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PART II :THE PERFECTIONS OF GOD WHICH HIS PROVIDENCE PRESUPPOSES

7. The Divine Simplicity

We have seen that the formal constituent of the divine nature according to our imperfect mode of knowledge is subsistent being, for this distinguishes Him from every other being and is the source from which all His attributes may be deduced, as man’s characteristics are deduced from the fact that he is a rational being. And now, in order to have a right idea of providence, we must consider those divine perfections which it presupposes. A full consideration of these perfections helps us to a true notion of providence and gradually leads us to a more exact understanding of it.

We distinguish between the attributes relative to God’s being (His simplicity, infinity, eternity, incomprehensibility) and those relating to the divine operations (in the intellect, wisdom and providence; in the will, love with its two great virtues, mercy and justice; and finally omnipotence).

All these attributes are absolute perfections, implying no imperfection, and they may be deduced from what we conceive to be the formal constituent of the divine nature. 13

Our Lord said: “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Perfect, not merely like the angels, but as our heavenly Father is perfect; because we have received sanctifying grace, which should be constantly increasing in us and which is a participation, not in the angelic nature, but in the divine nature itself. Since, then, every passing day ought to see in our lives a gradually increasing participation in these infinite perfections of God, we should frequently make them the subject of contemplation in our prayer, by slowly meditating, for instance, on the Our Father.

We shall speak first of God’s simplicity, which is so marked a feature in the ways of divine providence.

The divine simplicity and its reflections

What is simplicity in general? As unity is the non-division of being, so simplicity is the opposite of composition, complexity, and complication. The simple is opposed to what is compounded of different parts, opposed therefore to what is complicated, pretentious, or tainted with affectation. From the moral point of view simplicity or integrity is opposed to duplicity.

We speak of a child’s outlook as simple because it goes straight to the point; it has no concealed motives; its inclination is not in several directions at once. When a child says a thing, it is not thinking of something else; when it says “yes, ” it does not mean “no”; it is not two-faced or deceitful. Our Lord tells us: “If thy eye be single [simple], thy whole body will be lightsome.” That is, if our intention is straightforward and simple, then there will be a unity, truth, and transparency in our whole life, instead of its being divided as it is with those who seek to serve two masters, God and wealth. And when we consider the complexity of motive, the insincerity we find in the world and the complications arising from lying and deceit, we cannot help feeling that the moral virtue of simplicity, of candor and uprightness, is the reflection of a divine perfection. As St. Thomas says, “Simplicity makes the intention right by excluding duplicity” (IIa IIae, q. 109, a. 2 ad 4um).

But what is divine simplicity? It is the absence of all compounding of different parts, the absence of all division.

1) There cannot be in God a distinction of quantitative parts as in matter. Every material thing has extended parts that are contiguous, whether these parts are similar as in the diamond, or different, like the members and the organs of a living being: the eyes, ears, and the rest.

The simplicity of God, on the contrary, is the simplicity of pure spirit, incomparably superior to that of the purest diamond, or to the unity of the most perfect organism. In God we do not find a distinction of two parts as soul and body, the one giving life to the other: the latter would be less perfect; it would not be life itself, but would merely participate in life; it would not be the principle of all order, but would itself be ordered. No imperfection or composition of any kind exists in God. Every compound requires a cause uniting the elements composing it, whereas God is the supreme cause uncaused. His simplicity therefore is absolute.

2) The simplicity of God far surpasses that of the angels. Of course an angel is pure spirit, but his essence is not self-existent: it is merely susceptible or capable of existence; it is not existence itself. An angel is a compound of finite essence and limited existence, whereas, as we have seen, God is self-subsisting, purely immaterial being.

An angel can acquire knowledge only by means of an intellectual faculty; he can desire only through another faculty, the will. These two faculties with their successive acts of thought and desire are accidents distinct from the angel’s substance; his substance remains always the same while his thoughts succeed one another. In God, on the other hand, there can be no question of composition of substance and accidents, because the divine substance is the fullness of being, the fullness also of truth ever apprehended and of goodness ever loved. In Him no succession of thoughts takes place: there is but one unchanging, subsistent thought, embracing all truth. In Him no successive acts of will occur; there is but one subsistent, unchanging act of will, which is directed to all that He wills.

Therefore divine simplicity or divine unity, is the absence of all composition and division in being, thought, and volition.

3) The simplicity of God’s intellect is that of the intuitive glance, excluding all error and ignorance, and directed from above and unchangingly upon all knowable truth.

The simplicity of His will or intention is that of a transcendently pure intention, disposing all things admirably and permitting evil only in view of a greater good.

But the most beautiful feature of God’s simplicity is that it unites within itself perfections that are apparently at opposite extremes: absolute immutability and absolute liberty, infinite wisdom and a good pleasure so free as to seem at times to be arbitrariness; or again, infinite justice inexorable toward unrepented sin, and infinite mercy. All these infinite perfections are fused together and identified in God’s simplicity, yet without destroying one another. In this especially consists the transcendence and splendor of this divine attribute.

We have a reflection of this exalted simplicity in a child’s simplicity of outlook, and to a greater degree in that of the saints, rising above the frequently deceitful entanglements of the world and all sorts of duplicity.

Let us now come down once more to creatures. We find a vast difference between the simplicity of God, with the holiness it reflects, and the seeming simplicity which consists in giving vent to everything that comes into our heart and mind at the risk of contradicting ourselves from one day to the next when impressions have altered and people with whom we live have ceased to please us. This seeming simplicity is sheer fickleness and contradiction, a complication therefore and a more or less conscious lie. God’s simplicity, on the other hand, is an unalterable unity, the simplicity of unchanging supreme wisdom and of the purest and strongest love of the good, remaining ever the same and infinitely surpassing our susceptibility and unstable opinions.

We have a glimpse of this divine simplicity when we consider the soul that has acquired a simple outlook, so that it is now able to judge of all things wisely in the light of God and to desire nothing but for His sake. The complex soul, on the other hand, is one that bases all its judgments on the varying impressions caused by the emotions and that desires things from motives of self-interest with its changing caprices, now clinging to them obstinately, now changing with every mood or with time and circumstances. And whereas the complex soul is agitated by mere trifles, the soul that has acquired simplicity of purpose, by reason of its wisdom and unselfish love, is always at rest. The gift of wisdom brings peace, that tranquillity which comes from order, together with that unity and harmony which characterize the simplified life united with God.

The souls of such men as St. Joseph, St. John, St. Francis, St. Dominic, the Cure of Ars give us some idea of this simplicity of God; but still more the soul of Mary, and especially the holy soul of Jesus, who said: “If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be lightsome.” That is, if your soul is simple in its outlook, it will be in all things enlightened, steadfast, loyal, sincere, and free from all duplicity.” Be ye wise as serpents [so as not to be seduced by the world], and simple as doves, ” so as to remain always in God’s truth.” I confess to Thee, O Father,… because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones.” “Let your speech be yea, yea: no, no” (Matt. 10: 16; 11: 25; 5: 37)

In the Old Testament we read: “Seek the Lord in simplicity of heart” (Wis. 1: 1) ; “Better is the poor man that walketh in his simplicity, than a rich man that is perverse in his lips and unwise” (Prov. 19:1). “Let us all die in our innocency,” cried the Machabees amid the injustices that oppressed them (I Mach. 2:37). “Obey… in simplicity of heart,” said St. Paul (Col. 3: 22) ; and he admonishes the Corinthians not to lose “the simplicity that is in Christ” (II Cor. 11: 3).

This simplicity, says Bossuet, enables an introverted soul to comprehend even the heights of God, the ways of Providence, the unfathomable mysteries which to a complex soul are a scandal, the mysteries of infinite justice and mercy, and the supreme liberty of the divine good pleasure. All these mysteries, in spite of their transcendence and obscurity, are simple for those of simple vision.

The reason is that, in divine matters, the simplest things, such as the Our Father, are also the most profound. On the other hand, in the things of this world, containing both good and evil closely intermingled and thereby exceedingly complex, anybody who is simple is lacking in penetration and will remain naive, unsuspecting, and shallow. In the things of God simplicity is combined with depth and loftiness; for the sublimest of divine things as also the deepest things of our heart, are simplicity itself.

The perfect image of God’s simplicity

The purest and most exalted image that has been given us of the divine simplicity is the holiness of Jesus, which embraces, as it were fused together, virtues to all appearances at opposite extremes. Let us call to mind the simplicity He displayed in His relations with His adversaries, with His heavenly Father, and with souls.

To the Pharisees, wishing to put Him to death, He says without fear of contradiction: “Which of you shall convince me of sin?” (John 8:46.) Their duplicity aroused His holy indignation: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men, for you yourselves do not enter in; and those that are going in, you suffer not to enter…. Woe to you, blind guides… you are like to whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all filthiness” (Matt. 23: 13, 25, 27).

