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AS
we watch life, we realize how deeply this
double fact of God's inciting movement and
the response it evokes from us, enters into
all great action; and not only that which we
recognize as religious. In all heroic achievements,
and all accomplishment that passes beyond the
useful to seek the perfect, we are conscious of two
factors which cannot be separated but cannot be
confused. There is ever a genuine and costly
personal effort up to the very limit of the self's
endurance: and there is, inciting, supporting and
using this devoted thrust of the creature, this
energetic love, a mighty invading and enveloping
Power. So too in all great historic and religious
movements, we seem to discern a secret incitement
of the corporate action, a hidden Providence, subduing
to its purpose the varied energies of men.
For this double strain this reinforcement of the
temporal by the eternal, and this using of the temporal
as a medium for the Absolute Action of God
is present in all history; though perhaps specially
clear in the religious history of man. It is vividly
present in the birth of the Christian Church at
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Pentecost, and in the subsequent events of the
period so rightly called charismatic. There we see
on one hand the utter dependence of the small
creature-spirits on the Infinite Life, with its pressure
and its prohibitions. On the other hand, we see
the self-oblivious courage and initiative, the unlimited
confidence and hope of those same limited
creatures, called to incarniate something of that
Infinite Spirit's will.
'Greater is he that is in you
than he that is in the world'
says the Johannine
writer, referring to a recognized truth of experience.
Were we more sensitive to the delicate forces
that enmesh and penetrate us, we should feel the
operation of that Spirit within all circumstance;
increasing in power and clearness with the degree
of surrender achieved by those who are its instruments.
For the Spirit does not work on our small
spirits by way of suppression, but by way of enhancement; and the more complete its conquests,
the more plainly does this truth appear. The saints
are not examples of a limp surrender. In them we
see dynamic personality using all its capacities;
and acting with a freedom, originality and success
which result from an utter humility, complete selfloss
in the Divine life. In them supremely, will and
grace rise and fall together; the action of the Spirit
stimulates as well as sustains, requiring of them
vigorous and often heroic action, and carrying
them through desperate sufferings and apparently
impossible tasks. No man was ever more fully
and consciously mastered by the Spirit than St.
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Paul ; and we know what St. Paul's life was like.
The same is true of St. Hildegard, St. Francis, St.
Catherine of Siena, St. Vincent de Paul.
'The
human will ', says Dr. Temple,
'
is a more adequate
instrument of the Divine will than any natural
force '. Even more truly we might say that the
human spirit, transformed by love, is the most
adequate instrument known to us of the Holy
Spirit of God the active energy of the Divine Love
operating in time.
'I only want one thing,' said Elizabeth Leseur,
'the accomplishment of your will, in me and by
me'. Since the essence of man is his will and his
love, that quiet saying so easily dismissed as a bit
of piety sums up the human soul's peculiar
destiny, and the very aim of a spiritual life. Meek
self-abandonment to the vast and hidden purposes
of the Spirit, and vigorous selfless action as the
result, are the poles between which the living soul
is called to move. And because it is inherent in
our limited freedom, that our acceptance of this
destiny is, in the last resort, left to us for the
Divine incitement stirs but never overrules Its
creature's will the soul's responsibility over against
God is absolute.
In the fourteenth Canto of the Paradiso, Dante
gives a wonderful picture of the heavenly state of
all courageous souls. It' is not a state of mere
security or passive bliss. He sees the joyful spirits
of brave saints—those who took risks, faced suffering,
solitude and darkness, the chivalry of the Spirit of
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God—dwelling within a great Cross of Light. They
flash to and fro on their various occasions; some
upwards to God Pure, and some outwards to His creation. Each is self-given to his peculiar mission;
but within the boundaries of one sacrificial Love,
which unites them with its action, and fills them
with its life. Entrance into that order, union with
that life-giving life: this is the goal of our spiritual
growth. For where this surrender is absolute, the
mighty creative action evokes, develops and uses
to the last drop Its creature's energy; and the
result is such an amazing transcendency, such
creative and redeeming power, as we see in the
saints, whose spirit
'clothes and expresses' the
Holy Spirit of God.
Thus a constant balance of surrender and initiative,
a God-impelled action and a God-desiring
contemplation, in ever-varying degrees and forms;
this is the mark of a spiritual maturity. And
because this ceaseless tension so easily overstrains
us, and so easily opens the door to self-willed interpretation
of the Creative Will, some corporate
action and submission to the common judgement
is needed too. The separate member must be knit up
into that Mystical Body which is the organ of the
great Divine action in the world. It is within this
supernatural economy that all our little activities,
religious and other, go forward; it is this informing
aim which gives them worth; and it is this solemn
consciousness of supporting and inciting Spirit,
at once Patria and Pater, but in its fullness ever
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remaining inexpressible which is the mark of the
really religious man.
