. Against this we must always strive, turning away with all our might from whatever is opposed to God's will. The other misery arises from the first one: it is all the sorrow and pain of our earthly existence. Now this misery we must accept willingly and bear cheerfully. It is placed as a duty upon us by God that we follow after our Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sins suffered the greatest misery His whole life long.

God often allows men to be oppressed with the first misery, that of sinful inclinations, in order that in their dire necessity they may find themselves out. This trial teaches them joyfully to enter the way of penance, and patiently to suffer all the misery that may happen to them. Children, it is a blessed privilege thus to accept suffering, for thereby one discovers his weakness and helplessness, yea even his nothingness before God. Ah, the man who should learn to walk in this path, and who should devote himself to no other practise than gazing down into his own helpless nothingness — in that same man would God's urate truly be born. Dear children, man has nothing of his own; everything he claims as his is absolutely God's, whether it be great or little: all comes from God, nothing from man except the spoiling of God's gifts inwardly and outwardly. If you say there is aught in man, then it must be non-existence. This thought must never be absent from our heart: the wisdom of gazing down into one's own nothingness and understanding one's innate tendency, — as far as we are free to act, — to do all kinds of evil. Self-knowledge should be the aim of our busiest efforts. We should get to the bottom of our nature, study our purposes, our preoccupations, our joys. We should go over the garden of the soul searching diligently for weeds. That done, the most interior meaning of our life must be made God and nothing else.

And then thou must ponder thy outward conduct : words, works, manners and behaviour, clothes, companions, all must be scrutinized. Lament before God every shortcoming of thine each day thou livest, breathing sighs of sincere inward sorrow for thy faults and weaknesses. This secures thy forgiveness; but make sure that thy grief is deep within thy soul — a most profitable thing. Such were the interior sighs of the apostles towards God, not only for their own sins, but indeed for those of all men. When God grants a man the taste of eternity if only for an instant, there bursts forth from his heart's cave a deep groan of sorrow. Nor does this feeling rest wholly within, for it works forth into the outward senses, which are thus made the public altar of the most high God, on which are sacrificed the goats and the oxen of sin atonement. Thus does one offer his outward, bodily flesh and blood as a recompense to God, for the immolation of His divine Son's flesh and blood on Calvary.

In this deep search for his sinfulness, one must cast himself down at God's feet in all humility. He must implore His mercy, full of hope that God will lift from him the weight of his guilt. Thus John, that is to say grace, is born unto us in the home of humility ; for the lower we sink the higher we shall rise. Of this St. Bernard speaks: "All the devotional practises that one may do outwardly, are nothing in comparison with passing through the hidden valley of humiliation. In this valley meekness grows, as well as self-abandonment, quiet of soul and kindness: through it lies the straight and the true road. Whosoever treads it not goes astray, no matter how many external good works he may do. These without real humility avail nothing with God; indeed they rather arouse His wrath than gain II is favor."

Children, let us consider the gospel of this feast. Zachary was a high priest whose wife was barren, and this was a grief to them. Once as ho entered t lie holy of holies, the people remaining without,— suddenly the angel Gabriel stood before him at the altar, and announced that his wile should bring forth a son, and that he should call his name John, which means grace is in him. But Zachary hesitated to believe this message, and therefore the angel struck him dumb, so to remain till the promise was fulfilled.

Now the name Zacharias means the remembrance of God. The God thinking man it is that shall be a priest, and shall enter the holy of holies, whereas the rest of the people shall remain outside. Mark the essential thing in this priest, and also his office. The office of Christian priests is to offer up the only begotten Son of God to His heavenly Father for the salvation of the people. Now I fear that not all priests are perfect — and that is indeed manifestly the case. They stand before the people personating the Christian religion, and yet some of them are better fitted to lead men astray than to assist them; they rather enkindle God's wrath than placate it. But they do perform their priestly office as representing the holy Christian church, and it is done sacramentally; nor can any but members of the male sex validly do it. They consecrate and offer up the holy body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which none but men in priests' orders can do; for sacrifice is peculiarly a priestly office. As to the spiritual offering of God's Son to His Father, that can be done in the soul's interior shrine by women as well as by men, by night as well as by day. And it is this that we shall mean when we ask how one should enter into the holv of holies, leaving the common kind of people without.

One must enter in alone; with a deeply recollected spirit must one enter into one's own soul, leaving outside all sensible life. Thus minded shall one offer to the heavenly Father a welcome sacrifice, namely His beloved Son, with all His holy words, works, life and passion. This offering the soul makes for every desire of the heart, and into that offering it draws very affectionately all mankind : — all poor sinners and all good Christians in this life and all who are imprisoned in purgatory. Children, this is a mighty act of religion. Albertus Magnus thus tells of the high priests' function: "He entered the holy of holies bearing fire and the blood of a red calf, and with the blood he sprinkled all the golden vessels there. Then he made a bundle of sweet smelling herbs, and he laid it on the burning coals, and as it burnt it filled the room with a fragrant cloud of smoke. And it was in that cloud that God came and spoke to him."