Referring to His heavenly Father, He says: “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me…. I do always the things that please Him…. I honor my Father…. I seek not my own glory” (John 4: 34; 8: 29, 49, 50).” My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” “It is consummated” (Matt. 26:39; Luke 23: 46; John 19: 30).

And lastly, with regard to the faithful, He says: “Learn of Me, because I am meek, and humble of heart; and you shall find rest to your souls” (Matt. 11: 29). Such is this simplicity of His that He alone can speak of His own humility without losing it.

He is the good shepherd of souls, who prefers the company of the poor and the weak, the afflicted and little children, and of sinners too, in order to win them back. He is the good shepherd, who in all simplicity gives His life for His sheep, praying for His executioners and saying to the good thief: “This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23: 43).

But the most astonishing feature of our Lord’s simplicity is that it unites in itself virtues that to all appearances are at opposite extremes, and each virtue carried to its highest degree of perfection.

In Him are reconciled in a simple unity that holy severity of justice He metes out to the hypocritical Pharisees and the abounding mercy He displays toward all those souls whose shepherd He is; and the rigor of His justice is always subordinate to the love of the good from which it proceeds.

In Him are reconciled in the greatest simplicity the most profound humility and the loftiest dignity, magnanimity or grandeur of soul. He lived for thirty years the hidden life of a poor artisan, saying that He came not to be ministered unto but to minister. He fled to the mountain when they would have made Him king, washed the feet of His disciples on Holy Thursday, and for our sake accepted the final humiliations of the passion. On the other hand, during the same passion with lofty dignity He proclaimed the universality of His kingdom.” Pilate said to Him: Art Thou the king of the Jews?… What hast Thou done?… Jesus answered: Thou sayest that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Everyone that is of the truth, heareth My voice” (John 18: 33 ff.). With simplicity and noble majesty He answered Caiphas, who adjured Him to declare whether He was the son of God: “Thou hast said it. Nevertheless I say to you, hereafter you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26: 64).

This profound humility and lofty dignity are found reconciled in Jesus’ simplicity. Yet He, the humblest of men, was condemned for an alleged crime of blasphemy and pride.

In Him likewise are reconciled the most perfect gentleness, which constrained Him to pray for His executioners, and the most heroic fortitude in martyrdom, abandoned as He was by His own people and by all but a few of His disciples in the saddest hours of the passion and crucifixion. This simplicity of His had such nobility about it that the centurion, witnessing His death, could not help but glorify God, saying that “indeed this was a just man” (Luke 23: 47).

Great and wondrously sublime is simplicity when it thus reconciles in itself these apparently opposite virtues. It is the highest expression of the beautiful. For the beautiful is harmony, the splendor arising out of unity and diversity; and the greater the diversity, the more profound is the unity, the more extraordinary is the beauty. It then is rightly called sublime. In very truth it is the image of that divine simplicity which reconciles within itself infinite wisdom and the freest good pleasure, infinite justice, inexorable at times, and infinite mercy, all the energy of love combined with all its tenderness.

For this reason God alone can produce in the soul this surpassing simplicity, which is the image of His own. In us temperament is determined in one particular direction, inclining us either to indulgence or to severity, to a broad and comprehensive view of things, or to practical details, but not both ways at once. If, then, a soul with perfect simplicity practices at one and the same time virtues that are apparently extreme opposites, it is because almighty God is very intimately present in the soul, impressing His likeness upon it.

Bossuet (discours sur l’histoire universelle, Part II, chap. 19) expresses this thought beautifully when he says: “Who would not admire the condescension with which Jesus tempers His doctrine? It is milk for babes and, taken as a whole, is bread also for the strong. We see Him abounding in the secrets of God, yet He is not astonished thereby, as other mortals are with whom God holds communion. He speaks of these things as one born to these secrets and to this glory. And what He possesses without measure (John 3:34), He dispenses with moderation so as to adapt it to our infirmities.”

Pascal in his Pensees gives similar expression to our Lord’s simplicity, the purest image of the simplicity of God:

Jesus Christ, without wealth or fortune or display of scientific knowledge, is in an order of holiness all His own. He was neither an inventor nor a monarch; but He was humble, patient, holy, holy to God, free from all sin. To those loving eyes that perceive the wisdom in Him, with what stupendous magnificence He came!… Never had man such repute, never did man incur greater ignominy…. From whom did the Evangelists learn the qualities of a supremely heroic soul, that they picture it so perfectly in Jesus Christ? Why did they make Him weak in His agony? Did they not know how to picture a death borne with constancy? Yes indeed, for the same St. Luke pictures the death of St. Stephen as more bravely born than that of Jesus Christ. They make Him susceptible of fear before the necessity of dying arose, but full of fortitude thereafter. When therefore they portray Him as being so sorrowful, it is because in that hour His sorrow is self-inflicted (desiring to experience the crushing burden of anguish in order to suffer even that for us) ; but, when He is afflicted by men, it is then His fortitude is supreme, with that strength which is their salvation.

This simplicity of Jesus, purest image of God’s simplicity, is apparent in every detail of His life. Pere Grou remarks: “It is impossible to speak of things so exalted, so divine, in a simpler way. The prophets appear to be struck with amazement at the great truths they proclaim…. Jesus is self-possessed in all that He says, because He is drawing on His own resources… the treasury of His knowledge is within Him and in communicating it He does not exhaust it” (L’interieur de Jesus, chap. 29).

Thus we are able to form some faint idea of the simplicity of God, the simplicity of His being, thought, and love. It is a simplicity uniting in its transcendence such apparently opposite attributes as justice and mercy, uniting without destroying them, but, on the other hand, containing them in their pure state without any imperfection or diminution. It will be granted us to behold this simplicity in eternal life, if gradually each day we draw nigh to it in simplicity of heart, without which there can be no contemplation of God and no true love.

8. The Infinity Of God

We have seen how the simplicity of God, the simplicity of pure spirit, of being itself, unites within itself, to the exclusion of all real distinction, such apparently opposite perfections as justice and mercy. We have seen, too, how this divine simplicity is reflected in the outlook of a child, in that of the saints. But it is seen especially in the exalted simplicity of our Lord’s holy soul, which, like the divine simplicity, unites within itself such seemingly opposite virtues as the most profound humility and the most grandiose magnanimity, the most compassionate gentleness and the most heroic fortitude, a rigorous justice and a most tender mercy.

We must now consider another attribute of the divine Being, His infinity: without it we can have no conception of divine wisdom or providence.

This attribute at first sight appears to be opposed to the preceding; for our intellect, always more or less a slave to the imagination, represents the divine simplicity as a point like the apex of a pyramid. Now a point is indivisible and without extension, and hence is not infinite. How can God be both supremely simple and infinite?

The reason is that the divine simplicity is not that of a point in space; it is a spiritual simplicity, far transcending space and the point. Again, the infinity of God is an infinity of perfection, far transcending what might be the material infinity of a world that would have no limits.

Many errors about the divine infinity are the result of confusing the quantitative infinity of unlimited extension or of time without beginning, with the qualitative infinity of, say, infinite wisdom and infinite love. But the difference between them is enormous; it is the same as the difference between corporeal beings and the infinitely perfect pure Spirit.

Nor must we confuse this infinity of perfection, in the highest degree determinate and so complete as to admit of no increase, with the indetermination of matter, which is capable of receiving forms of every kind. These are at opposite poles: on the one hand, we have the absolutely imperfect indetermination of matter, and on the other, the supremely perfect infinity of the pure Spirit, who is being itself.

The a priori proof of the divine infinity

How do we prove the divine infinity thus conceived as an infinity of perfection?

A beautiful proof is given us by St. Thomas (Ia, q. 7, a. 1). It is a proof that will appeal to the artist. St. Thomas notes that the artistic ideal, the ideal form as conceived by the artist—the form, for instance, of the statue of Moses in the mind of Michelangelo—possesses a certain infinity of perfection before it is materialized or limited to a particular portion of matter and localized in space. For in the mind of Michelangelo this ideal form of the Moses is independent of any material limitation, and may be produced indefinitely in marble, clay, or bronze. The same applies to any ideal form whatever, even the specific form of things in nature: the specific form of a lily, for instance, or of a rose, a lion, or an eagle.

Before being materialized or limited to a particular portion of matter and localized in space, these specific forms have a certain formal infinity or infinity of perfection, which consists in their being independent of all material limitation. Thus the idea of a lily transcends all particular lilies, the idea of an eagle transcends all those eagles whose essence it expresses. It is a principle that “every form, before being received into matter, possesses a certain infinity of perfection.”

