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WE cannot, as Von Hügel said, find God's Spirit
'simply separate' from our own
spirit; since the one impossibility of
thought is the leaving of the thinking self behind.
Still less can we isolate and observe that spirit,
that seed of Absolute Life which is in us, apart from
the supporting, spaceless, penetrating God. To
speak of our spiritual life and our spiritual growth,
then, is to speak not of ourselves but of Him; for
we are daring to behold and describe the Divine
creative action in its most subtle and mysterious
operation, working in
'intimate union with our
own'. It is true that there are many ways and
degrees in which we may discover this fact of the
ceaseless action of Spirit upon spirit; mediated as
it is through all those physical and psychological
experiences which make up the texture of our lives.
One way or another, in times of crisis, in sudden
moments of clear vision, in the terrible embrace of
ghostly suffering—or by gradual meditation on the
sequence of events, the slow insistent pressure,
which changes the contour of our life, giving it a
shape and meaning of which we never dreamed—
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we become aware of the presence of an Infinite
Fact, living, personal, inerrant; whose moulding
influence reaches us through and in that finite
environment to which our outer lives are tuned.
We know the mysterious power of influence
between man and man; know it so well, that we
seldom pause to think of its strangeness and significance—how decisively it witnesses against any
theory of the soul as an independent monad. Yet
this interpenetration of human spirits is a mere
shadow of the deep and actual penetration and
influence of God on souls. And though news of
this steadfast creative action, this supporting and
stimulating presence of God must like all our
other news enter the field of consciousness through
the senses or the intellect, translating intuition into
concepts and sensible signs; these only partly
reveal and certify that deep action of Spirit upon
and within our spirits, which is literally the life of
our life. Sometimes it seems that we are bathed
in a living Ocean, that pours into every corner of
our being to cleanse, heal and refresh. Sometimes
it seems that a personal energy compels, withstands,
enlightens or suddenly changes us ; working on our
stubborn natures with a stern, unflinching love.
Yet even this language, vague as it may seem, is
still far too rigid and too spatial, and these contrasting
images too harsh and incomplete, for a
situation and experience which only the allusive
methods of poetry or inspiration can suggest.
There is on the north porch of the Cathedral of
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Chartres a wonderful sculpture of the creation of
Adam. There we see the embryonic human creature,
weak, vague, half-awakened, not quite formed,
like clay on which the artist is still working: and
brooding over him, with His hand on His creature's
head, the strong and tender figure of the Artist-Creator. Creative Love, tranquil, cherishing,
reverent of His material, in His quiet and patient
method: so much more than human, yet meeting
His half-made human creature on its own ground,
firmly and gradually moulding it to His unseen
pattern, endowing it with something of His own
life. It is a vision of the Old Testament seen in
the transfiguring light of the New Testament. The I will of an Absolute Power translated into the
I desire of an Absolute Love; awful holiness reaching
out to earthly weakness, and wakening it to
new possibilities. Now this situation is surely the
situation of all living souls; and the very essence of
their spiritual life is or should be the lifting up of
the eyes of Adam, the not yet fully human creature
who is being made, in his weakness and hope, to
the holy creative love which never lets him go, and
in which his life is to find its meaning and goal.
It is true that the half-awakened Adam, stirring
to consciousness, can give no exact meaning to the
strange experiences that seem to reach him: the
sudden or gradual changes, sharp pinches, smooth
pressures or enlargements, by means of which he is
being conformed to the secret type. He is still
rather dazed by his situation; Eden itself is not
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clear to him yet. The true character of the Divine
action is blurred by its passage through the world
of succession. He sees and feels the Potter's tools,
but not the Potter's hand 'acting within the world
and moving all things to their respective ends'.
Yet in prayer he can at least look up towards the
Power that holds him, and so glimpse the truth of
that majestic and delicate action; working through
circumstance,
'from one end to another, mightily
and sweetly ordering all things', and bringing each
created spirit to its appointed state. This humble
glance from the successive to the Abiding—this is
the first gesture of recognition, the first spiritual
movement of man.
Thinking of this we begin to realize what is meant
by Maritain's deep saying:
'Adam sinned when he
fell from Contemplation—since then, there has been
a cleavage in man's life'. For sin is the willed
departure of man's spirit from correspondence with
the Spirit of God; a thwarting of the creative ideal.