Children, this high priest may be taken as a figure to show forth the interior man. He enters the sanctuary of his soul, bearing with him the precious and thrice glorious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; and he bears fire with him, too ; namely ardent love. And he sprinkles all the golden vessels there with that sacred blood; namely all souls of men in the state of grace, or who shall ever be in that state. And he also comforts with his offering all the poor souls in purgatory, sadly waiting for their release. Children, you cannot imagine how sweet and lovely a work this is. And meanwhile this man does not forget himself ; he offers himself up to God's fatherly heart, and enters into entire agreement with the heavenly Father's will that He may do with him as He pleases, in time and in eternity.

Now some may object : if we turn thus inwards, it will happen that the figure of Jesus crucified will drop out of our mind. Dear children, I answer no. When you turn into the soul's depths, you enter the place where alone grace is born in very truth; and in that grace will appear the life and passion of our Lord, all full of love, all simply seen, and as plainly known as if His passion were taking place right before your eyes. Nor is it there seen in multiplicity, but as if I saw all of you in one simple all embracing form as of a single person — so will the events of Christ's life and death appear. One glimpse of this kind of knowledge of our Lord, is more useful to thee, than if thou shouldst spend five months in thinking about Him other ways. Now during this sort of priestly function, where a man enters alone into his soul's holy of holies and stands with all his faculties lifted up in recollection, speaking no word — in that act of spiritual priesthood the angel of God, Gabriel, is presently seen standing beside the altar gazing upon the perfection of the soul's offering. You may take the angel's name to mean the power of God, for he bears to that sacrificial soul the power to do all things in our Lord.

Then this spiritual priest makes a bundle of sweet smelling herbs, and burns them with fire, and out of the vapor of that fire God speaks to him. These are the collection of his holy virtues, especially such ones as mildness and humility. For if a man has not virtues to gather up and offer to God, virtues of the highest or lowest or middling degree, such a one's whole life is false and worthless. The fire that is enkindled in those virtues is the flame of love. From it rises the vapor and the darkness of rapture of the spirit, lasting perhaps not half an Ave Maria; and during that time God takes away thy senses and the oatnral use of thy reason. Then it is that God speaks to thee in very truth, as it is written : "While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy almighty Word leapt down from heaven from Thy royal throne" (Wisd. xviii, 14, 15). And iIk- book of Job says: "Now there was a word spoken to me in private, and my ears by stealth as it were received the veins of its whisper" (Job iv, 12). To the soul this is the announcement of a birth, in which, as in John's case, many souls shall rejoice. From Elizabeth the barren wife of Zachary shall the child be born : meaning a divine fulfillment of the promise of a miracle of love, a happy birth accomplished by the divine omnipotence.

And yet all this takes place in the lowest powers of the soul. And it happens sometimes, that men of mere natural intellectuality turn inwards to the natural depths of the reasoning powers with only reason's native light. They can be absorbed in an inner state of thought void of all forms and images; but they hold this place of light with all self-proprietorship, and treat it as if it were God Himself: but it is mere human nature after all. Yet in this there is more joy than in all pleasures of the senses. But when such high spirits are herein self-contained, and when they hold it all with obstinate self-will, it makes them the wickedest of mankind, and the most dangerous. How can one discover this? By the following signs: they have not attained to this transcendent interior absorption by the way of practising virtue; they have not followed the pious exercises of a holy Christian life, including the mortification of irregular appetites. They make little or nothing of such things, for they trust wholly to their false disengagement and quiet of spirit. This they have not strived after with inner and outer practical charity. They have arrived at the dismissal of inner forms and images prematurely, and without due actual practise of virtue. And now the devil intervenes: he fills them with false light and deceitful sweetness. He so misleads them that often they are eternally lost. Studying their dominant natural tendencies, such as pride, avarice or lust, the evil one draws them on to ruin by such means.

Yet they will call this interior light and their sweetness of sentiment. God's own self — it is onlv the work of the devil. Whv cannot they perceive this? Because they are passionately attached, in all selfishness of enjoyment, to these interior emotions. This explains the unholy freedom with which they follow their natural inclinations.