Now, as St. Thomas notes, it is a simple matter to apply this principle to God; for of all formal perfections the most perfect is not that of a lily or an eagle or the ideal man, but that of being or existence, which is the ultimate actuality of all things. Every perfection in the universe is something susceptible of existence, but none is existence itself; it can receive existence as matter receives the form of a lily or a rose.

If, therefore, God is self-existent, St. Thomas concludes, if He is being, existence itself, He is also infinite, not in quantity but in quality or perfection. If the ideal lily is independent of every individual material limitation, the self-subsisting being will transcend every limitation whatsoever, not only of space and matter but of essence also. Even the most perfect angel has no more than a finite existence conditioned by the limitations of his spiritual essence; whereas in God existence is not received into an essence susceptible of existence: He is the unreceived and eternally subsistent existence.

God is thus in the highest degree determinate, perfect, complete: He is absolutely incapable of receiving additions. He is at the same time infinite with an unlimited perfection, and incomprehensible, “the infinite ocean of being, ” says St. John Damascene, but a spiritual ocean, boundless, shoreless, far transcending space and the point and infinitely surpassing a material world supposedly infinite or limitless in quantity.

It is at once the infinity of being, of pure spirit, of wisdom, goodness, love and power; for infinity is a mode of all the attributes.

Such is the a priori proof as given by St. Thomas. It proceeds from the principle that every form, like that of a lily, before being received into matter, possesses a certain infinity of perfection. Now the most formal element, the ultimate actuality in all things is existence. Therefore God, who is being, existence itself, is infinite with an infinity of perfection transcending every limitation, whether of space or of matter or even of essence. He thus infinitely surpasses every material thing and every created pure spirit.

The a posteriori proof of the divine infinity

There is another, an a posteriori proof of the divine infinity, which shows that the production of finite things ex nihilo, their creation from nothing, presupposes an infinitely active power which can belong only to an infinitely perfect cause. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 45, a. 5.)

In fact the only way a finite cause can produce its effect is by transforming an already existing object capable of such transformation. Thus a sculptor, in order to carve his statue, requires a material; so also a teacher gradually forms the intelligence of his pupil, but he did not give him intelligence.

The greater the poverty of the object to be transformed, the greater must be the wealth and fecundity of the transforming active power. The poorer the soil, the more it must be cultivated, good seed sown in it and fertilized. But what if the soil is so poor as to be altogether worthless? It would then require an active power, not only exceedingly rich and fruitful, but infinitely perfect; and this is creative power.

Created agents are transformative, not creative. To produce the entire being of any finite thing whatever, no matter how minute—to produce the total entity of a grain of sand, for instance, to produce it from nothing—an infinite power is required, a power that can belong only to infinitely perfect Being. It follows, therefore, that the first cause of everything that comes into existence must be infinitely perfect.

Not only was it impossible for even the most exalted angel to create the physical universe, but he cannot create so much as a speck of dust; and it will ever be so. To create anything out of nothing—that is, without any pre-existing subject whatever—an infinite power is required.

Against this traditional and revealed teaching, pantheism urges a somewhat trivial objection. To the infinite, it says, nothing can be added; if therefore the universe is added to the being of God, as a new reality, the being of God is not infinite.

It is easy to answer this. There can be no addition made to the infinite in the same order: that is, no addition can be made to its being, its wisdom, its goodness, its power. But there is no repugnance whatever in something being added in a lower order, as an effect is added to the transcendent cause producing it. To deny this would be to refuse to the infinite Being the power of producing an effect distinct from Himself; He would then no longer be infinite.

But if this is so, the pantheist insists, more being and perfection will exist after the production of created things than before, which is equivalent to saying that the greater comes from the less.

The traditional answer given in theology is, that after creation many beings exist, but there is not more being or more perfection than before. Similarly, when a great teacher like St. Thomas has trained several pupils, there are many that are learned, but there is no more learning than before unless the pupils excel their master in knowledge. This being so, we can with even greater truth say that after creation the world has many beings but not more being, many living beings but not more life, many intellects but not more wisdom. He who is infinite being, infinite life, infinite wisdom, already existed before creation, containing in Himself in an eminent degree the limited perfections of created beings.

Such is the infinity of God, an infinity of perfection which is the plenitude not of quantity or extension, but of being, life, wisdom, holiness, and love.

We are made for the Infinite

In this mystery of the divine infinity we find the practical and important lesson that we are made for the Infinite; to know infinite truth and to love the infinite good, which is God.

The proof of this truth lies in the fact that the two higher faculties in us, intellect and will, have an infinite range.

Whereas our senses apprehend only a sensible mode of being, whereas the eye apprehends only color and our ear perceives only sound, the intellect grasps the being or reality of things, their existence. It perceives that being, subject to varying degrees of limitation, in the stone, the plant, the brute, and in man, does not of itself involve limitations. And so our intellect, far surpassing sense and imagination, aspires to a knowledge of finite beings and also of the infinite being, so far, at any rate, as such a knowledge is possible for us. Our intellect aspires to a knowledge not merely of the multiple and restricted truths of physics, mathematics, or psychology, but of the supreme and infinite truth, the transcendent source of all other truths. What we tell children in the catechism is this: “Why did God make you? God made me to know Him.” And we add: “To love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”

As our intellect has an unlimited range, and is able to have knowledge of being in all its universality and hence of the supreme Being, so also our will has an unlimited range. The will is directed by the intellect, which conceives not merely a particular sensible good that is delectable or useful, such as a fruit or a tool, but it conceives good as such, moral good, virtues such as justice and courage. It even reaches out beyond some special moral good, such as the object of justice or temperance, and apprehends universal good, good of whatever kind, everything in fact that is capable of perfecting us. Lastly, our intellect, far superior to the senses, ascends to a knowledge of the supreme and infinite good, in which every other good has its source; then the will, illumined by the intellect, desires this supreme and infinite good. The will has a range and unlimited capacity, which can be satisfied in God alone, as we explained at some length in Part I, chapter 4, where we spoke of the sovereign good and the natural desire for happiness.

Nevertheless our intellect and will are not destined naturally to know and love God in His intimate life. In that God is the author of nature, they can attain to Him in the natural order only because His perfections are reflected in created things.

In baptism a supernatural life and inclination were given to us, far surpassing our natural faculties of intellect and will. We received sanctifying grace, which is a participation in the divine nature and the intimate life of God; and with grace we received faith, hope, and charity, which give a vaster and more exalted range to our higher faculties.

We now gradually obtain a better grasp of the meaning and import of those words of the catechism: “Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”

The purpose of our existence, therefore, is to acquire not a merely natural knowledge and love of the infinite God as the author of nature, but a supernatural knowledge and love, the beginning of that eternal life in which we shall see and love God even as He sees and loves Himself.

We shall then have an intuitive vision of that spiritual infinite, which is God, a light infinitely strong and soft. Its brightness we shall be able to bear because our intellect will be elevated and fortified by the light of glory. We shall have an intuitive vision of that God who is infinite goodness, combining all the strength of justice with all the tenderness of mercy. And this supernatural elevation to the immediate vision and love of infinite truth and goodness will be ours forever; it will be a continuous vision and love that nothing henceforth will interrupt or diminish.

Yet in one sense the infinite will still surpass us; because our vision of the divine essence will never be the same as the vision God has of Himself, which is completely comprehensive. In heaven each one of the blessed has this intuitive vision of God, but with a power of penetration in proportion to their merits and the intensity of their charity. Similarly here on earth we all have direct vision of a landscape stretching out before us, but we see it better if our sight is keener. In heaven our vision of the infinite God will be immediate, but proportionate to the intensity of our charity and the light of glory. Great saints like the Apostles will see Him better, and their vision will be more penetrating than ours; but they, too, will be surpassed by St. Joseph, and St. Joseph by the Blessed Virgin; and surpassing her, the holy soul of Christ united to the person of the Word. It is pleasant to think that the Blessed Virgin, whose intellect is naturally inferior to that of the angels, has nevertheless a better vision of the divine essence than even the most exalted of them. Since her charity surpasses theirs, she has received the light of glory in a higher degree, inferior only to that of the human intellect of Jesus.

Such is the spiritual lesson we receive in this mystery of the divine infinity. We are made for the Infinite: to know God in His intimate life and to love Him above all things. That is why nothing in this world can really satisfy us and why we are free to respond or not to the attraction offered by finite good. Each time we experience within ourselves the limitations and the poverty of these perishable things, we should give thanks to God; for it gives us the opportunity, amounting sometimes to an urgent necessity, of pondering on the infinite riches, the infinite fullness of truth and goodness that are in Him.