We see then that the working of the Spirit on
human personality, and the spiritual life which
develops as a result of this commerce between finite
and Infinite will, can never be identified with the
abnormal phenomena or cataclysmic conversions
too often described as '
religious experience '. We
have indeed no reason to suppose that the supernatural
world is less steady, less dependable in its operations than the natural world. Anything
abrupt or sensational in our realization of Spirit is
rather to be attributed to our weakness and instability, our sense-conditioned psychic life, than
to the deep and quiet working of the Power of God.
In the Book of Acts we have one of the greatest of
all historic records of the Spirit's double action:
felt sometimes as an invading, dictating, and transfiguring
power, in sharp contrast with the ordinary
levels of experience, but more deeply recognized in
the continuous action and growth of individuals and
groups indwelt by Him. And so with us. There
may be italicized periods of either joy or abasement,
when the reality and claim of God are suddenly and
violently felt, and the Spirit seizes the field of
consciousness; and throughout the whole spiritual
course, for some temperaments, moments of communion
when His presence is vividly experienced,
and His direct guidance is somehow recognized.
But what matters far more is the continuous normal
action, the steady sober growth which the Spirit
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evokes, and cherishes if we are faithful: the whole
life of correspondence between man the creature
and the Absolute Will.
Thus the 'coming of the Holy Spirit', whether
understood as a historic or a personal experience,
does not mean any change in the Presence and Action
of God; but does mean a change in the attitude and
capacity of men.
O Lux beatissima,
Reple cordis intima
Tuorum fidelium.
'Your opening and His entering', said Meister
Eckhart,
'are one moment.' The New Testament
shows us men's experience of Christ as opening a
door for the further experience of the energizing
Spirit of God,
'as He is everywhere and at all
times'; and ordinary human beings moving out to
the very frontiers of human experience, to become
channels of that Spirit's action in space and time.
Since we are part of the society to which this happened
and can happen still, our own responsibility
as agents of Spirit is both individual and corporate;
and each reacts on the other. Church and soul are
both temples of the living Reality of God. Prayer
is the responsive moving-out of soul and of Church,
to the Spirit whose first movement has initiated
this marvellous intercourse between the finite and
Infinite life.
Hence the true aim of the creature's transformation,
is to weld that creature into the
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universal creative process—to make of each soul a
new centre of creative life. Thus from the first
all self-regarding spirituality, all mean ideals of
safety and of comfort, are to be abandoned. The
goal is not moral goodness, effective service, spiritual
knowledge; but a whole life of adoring love, transcending
and including all these ends. 'Salvation'
means this total glad self-offering, this dedication of
the whole drive of our nature and its incorporation
into the eternal order; not for our own sake, but
for the sake of the whole. And clearly
nothing
short of the immense attraction of that order, the
steady pull and pressure of the Love of God, could
persuade men to the sufferings and dedications
involved in such a destiny as this. For the flame
of Living Love is not a mild and tempered radiance.
It burns as we approach, and only gives us of its
ardour and its glory when we dare to plunge into
its very heart. Perhaps all earth's lesser demands
and vocations, the sacrificial call of truth and
beauty, the passion of the explorer or the mountaineer,
overriding selfishness and ease, are parts
of the intricate process by which souls are trained
for the supreme self-giving of eternal life.
So we arrive at this point. If the substantial
reality of the human soul abides in that quality or
ens we call spirit; and if here, in its ground or at
its spire-point, it finds God dwelling, and its own
real abiding place in Him two sides of one truth
then growth in the spiritual life and entrance into
reality, are the same thing. The disciplines of the
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interior way become of immense importance for
the unfinished creature we call
'man'. Every
human being, said Peguy, represents a 'hope of
God'. In less poetic terms, every human being is a potential spiritual personality, who can by faithful
correspondence with God become an actual spiritual
personality. The Church is a society of souls at every stage of growth, and adapted to a myriad
different ends, yet all surrendered to the one indwelling
Presence, and in all of whom this transformation
is going forward 'as He wills'. Thus
they form together in a special sense, a tabernacle,
an organic embodiment for the Holy Eternal Spirit
in space and time; one Body of many members—Corpus Christi.