Such men should be shunned more than the demon himself. Outwardly they so much resemble good men that they are not easily detected. But really right-spirited men show this difference: they have come to their interior peace by the road of common virtue. Humility, the fear of God, detachment from creatures, and mildness of manner: — all this marks their progress. They ever stand in holy fear; they feel that they dare not trust themselves in anything; a weight of sorrow for sin oppresses them ; they incessantly turn to God for help. On the contrary, those who boast that they are free, are audacious spirits and inclined to quarrel. Whosoever associates with them, presently encounters bitterness and contention, and overbearing manners. They are too proud to endure contempt or anywise to be made little of. O what marvels of horror shall be seen in the next life, where men who now seem so good, shall be hemmed in straitly, and shall abide in everlasting burning. Beware, beware of this fate, I emplore you.

Ah, children, turn inwardly to God, where truth is born to you, and where many great joys are granted you, and through you to all of God's Christian people. Then you shall not be racked with doubt as to whether or not you stand right with God, for you shall have this plain test, the choice of the straight or the crooked road to God. If you have trod the plain, sure road of virtuous conduct, that will be your guarantee of God's friendship, whether your perfection be in the lowest or the highest or the middle state of spiritual proficiency. And when God's joy is born in your soul, its sweetness will exceed the power of words to tell.

Dear children, no one can lead these souls astray without first enticing them from their interior recollectedness and throwing them into multiplicity : they should be left alone with God. The Lord says in the Canticles: "I adjure you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and the harts of the fields, that you stir not up, nor make the beloved to awake, till she please" (Cant, ii, 7). Nor should they seek counsel from those who do not understand God's ways in such things, for that kind of men may easily misdirect them ; it is quite possible that thereby they may lose their state of interior union for many years together. They must keep their souls in strict custody, for they are like new wine in active ferment ; so strong are the emotions of joy within them that they overcome nature, and sometimes to such a degree that blood bursts from nose and mouth. But this is in the life of the senses and is in the lower degree of union.

The angel Gabriel said of John: "He shall drink no wine nor strong drink" (Luke i, 15). This may be taken to mean, that in whomsoever this birth of God shall be accomplished, he may be led into higher degrees of holiness, and again into yet higher ; for there are good and better and best ways with God. Those in the best way shall not drink aught that may make them drunk — that is to say their heads shall not be turned by the joys granted them; they shall not enjoy them with spiritual gluttony, either in contemplation or in action.

On the contrary, they shall be removed into a way that is narrow, dark and comfortless: a time comes when God seems lost and gone from them. Therein they find themselves in a state of intolerable oppression of spirit: nor can they possibly extricate themselves. Whichever way they turn, they find only deepest misery, their soul is desolate, obscure and disconsolate, for God is veiled from their gaze. To this state they must give themselves up. They must abandon themselves to the Lord, being resigned to remain upon this road as long as it shall please Him. And this they must do with as much willingness as if they felt no manner of anguish, and suffered no pain at all. It is a condition of intolerable anguish of spirit, and immense and fruitless longing for God— and yet of perfect resignation. This is in truth the perfect conversion, for which the most essentially perfect reward is reserved. Lesser degrees merit a less essential reward.

Therefore does St. Thomas teach, that great external works of religion — no matter how wonderful — never merit, taken simply in themselves and as good works, more than an accidental, that is to say a less essential reward. But when a man's spirit turns inward to God's spirit, inward to the inmost depths, stripped in all things of what is accidental, seeking God purely and simply, transcending all works and ways and methods, all reason and thought, (a state called by St. Dionysius love unreasoning and unsensible) — when a man has thus placed himself before God, his state may rightly be termed an essential conversion. It must be granted an essential reward. That reward is God Himself.

There is another conversion that may be called essential, but only in an ordinary and external meaning of the term. That is any conversion that keeps God in view with all sincerity, and only God — God for His own sake, God in Himself. But the other above-mentioned one consists in an interior presence of the soul with God, who is formless as the soul is comfortless. It is a supersubstantial drawing of the created spirit of man into the uncreated spirit of God. Oh if a man could thus be drawn into God but once in his whole life, how fortunate for him it would be. Such a man, so docile to God, so true to God amid all his desolation of spirit, He must reward with nought else than His own very self. He draws him into the divine abyss of His own happiness. That man's spirit is so immersed in God and saturated with the deity, that he loses all multiplicity in the divine unity. These are the chosen spirits whose every work on earth is divinized; and they are vouchsafed a foretaste of their eternal paradise. Upon them as a house upon its foundation stands holy Church; if they were not in Christendom, Christendom could not stand. The fact of their very existence among us, that they simply are, is of more honor and of greater benefit to holy Church than a whole world of action by other Christians. It is of them that the Lord speaks: "He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of My eye" (Zach. ii, 8). Therefore, children, be careful not to meddle with them. May God grant us to attain to this holy state and even by the shortest way, if this may be to His praise and glory. Amen.