9. The Immensity Of God

God, we have said, is infinite: not in quantity, as though He were an unlimited material body, but in quality or perfection, the only kind of infinity possible with Him who is purest spirit, who is being itself subsisting in His immateriality at the summit of all things. This infinity is a mode of all His attributes, and thus we speak of His infinite wisdom, His infinite goodness, His infinite power.

And now, if we are to have a right idea of providence and its universal scope including every age and every place, we must consider the divine immensity and eternity in their relation to space and time, which are on an infinitely lower plane.

If we consider the perfect being of God as related to space, we attribute to Him immensity and ubiquity. When we say He is immense, we mean that He is immeasurable and able to be in every place. In attributing ubiquity to Him, we affirm that He is actually present everywhere. Before creation God was immense, but He was not actually present in all things, since things as yet did not exist.

It would be a gross error to picture the divine immensity as unlimited space, and it is equally false to conceive the divine eternity as unlimited time, as we shall see later on.

God is pure spirit: there cannot be parts in Him as there are in what is extended; we cannot distinguish in Him the three spatial dimensions, length, breadth, and height or depth. When we apply these terms occasionally to the divine intellect, we do so purely by way of metaphor. In reality, God infinitely transcends space, even unlimited space, as the divine eternity infinitely transcends time, even unlimited time.

It was in attributing this spatial immensity to God that Spinoza erred. Were it so, God would no longer be pure spirit but would have a body, and thus one part of Him would be less perfect than another; He would not be perfection itself. Hence the divine immensity is not something material, but spiritual, and in an order infinitely transcending space.

If we would have some idea of the majesty of this divine perfection, three quite distinct modes of divine presence must be considered:

1) The general presence of God in all things by His immensity.

2) The special presence of God in the souls of the just.

3) The unique presence of the Word in the humanity of our Savior, and the reflection of this presence in the Church and in the vicar of Christ.

The general presence of God by His immensity

God is everywhere. What meaning are we to give to this phrase which so often occurs in Holy Scripture? First, God is everywhere by His power, to which all things are subjected, through which also He sets every being in motion, and directs it to action. Secondly, God is everywhere by His presence, in that all things are known to Him. All things are laid bare to His sight, even to the minutest detail, to the most profound secrets of our hearts and the innermost recesses of conscience. Lastly, God is present by His essence, in that by His preservative action, which is identical with His very being, He maintains every creature in existence.

Moreover, as in creation God’s action is immediate without any creature or instrument intervening, so too His preservative action, which is the continuation of His creative act, is exercized immediately in every creature and upon what is most intimate in them, their very being. He is thus present even to those far distant nebulae which our telescopes barely succeed in bringing to view.

Therefore God, though not corporeal, is everywhere, not as a material body is in place, but by a simple virtual contact of His creative and preservative power, wherever in fact there are bodies to be maintained in existence. Besides this, in a sphere of being transcending space, He is present to every spirit, whom He maintains in being as He does the rest of creatures.

And so God as pure spirit is in every being, in every soul, of which He is the transcendent center as the apex of the pyramid contains in a transcendent manner all its sides. God is that spiritual force which maintains everything in existence. As the liturgy has it: Rerum Deus tenax vigor Immotus in te permanens. (God powerful sustainer of all things Thou who dost remain permanently unmoved.)

The special presence of God in the just

There is another presence of God, which is peculiar to the soul in the state of grace whether on earth, in purgatory, or in heaven. God is no longer present simply as conserving cause—as such He is within even inanimate bodies—but He dwells in the souls of the just as in a temple, the object of a quasi-experimental knowledge and love.

Our Lord said: “If any man love me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him: and we will come to him and will make our abode with him” (John 14: 23). What is meant by “We will come”? Who will come? Is it simply created grace? No, in the souls of the just the three divine Persons come to take up their abode: the Father and the Son, and with them the Holy Ghost, whom the Son has promised.

This is what the Apostle St. John understood it to mean when he said: “God is charity: and he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him” (I John 4: 16).

However great the earthly distance separating souls that are in the state of grace, be it from Rome to Japan, it is the same God who dwells in them all, enlightening, strengthening, and drawing them to Himself.

The same is brought out by St. Paul (I Cor. 3: 16) : “Know you not that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” “Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God: and you are not your own? For you are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body” (ibid., 6: 19-20), that is, by comporting yourselves in a manner worthy of Him. And St. Paul says to the Romans (5:5) : “The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us.”

This sublime doctrine was a commonplace in the early Church: the martyrs proclaimed it openly before their judges. Thus St. Lucy of Syracuse answers the judge Paschasius: “Words can never be wanting to those who bear within them the Holy Ghost.” “Is the Holy Ghost within thee, then?” “Yes, all who lead a chaste and upright life are the temples of the Holy Ghost.”

The creeds and councils of the Church, the Council of Trent, for instance, affirm that the Blessed Trinity dwells in the souls of the just as in a temple and from time to time makes its presence felt by a more luminous inspiration, a more profound peace, like that which the disciples experienced as they conversed with our Lord on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24: 42) : “Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way, and opened to us the Scripture?” In fine, as St. Paul says to the Romans (8: 16), “the Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God.”

God makes this special presence of His felt in us by that filial love for Him with which He himself inspires us and which, like the peace it brings us, can come only from Him. (Cf. St. Thomas, Comment. in Ep. ad Rom., 8: 16.)

The unique presence of God in the humanity of Jesus

Surpassing the general presence of God in all things, even His special presence in the souls of the just, is that unique and quite exceptional presence of the Word in the humanity of Jesus.

This presence of the Word in the sacred humanity of Jesus is not, as in the saints, a purely accidental union of knowledge and love. It is a union that is substantial in the sense that the Word assumed and made His own forever the humanity of Jesus which consisted of His holy soul and His body virginally conceived. There is thus in Jesus Christ but one Person, possessing both the divine nature and a human nature without mutual confusion, in some such way as each one of us possesses his soul and body unconfused.

Obviously this substantial union of Christ’s humanity with the Word of God immeasurably surpasses both the general presence of God in all things by immensity and even that special presence of His in the souls of the just on earth, in purgatory, or in heaven.

Moreover, in the sacred humanity of Jesus there is a wonderful participation in the divine immensity, since by Eucharistic consecration His body is made present throughout the world on every altar where the consecrated host is reserved. His body is present there not as localized in space, but after the manner of substance. Substance is not of itself extended; in certain respects it transcends extension and space; and this helps us to understand how the selfsame body of Christ remaining present in heaven can, without being multiplied, become really present throughout the world in every tabernacle where there are consecrated hosts. We have here a remote likeness to that presence by which God Himself is in every material being, maintaining it in existence; it is a reflection of the divine immensity.

A further reflection of this divine perfection is seen in that universal sway exerted by the Church simultaneously in every quarter of the globe. In a certain sense we can say that the Church is everywhere present upon the face of the earth, for the soul of the Church includes all who are in the state of grace. Moreover, the Church, being both one and catholic, exercises the same supernatural influence wherever the Gospel is preached.

In spite of the diversity of nations, races, manners, customs, and institutions, the Church, wheresoever her influence extends, effects a unity of faith and hierarchical obedience; unity of worship, especially in the Mass; one common nourishment in communion; unity of life, since all must find their nourishment in Jesus Christ; unity of Christian dispositions, of hope and charity. Since grace here on earth and glory hereafter are the principle of life for all, they have in the merits of Christ the same resources and a common inheritance in eternal life.

Now the Church thus present among the nations for nearly two thousand years would not be able to exercise this influence of hers without the supreme pastor appointed by our lord to be His vicar. The exercise of papal and episcopal jurisdiction preserves intact the doctrines of the Gospel in the bosom of the Church through an infallible teaching office, and safeguards Christian morality and Christian perfection by maintaining the divine law and imposing ecclesiastical laws, and safeguards Christian worship also through the various forms of the liturgy.

Christ Jesus promised to St. Peter and his successors and conferred on them the primacy of jurisdiction over the universal Church (Matt. 16: 16; John 21: 15). He also said to them: “I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”

To sum up, then: God, pure spirit, is immense and everywhere present inasmuch as through His creative power He maintains in existence and sets in motion every creature, corporeal and spiritual, and all things are laid bare to His sight, even the most intimate secrets of the heart, secrets that not even the angels can discern by their natural knowledge.

Besides this universal presence in every creature, there is that special presence of God in the souls of the just, who are in the state of grace. He is within them as in a temple, to be known and loved by them, and He makes His presence felt there from time to time in that filial love for Him which He alone can inspire.

In a manner still more distinctive the Word of God is present in the humanity of Christ, with which He is united not merely in an accidental way through knowledge and love, but substantially, forming with it but one Person, one being, yet without confusion of the two natures.