And such a thwarting of life's purpose is to be
expected, when man ceases to look up and out
beyond the world: to lift his eyes to God. Then
he makes a cleavage between vision and action,
departs from that realistic sense of the overruling
Divine action, that 'Vision of the Principle' as St.
Gregory called it, which is the first point of a
spiritual life. Though the Vision of the Principle
is far too great for Adam, and produces, by its very
radiance, the obscurities of faith—still this dim
humbling disclosure of the mystery of God's action
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does make the creature more supple to the pressure
of the Divine life.
Yet even so, perhaps the image is not quite
complete ; nor the situation rightly seen by us.
For spiritual life consists in a submission, which is
by turns active and passive, to the moulding and
penetrating action of the supernatural order. It
requires a secret collaboration between the soul and
God. The gradual growth and transformation of
the half-made natural creature into an agent of
the Divine creativity—a 'child of God'—is achieved
by a ceaseless and ever purer correspondence of man's
will with the Creative Power. Left to ourselves,
we are wholly unable to rise above our normal
correspondence with the world of succession; the
sensitive and natural levels of life. Spiritual life
begins with a recognition of this humbling truth,
and a willing response to that Spirit already intimately
present with us, Who 'first creates and then
sustains and stimulates' our childish souls, balancing
each gift by a demand. It is, above all, the touch
of this Creative Spirit acting on and through us,
that we mean when we speak of our 'experience of
God'.
What this experience can be in depth and richness
for a fully expanded religious sense, is realized when
we read with humility the declarations of the saints;
for instance, when St. Teresa tells us that it marked
an epoch in, her spiritual life when she 'learned that
God was present in and with her Himself; and not,
as she had been told, by His grace'. For here is a
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concrete experience, reported with a realistic
simplicity, of the sustaining and stimulating action
of that Present God. Those words are not chosen
haphazard; they represent two distinct groups of
experiences, in which we recognize the penetration
of Spirit into sense, the direct action of God on human personality. First that steady support
which, as Plotinus says,
'ever bears us', whether
we notice it or not: as true an operation of the Holy
Spirit as any abnormal manifestation, or 'charismatic'
gifts. Next that strange insistent pressure,
reaching men sometimes through outward events,
sometimes by interior ways, which urges them forward
on the spiritual path, incites them to those
particular efforts, struggles and sacrifices, through
which they grow up in the supernatural life. For
this life requires from us a response which seems a
paradox: on one hand an utter self-abandonment
to the sustaining power; and on the other hand,
because of that abandonment, a vigorous personal
initiative a ceaseless balance and tension, through
and by which our human action, ever more fully
laid open to the Spirit, at last becomes part of the
deep action of God.
This twofold relation of God's infinite Spirit and
man's finite spirit is reflected in our characteristic
religious practices: works of art, born of the deep
Christian instinct for reality, which always seem to
carry a double reference. On one hand there is
the constant acknowledgement of a solid and
objective support given by the Immanent Holy to
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its feeble creature—a literal response to the great
Advent prayer
'Raise up, we pray thee, thy power;
and come among us'. On the other hand, there is
the steady demand on the self's own initiative and
courage; on costly willing action, a total self-donation
in the interests of Spirit, which may fulfil
itself by way of homely self-denials or faithful
unconsoled devotion, or may reach the summits of
heroic sacrifice. Man, the slave of the Highest, is
to be at once the patient and the agent of the
Unseen. As that communion in which he receives
the Food of eternal life is given the character of a
sacrifice; so every true procession of the Spirit
unites a gift and a demand. The Power comes
first to transform, and then to use, the creature;
to call out and penetrate its natural energies, and
dedicate them to supernatural ends. For the
dignity of the human soul is this: that not only can
it be transformed in God by, as we say, co-operation
with His grace, but being transformed, living eternal
life, it can also take its part as the agent and tool
of God in the redemptive action of the Holy on the
world. And in this correspondence, so richly
creative, with that Spirit which gives all that it is,
and takes all that we are, we find once more the
secret rhythm and deepest meaning of the spiritual
life.