As a wonderful reflection of the divine immensity, our Savior’s sacred humanity is really and substantially present throughout the world in every tabernacle where the consecrated host is reserved. Everywhere it is the same body of the Savior, unmultiplied yet really present, after the manner of substance—a remote resemblance to that presence by which God is within all creatures as pure spirit and unmultiplied, maintaining them in existence.

And lastly, there is that other reflection of the divine immensity in the vicar of Christ. As visible head of the Church, through the influence of his teaching and jurisdiction he is present to the entire Church. In a certain sense he reaches out to each one of the faithful in every clime and nation, preserving them all in the unity of faith, obedience, and worship, of hope and charity, and as supreme shepherd leading them on to the eternal pastures.

As in God this space-transcending immensity is united with an eternity that transcends time, so is it with the power of the pastoral office in the Church. It extends to all the faithful in space, and also extends to them all as they succeed one another in time, from the foundation of the Church until the end of the world.

The majesty of the Church is most clearly seen when viewed in the higher light of the divine perfections reflected in her: the divine immensity in her catholicity, the divine eternity in her indefectibility, the divine unity and holiness in her own unity and holiness.

Dominating the various dioceses and religious orders, the majesty of the Church is already a participation in the majesty of Christ and of God Himself. In spite of human shortcomings, which creep in wherever men are to be found, this supernatural beauty of the Church is clearly the beauty of God’s own kingdom.

We should rid ourselves of the habit of viewing things horizontally and superficially, as if all had the same value and importance. This is a materialist point of view, a leveling conception that blots out all elevation and depth. We should accustom ourselves rather to look down upon things vertically, so to speak, or in their depth. Above all is God, pure spirit, unchangeable, eternal, immense, conserving and giving life to all things. Then comes the humanity of our Savior, the channel through which every grace is transmitted to us and which is present in all the tabernacles of the world. Lower still is our Lady, the mediatrix and coredemptrix; and after her the saints; then come the supreme pastor of the Church and the bishops. After them the faithful who are in the state of grace and those Christians also who, though not in the state of grace, yet as Catholics, keep the faith as revealed by God. And last of all are those souls who are seeking for the truth and those, too, who are still wandering astray, who yet at certain moments receive from God and our Lord graces of illumination and inspiration.

This way of looking at things as it were perpendicularly or, if you will, in their height and depth rather than superficially, is precisely that contemplation which proceeds from faith illumined by the gifts of understanding and wisdom. It should normally be accompanied by a prayer that is catholic, or universal—a prayer ascending to the eternity and immensity of God through the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the intercession of Mary. Such a prayer begs God to pour out the abundance of His mercy upon the supreme pastor of the Church, upon the bishops and generals of orders, and upon all the faithful, that they may be loyal to the vocation to which they have been called, responding to whatever God demands of them, and so walk in the path of holiness that leads to Him.

10. The Eternity Of God

Having discussed the divine immensity in its relation to space, we must now consider God’s eternity in relation to time. Without it we can have no conception of Providence, whose decrees are eternal.

Let us examine the wrong notion people sometimes have of this divine eternity, and then we shall better understand the true definition of it, which is likewise a very beautiful.

What is eternity?

There is a partially erroneous conception of the divine eternity current among those who are content to define it as a duration without beginning and without end, thinking of it vaguely as time without limit either in the past or in the future.

Such a notion of eternity is inadequate: because a time that had no beginning, no first day, would always be, nevertheless, a succession of days and years and centuries, a succession embracing a past, a present, and a future. That is not eternity at all. We might go back in the past and number the centuries without ever coming to an end, just as in thinking of the time to come we picture to ourselves the future acts of immortal souls as an endless series. Even if time had no beginning, there would still have been a succession of varying moments.

The present instant, which constitutes the reality of time, is an instant fleeting between the past and the future (“nunc fluens, ” says St. Thomas), an instant fleeting like the waters of a river, or like the apparent movement of the sun by which we count the days and the hours. What, then, is time? As Aristotle says, it is the measure of motion, more especially of the sun’s motion, or rather that of the earth around the sun, the rotation of the earth on its axis constituting one day as its revolution around the sun constitutes one year. If the earth and the sun had been created by God from all eternity and the regular motion of the earth around the sun had been without beginning, there would not have been a first day or a first year, but there would always have been a succession of years and centuries. Such a succession would then have been a duration without either beginning or end, but a duration, nevertheless, infinitely inferior to eternity; for there would always have been the distinction between past, present, and future. In other words, multiply the centuries by thousands and thousands, and it will always be time; however long drawn out, it will never be eternity.

If, then, to define the divine eternity as a duration without either beginning or end is inadequate, what is it? The answer of theology is that it is a duration without either beginning or end, but with this very distinctive characteristic, that in it there is no succession either past or future, but an everlasting present. It is not a fleeting instant, like the passing of time, but an immobile instant which never passes, an unchanging instant. It is “the now that stands, not that flows away, ” says St. Thomas (Ia, q. 10, a. 2, obj. Ia), like a perpetual morning that had no dawn and will know no evening.

How are we to conceive this unique instant of an unchanging eternity? Whereas time, this succession of days and years, is the measure of the apparent motion of the sun or the real motion of the earth, eternity is the measure or duration of the being, thought, and love of God. Now these are absolutely immutable, without either change or variation or vicissitude. Since God is of necessity the infinite fullness of being, there is nothing for Him to gain or to lose. God can never increase or diminish in perfection; He is perfection itself unchangeable.

This absolute fixity of the divine being necessarily extends to His wisdom and His will; any change or progress in the divine knowledge and love would argue imperfection.

The unchangeableness, however, is not the unchangeableness of inertia or death; it is that of supreme life, possessing once and for all everything it is possible and right that it should possess, neither having to acquire it nor being able to lose it.

Thus we come to the true definition of eternity: an exceedingly profound and beautiful definition, one full of spiritual instruction for us.

Boethius, in his Consolations of Philosophy, formulated what has continued to be the classical definition: Aeternitas est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio (“eternity is the simultaneous possession in all its perfection of endless life”). It is the uniformity of changeless life, without either beginning or end, and possessed wholly at once. The principal phrase in the definition is tota simul (“wholly at once”). The unique distinction of the divine eternity is not that it is without beginning or end, but that it is without change, so that God possesses His infinite life wholly at once.

Plato says that time is the mobile image of an immobile eternity, so far, at any rate, as it is possible for a passing instant to be the image of an instant that does not pass.

Time, too, with its succession of moments has often been compared to the foot of a lofty mountain the summit of which represents the unique instant of eternity. From the summit of this eternity of His, God sees in a single glance the whole series of generations succeeding one another in time, as a man from the top of a mountain can see in one glance all who pass on their way in the valley below. Thus the unique, unvarying instant of eternity corresponds to each successive moment of time, the moments of our birth and death included. Time is thus, as it were, the small change in the currency of eternity.

What characterizes time is change or motion, which is measured by time. The distinctive characteristic of eternity is that unchangeable instant in which God possesses His infinite, endless life wholly at once. 14

Here on earth we have not, when born, the fullness of life. In childhood we have not yet the vigor of youth or the experience that comes with age; and then, when we reach maturity, we no longer possess the freshness of childhood or the readiness of youth. Not only is this true of our life as a whole, but we do not possess one year of it all at once. The year has its changing seasons, so that what summer brings, winter denies. The same must be said of the weeks and the days. Our life is distributed: hours of prayer are distinct from hours of work, and these again from hours of rest and recreation. Just as we do not hear the whole of a melody at once, so it is with our life: its events happen in succession.

On the other hand, it is said of Mozart that he was eventually able to hear a melody not as something continuous, in the way other listeners do, but all at once, in the law that gave it birth. In composing the opening bars of a melody, he foresaw and in some way heard its finale. To hear a melody all at once is a faint image of that divine eternity in which God possesses His infinite life of thought and love simultaneously and without any succession. In the life and thought of God it is impossible for Him to distinguish between a before and an after, a past and a future, a childhood, youth, and maturer age.

We have another faint image of the divine eternity in a great scholar who spends long years in studying successively all the branches of a particular science, and eventually is able to view them all in the general principles governing the science, in the master idea from which the other ideas are successive developments. Thus Newton must have seen the various laws of physics as consequences of one supreme law; and at the end of his life St. Thomas saw somewhat at a glance the whole of theology as contained in a few general principles.

Another and closer image of the divine eternity is to be found in the soul of a saint who has reached a life of almost continuous union with God; he has now risen beyond the vicissitudes and flight of time. The saint, too, has his hours of work as well as of prayer, but even his work is a prayer; and because in the summit of his soul he remains in almost continuous union with God, he possesses his life in a manner “all at once”; instead of dividing and dissipating his life, he unifies it.

The eternity of God, then, is the duration of a life that not only had no beginning and will have no end, but that is absolutely unchangeable and consequently wholly present to itself in an instant that never passes. In one absolute unfleeting “now” it condenses in a transcendent manner all the varying moments that succeed one another in time.

With men, captivated as they are by sense, an unchangeable eternity has the appearance of death; for their idea of immobility is that of inertia and nothing more; it does not extend to that immobility which comes from a fullness of life so perfect that any progress in it is unthinkable.

It follows that the divine thought, since its measure is eternity, embraces in a single glance all time, every succeeding generation, every age. In a single glance it sees the centuries preparing for the coming of Christ and thereafter reaping the benefits of that coming. In that same unique glance, the divine thought sees where our souls will be in a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years to come, and forever. If only this truth were kept in mind, many objections against providence would vanish. The true notion of providence is, as it were, the resultant of the contemplation of those divine perfections which it presupposes.

As the thought of God is unchangeable, so also is His love. With no shadow of change in itself, it summons souls into existence at the moment it has fixed from all eternity. From all eternity love pronounces a free fiat to be freely realized in time. At the appointed time the soul is created, justified in baptism or by conversion, receives a multitude of graces and in the end, if no resistance is offered, that grace of a happy death by which it is saved. The created effect is new, not so the divine act producing it: Est novitas effectus absque novitate actionis, says St. Thomas. The divine action is eternal, but produces its effect in time and when it wills.

On the heights of eternity God remains unchanging; but beneath Him all is change, save only those souls who cleave unalterably to Him and so share in His eternity.

Eternity and the value of time

What is the spiritual lesson for us in this divine perfection of eternity? The great lesson to be learnt is that union with God on earth brings us near to eternity. It also makes clearer to us the full value of the time allotted us for our journey: a bare sixty or eighty years, an exceedingly short span on which depends an eternity, the briefest of prefaces to an endless volume.

The thought of eternity brings home to us especially the high value we should place on the grace of the present moment. For the proper performance of our duty at any given instant we require a particular grace, the grace we ask for in the Hail Mary: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” Pray for us sinners now. Here we beg for those special graces, varying with each moment, which enable us to cope with our duties in the course of the day and reveal to us the importance of all those trivial things that bear some relation to eternity. Although, as we utter the word “now, ” we are often full of distractions, Mary as she listens is all attention. She receives our prayer gladly, and forthwith the grace we need at the moment to persevere in our prayer, in suffering, in whatever we are doing, comes down to us, even as the air we breathe enters our breast. As the present minute is passing, let us remember that the body and its sensibilities, alternating between joy and sadness, are not the only realities; there is also our spiritual soul, with the influence Christ has upon it, and the indwelling of the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Whereas the superficial and light-minded have a horizontal view of things, seeing material things and the life of the soul from the same plane of every fleeting time, the saints have unceasingly a perpendicular view of things; they see them from above and penetrate their depths, contemplating God at the summit of them all. The thought of eternity is the standard by which they estimate the value of time, past, present, and to come, and thus their judgments are gradually brought to the true focus.

Following their example, let us abandon to infinite mercy the whole of our life, both past and future. In a very practical way, inspired by faith, let us live the life of the present moment. In this fleeting now, be it dull or joyful or fraught with pain, let us see a faint image of the unique instant of changeless eternity; and because of the actual grace it brings us, let us see in it also a living proof of the fatherly kindness of God.

In this spirit let us go forward in the power of our Lord who in the sacrifice of the mass never ceases to offer Himself for us by an ever-living interior oblation in His heart, an oblation that transcends time as does the vision that hallows His holy soul.

Walking thus, we draw close to that eternity which we are some day to enter. In what will this entry into glory consist? We shall receive eternal life, which will consist in seeing God as He sees Himself. It will be an intuitive vision, never interrupted by either slumber or distraction, an unchanging vision of the self-same infinite object, which will be of inexhaustible profundity for us. This vision will be succeeded by a love for God equally changeless, which nothing can ever destroy or diminish. This vision and love will no longer be measured by time, but by a participated eternity. Although they are to have a beginning, they will henceforth be without end, without change of any kind, without before or after; the instant which is to be the measure of our beatific vision will be the unique instant of changeless eternity.

We are given an inkling of what this means, when, in the contemplation of some lofty truth or at prayer, we are so absorbed at times that we no longer take account of the passing hours. If such is our occasional experience, what will it be in the future life, which is not only future but is rightly called eternal, since it will no longer be measured by time but by eternity, which is the measure of the simultaneous being and life of God? Then we, too, shall possess all our love at once instead of seeing it languish, wavering between luke-warmness and a passing fervor, all our knowledge at once and no longer piecemeal.

Let us end with this thought from St. Augustine: “Unite thy heart to God’s eternity and thou, too, shalt be eternal; be thou united to God’s eternity and there await with Him the things that pass beneath thee” (Comm. in Psalm. 91).

It is only to us that eternity is obscure; in itself it is far more luminous than fleeting time, for it is the unchangeableness of the supremely luminous knowledge and love of God.

11. The Divine Incomprehensibility

The light and shade in the mysteries of God’s life

As we have seen, the attributes of God relative to His being are simplicity, infinity, immensity, and eternity. Before passing on to treat of those which, like wisdom and providence, relate to His operations, it will be well to say something of the divine incomprehensibility, which is so marked a feature of the divine governance in certain of its ways.

Therein will be found an important lesson for our own spiritual life. The point we shall particularly stress is that, although from certain angles God is presented to us in the clearest light, in other respects He remains in the deepest shadow. As in paintings we have light and shade, so also in the teachings of revelation we find lights and shadows, which are incomparably more beautiful than those we admire in the great masters. And the same lights and shadows in which God is represented to us will be found reproduced to some extent in our own spiritual life; for grace is a participation in the divine nature, or in the intimate life of God.

The high lights in the Divinity

Let us speak first of God’s features that are quite clear to us. By the natural exercise of our reason, apart even from faith, we are able here on earth to demonstrate the existence of God, the first mover of spiritual and corporeal beings, the first cause of everything that exists, the necessary being, the sovereign good, and the source of order in the world.

In the mirror of created things we discover a reflection of God’s absolute perfections and thus acquire a positive knowledge of whatever is similar or analogically common in God and His works: His reality, His actuality, His goodness, wisdom, and power.

When we wish to point out His distinctive characteristics, we do so by way of negation or by relating Him to the object of our experience. Thus we speak of God as the infinite or non-finite Being, as unchangeable, or again as the supreme good.

These rational convictions, already of themselves firmly established, receive further confirmation from divine revelation accepted through faith. These convictions are adamantine and unassailable. To us it is quite clear that God cannot exist without being infinitely perfect, that He can neither be deceived Himself nor deceive us, that He cannot will what is evil or be in any way the cause of sin. Indeed we are incomparably more certain of the rectitude of God’s intentions than we are of even the best of our own. From this angle God stands out before our minds in a light almost dazzlingly clear. Again, it is quite evident to us that on the one hand God is the author of all good, including also the good contained in our meritorious consent, and that on the other hand He never demands the impossible. Nothing can prevail against these supremely evident truths, which have the force of conviction for every right mind that is open to truth. Obviously God cannot exist without being at once supremely just and supremely merciful, supremely wise and at the same time supremely free.

And yet, with all this dazzling clarity, there is in God that which for us is very obscure. What is the cause of this?

The light-transcending darkness in God

The obscurity confronting us in God is owing to the fact that He is far too luminous for the feeble sight of our intellect, which is unable to endure His infinite splendor.

To us God is invisible and incomprehensible for the reason that, as Scripture says, “He inhabiteth light inaccessible” (I Tim. 6:16), which has for us the same effect as darkness. To the owl, in the order of sense perception, darkness appears to begin at sunrise, because its feeble sight can perceive only the faint glimmer that comes with the twilight or just before the dawn, and is dazzled by the excessive brilliance of the sun. Where God, the Sun of the spirit world, is concerned, our intellect is in much the same condition. Its intellectuality is of the lowest degree, being inferior to that of the angel; it sees intelligible truths only dimly and in a half-light, as it were, as reflected in a mirror of a lower order, the things of sense. 15

As St. Thomas notes (Ia, q. 76, a. 5), our intellect requires to be united with the senses so as to be presented with its proper object. This lowest degree of intellectuality attains first of all in cognition its proper object, the being of sensible things, which is the lowest degree of the intelligible; and in that object it acquires a very imperfect knowledge of God’s existence, and sees the reflection of His divine perfections.

Whereas, then, many things are invisible through not being sufficiently luminous or not sufficiently illuminating, God is invisible because for us He is far too luminous. 16

That God, who is pure spirit, cannot be seen by bodily eyes, is quite evident, since these perceive only what is sensible. But neither can He be seen by a created intellect when this is left to its purely natural resources. Not even the highest among the angels can directly see God through the purely natural power of their intellect; for them, too, God is a light overpowering in its intensity, a naturally inaccessible light. For the angels, the sole natural means of knowing God is in the mirror of spiritual creatures which are their proper object, this mirror being their own essence or that of other angels. They have a natural knowledge of God as the author of their nature, but they cannot have a natural knowledge of Him in His intimate life or see Him face to face.

To see God, the angels, like human souls, must have received the light of glory, that supernatural light to which their nature has no claim whatever, but which is infused in order to fortify their intellects and enable them to endure the brightness of Him who is light itself. 17 God Himself cannot give us a created idea capable of representing His divine essence as it is in itself. Such an idea must always be imperfect, intelligible only by participation, and hence wholly inadequate to represent, as it really is, that eternally subsistent, purely intellectual flash, the essence of God with its infinite truth.

If God wishes to reveal Himself as He really is, this can be only by direct vision with no created idea intervening, unfolding to our gaze the divine essence in all its splendor, and at the same time sustaining and fortifying our intellect, which when left to itself is too feeble to behold it. 18

It is in this way the blessed in heaven see God. We, too, desire to attain to this same vision, in which our everlasting happiness will consist. 19

God is therefore invisible to our mental as well as to our bodily sight because of the exceeding intensity of His radiance.

But how is it that in this invisible God there is so much that is transparently clear to us and at the same time so much that is profoundly obscure? What is the source of this fascinating, mysterious light and shade?

Evidently God cannot exist without being supremely wise, supremely good, and supremely just; He is the author of all good and never commands what is impossible. Then how is it that side by side with this dazzling radiance there is so much obscurity?

It is due to the fact that our knowledge of the divine perfections is obtained solely from their reflection in creatures. Although we can enumerate them one after another, we are unable naturally to perceive how they are united in the intimate life of God, in the eminence of the Deity. This intimate mode of their union is entirely hidden from us; its radiance is too overpowering, it is too exalted to be reflected in any created mirror. As we said above, where the Deity is concerned, we are like men who have never seen white light but only the seven colors of the rainbow in the clear waters of a lake.

Doubtless in the divine rainbow we see its various colors: that God, for example, is infinitely wise and supremely free. But we cannot see how infinite wisdom is intimately reconciled with a good pleasure so free as to appear to us at certain times sheer caprice. And yet, however surprising it may seem, this good pleasure is still supremely wise. We accept it in the obscurity of faith, but only in heaven will it be clearly seen.

Again, we are certain that God is infinitely merciful, that He is also infinitely just, and that He exercises both His mercy and His justice with a sovereign freedom in which wisdom is never wanting. If, says St. Augustine, to the good thief was granted the grace of a happy death, it was through mercy; if it was denied to the other, it was through justice. Here we have a mystery: we cannot see how infinite mercy, infinite justice, and a sovereign liberty are intimately reconciled. For this we must have a direct intuition of the divine essence, of the Deity, in the eminence of which these perfections are reconciled, and that far more profoundly, more perfectly, than the seven colors are contained in white light.

In God truths that relate to each attribute considered apart are quite clear. But so soon as we consider their intimate reconciliation, there descends a darkness that transcends the light.

Once again, we see quite distinctly that in His exceeding goodness and power God cannot permit evil unless for some greater good, as He permits persecution for the glory of the martyrs. But for us this greater good is often very obscure, to be seen clearly only in heaven. This truth is eloquently brought out in the Book of Job. 20 There is enough light for our Lord to have said: “He that followeth me walketh not in darkness.” 21 Thus, however obscure in itself our cross may be, we are able to bear it, all being made clear to us when we reflect that it is ordained for the good of our souls and the glory of God.

Our life is frequently cast in this mysterious light and shade, which appears in our very existence when this is viewed in its relations with Him who, without fully revealing Himself as yet, is ever drawing us to Him.

Hence arises that ardent desire to see God, that supernatural, efficacious desire proceeding from infused hope and charity. Hence, too, in every man arises a natural and inefficacious desire, a natural velleity, to behold God face to face, if only to solve the enigma how attributes so apparently opposed as infinite justice and infinite mercy are reconciled in Him. 22

From this it follows that what is obscure and incomprehensible for us in God transcends what is clearly seen. Here, in fact, the darkness is light-transcending. What the mystics call the great darkness is the Deity, the intimate life of God, the “light inaccessible” mentioned by St. Paul (I Tim. 6: 6).

We now understand what St. Teresa means when she says: “The more obscure the mysteries of God, the greater is my devotion to them.” She indeed realized that this obscurity is not that of absurdity or incoherence, but the obscurity of a light that is too intense for our feeble vision.

In this divine light and shade, then, the shadows transcend the light. Faith tells us that this impenetrable obscurity is the sovereign good in its more intimate characteristics, so that it is to this absolutely eminent Goodness, though still a mystery incomprehensible to the intellect, that our charity cleaves; the food of love in this life is mystery, which it adores. Here on earth love is superior to the intellect. As St. Thomas says, so long as we have not attained to the beatific vision of the divine essence, our intellect, with its very imperfect conception of God, brings Him down in some sort to our level, imposing upon Him as it were the limitations of our own restricted ideas; whereas love does not bring God down to our level, but uplifts us and unites us to Him (Ia, q. 82, a. 3; IIa IIae, q. 23, a. 5; q. 27, a. 4).

Therefore in this divine light and shade the shadows transcend the light and, for the saints here on earth, this light-transcending darkness exerts such an attraction on the love uniting them to God.” The just man lives by faith” (Rom. 1:17) and finds his support not only in its light but also in the divine darkness which corresponds to all that is most intimate in God. It is upon the incomprehensibility of the divine life that the contemplative is reared; he grasps the full meaning of that phrase of St. Thomas: “Faith is of things unseen” (IIa IIae, q. 1, a. 4, 5).

Finally, even for the blessed in heaven God remains in a certain sense incomprehensible, although they see Him face to face. No creature, no idea intervenes between Him and them in their vision of Him, and yet that vision can never be comprehensive like the vision God alone naturally has of Himself. Why is this?

St. Thomas provides a simple explanation: To comprehend a thing in the true sense of the word, is to know it as far as it can be known. A person can know a proposition of geometry without comprehending it, as is the case with anyone who accepts it on the word of the learned; he knows all the elements in the proposition (subject, verb, predicate) but he does not grasp the proof, and hence does not know it as far as it can be known (cf. Ia, q. 12, a. 7). Thus the pupil who knows his master’s teaching in all its parts does not penetrate so deeply as his master, for he has only a confused grasp of the radical connection of each part with the fundamental principles. Or again, a shortsighted person will see the whole of a landscape, but not so distinctly as one whose eyesight is good.

So also in heaven each one of the blessed sees the whole of the divine essence, for it is indivisible. But, since it is the infinite truth, infinitely knowable, they cannot penetrate it so deeply as God. The degree of penetration is according to the intensity of the light of glory they have received, and this again is in proportion to their merits and their love for God acquired here on earth. Consequently they cannot take in at a glance, as God does, the countless possible beings His divine essence virtually contains, and which He could create if He chose.

The divine light and shade of which we have just been speaking contain much that will enlighten our own spiritual life. Our Lord thus expresses it: “He that followeth me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8: 12).

Since the life of grace within us is a participation in the intimate life of God, it, too, will be for us a mysterious light and shade, which we must be careful not to distort or confuse. Grace brings us enlightenment, consolation, and peace, that tranquillity which comes from order. These are the high lights; we are no longer in the “shadow of death.” On the other hand, it is on a plane so exalted that it is beyond the reach of reason; we can never have absolute certitude that we are in the state of grace, though we may have sufficient indications of its presence to permit our approaching the holy table.

Moreover, along the path we have to pursue through life are lights and shadows of another sort. The precepts of God and His Church, the orders of superiors, the advice of spiritual directors—these are rays of light. But we find shadows, too, lurking in the depths of conscience. Not always can we easily distinguish true humility from false, dignity from pride, confidence from presumption, fortitude from temerity. Lastly—and it is here especially that the interior drama lies—in this obscurity characteristic of our life there is the darkness descending from above, the obscurity of grace with its overpowering radiance, and that other darkness from below, arising from the lower elements in our disordered nature.

Let us often ask the good God to enlighten us through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that we may walk aright amid this interior light and shadow. To deny the light because of the shadows and thus substitute the absurd for the mystery, would result in error and discouragement. Let us leave the mystery its rightful place. Let us ask of God the grace to distinguish between the light-transcending darkness from above and that lower darkness which is the darkness of death. And, that we may the more surely obtain this grace, let us often repeat this prayer: “Grant me, O Lord, to know the obstacles that I am more or less conscious of placing in the way of grace and its working in me, and give me the strength to remove them, no matter what it may cost me.” In this way we shall discover the true light, and if darkness persists it will be the darkness from on high, that which enables the just man to live; for to our poor intellect it is but an aspect of the light of life and of the sovereign good. This is what is meant by these words: “He that followeth me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” 23 He who follows me walks neither in the darkness of religious ignorance nor in the darkness of sin and condemnation, but in the light, for “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; therefore “he shall have the light of life, ” which shall never be extinguished.

12. The Wisdom Of God

Hitherto we have been considering the attributes relative to God’s being itself: such as His simplicity, eternity, incomprehensibility. We must now treat of those relating to the divine operations.

God, the self-subsisting Being, is by definition immaterial and therefore intelligent. The two great attributes of His intellect are wisdom and providence.

On the other hand, free will is an absolute perfection resulting from intellect. The act of the divine will is love, and its two great virtues are justice and mercy. As for the external works of God, they have their source in omnipotence.

And so by degrees what may be called the spiritual features of God stand out more clearly. Just as with us, wisdom and prudence are found in the intellect, and in the will are found justice and the other virtues regarding our neighbor, so also in God’s intellect are wisdom and providence, and in His will are justice and mercy. These are the divine virtues, as it were, but with this difference, that obviously in God there can be no virtue regarding one who is superior to Him.

First of all we shall speak of the divine wisdom. All that revelation and theology tell us about it, illumines their teaching on providence.

What are we to understand by wisdom?

Before we can attribute wisdom to God, we must know the meaning of the word, or what people usually understand by it. This will help us further to distinguish between two very different kinds of wisdom: the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God. That they know what wisdom is, is the boastful claim of all, even the skeptic, who would have it consist in universal doubt.

That wisdom is a comprehensive view embracing all things, everyone is agreed. But after that, what divergences there are! We may view things from above, believing that they all proceed from a holy love, or at least are permitted by it, and that all things converge upon one supreme good. Or we may view things from below, considering them the result of a material, blind fatality without any ultimate purpose. Another divergence is that there is a wisdom characterized by a false optimism, shutting its eyes to the existence of evil, and there is a pessimistic, depressing wisdom that sees no good in anything.

St. Paul often speaks of the wisdom of this world, which, he says, is stupidity or foolishness in the eyes of God (I Cor. 3:19). Its peculiarity is that it views all things from below, estimating the whole of human life by the earthly pleasures it brings, or by the material interests to be safeguarded, or again by the satisfaction our ambition and pride may derive from it.

To adopt this attitude in our estimation of things, is to make of self the center of all things, unwittingly to adore self. Practically it amounts to a denial of God and a looking upon others as, so to speak, non-existent.

If the worldling feels himself incapable of playing such a part, he takes as his standard of judgment the opinion of the world, and sometimes becomes its very slave that he may obtain its favors. In the opinion of the world wisdom in the conduct of life usually consists not in the golden mean between two extreme vices, but in an easy-going mediocrity lying midway between the true good and an excessive crudeness or perversity in evildoing. In the eyes of the world Christian perfection is as much an excess in one direction as downright wickedness is in the other. We must avoid extremes in everything, we are told. And so the mediocre comes to be called good, whereas it is nothing but an unstable, confused state lying between the good and the bad. People forget the meaning of the school marks given to children on their reports: very good, good, fair, mediocre, bad, very bad. The difference between the mediocre and the good is lost sight of, the one is confused with the other; instead of rising higher, a man will remain permanently halfway. Hence the word charity is sometimes applied to a reprehensible toleration of the worst evils. Calling itself tolerance and prudent moderation, this “wisdom of the flesh” is equally indulgent to vice and indifferent to virtue.

It is particularly severe toward anything of a higher standard and thus seems to rebuke it. Sometimes it even hates heroic virtue, which is holiness. We have an instance of this in the age of persecutions, which continued even under Marcus Aurelius. This emperor, though wise according to this world’s standards, was never able to perceive the sublimity of Christianity, in spite of the blood of so many martyrs.

As St. Paul says, this self-complacent wisdom is simply “foolishness with God” (I Cor. 3:19). Because of its self-complacency it goes so far as to base all its estimations concerning even the most sublime things, even salvation, upon what is sheer mediocrity and emptiness. It completely overturns the scales of values and well deserves to be called stupidity.

It is clear, therefore, that true wisdom views things from a higher standpoint, considering them as dependent on God their supreme cause and directed to God their last end; whereas stupidity, the opposite of wisdom, is the outlook of the fool, who considers all things from the lowest standpoint, reducing them to the basest possible level, a material, blind fatality or the transitory pleasures of this present life. It was this that made our Lord say: “What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” And St. Paul says: “If any man among you seem to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written: I will catch the wise in their own craftiness. And again: The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. Let no man therefore glory in men” (I Cor. 3:18-21).

In contrast to this let us see what the wisdom of God is, considering it first in itself and then in relation to ourselves.

The divine wisdom in itself

In itself the divine wisdom is the knowledge God has of Himself and of all things, in so far as He is their supreme cause and last end: the divine knowledge of all things through their highest causes.

In other words, it is an uncreated luminous knowledge, penetrating God’s entire being and from these heights extending eternally in all its purity and without contamination of any kind to everything possible as well as to everything that is or has been or will be, however lowly, however evil, and all this in a single glance and from the loftiest standpoint conceivable.

Let us pause to consider each of these terms and so obtain a glimpse of the wonders they seek to express.

a) Divine wisdom is an uncreated luminous knowledge. The Book of Wisdom tells us: “She is more beautiful than the sun… being compared with the light, she is found before it. For after this cometh night, but no evil can overcome wisdom…. She is a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God: and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her. For she is the brightness of eternal light” (Wis. 7: 25, 26, 29).

b) This uncreated luminous knowledge penetrates God’s entire being. To His intelligence there is nothing in Him that is hidden, obscure, mysterious. We, on the other hand, are a mystery to ourselves, by reason of the thousand and one more or less unconscious movements of our sensibility influencing our judgments and our will; by reason, too, of the mysterious graces offered us and often perhaps indirectly rejected. Not even the most introverted souls can boast of a complete knowledge of self.” Neither do I judge my own self, ” says St. Paul.” For I am not conscious to myself of anything. Yet am I not hereby justified: but He that judgeth me, is the Lord” (I Cor. 4: 3, 4).

God’s self-knowledge is absolutely complete, extending to all that is knowable in Him. Our knowledge of God is through creatures, as He is reflected in them; the knowledge God has of Himself is immediate.

The blessed in heaven see Him face to face, but this does not thereby exhaust the infinite fullness of His being and truth. God’s vision of Himself is both immediate and comprehensive. His infinite knowledge exhausts the infinite depths of truth in Him.

What is more, so completely does this luminous thought of His penetrate His wholly immaterial being, that it is absolutely identified with it. There is no slumber here to interrupt the spiritual life, no progress from an imperfect to a more perfect knowledge. He is essentially and from all eternity perfection itself, a pure intellectual flash subsisting eternally, the uncreated spiritual light transcending all things. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 14, a. 1-4.)

c) From these heights God’s knowledge extends instantaneously, in the unique instant of eternity, to every possible mode of existence, as well as to everything that exists now or has existed or will exist, however lowly, however evil.

In what way does God know every possible mode of existence, the innumerable, infinite multitude of beings that might exist? Through the exhaustive knowledge He has of His own omnipotence, which is able to produce them. He is like the artist who delights in contemplating the exquisite works of art he has conceived and might execute, though they will never see the light of day.

And how does God know from His high abode the things that exist now, and all that has been or will be? Whence does He get this knowledge? Does He acquire it as we do from the things themselves as one after another they come into existence? We ourselves thus learn from events as they happen, and our knowledge, imperfect to begin with, becomes more perfect. But can God have anything to learn from facts as they occur? Obviously not; for His knowledge cannot pass from a less to a more perfect state: He is perfection itself. What then, must our answer be?

We must say, St. Thomas remarks (Ia, q. 14, a. 8), that whereas with us knowledge is gauged by the objects on which it depends, the wisdom of God is the cause of things; wisdom is their measure, they are not the measure of wisdom. Divine wisdom is the cause of things as the art of the sculptor is the cause of the statue, as Beethoven’s art produced his immortal symphonies, as Dante’s art produced the Divine Comedy.

But the sculptor’s work is no more than a lifeless statue; the great musician or the great poet can only weave a harmony of sounds or words to express his thought. God, however, through His wisdom can create beings that are living, conscious, intelligent: human souls and myriads of angels.” God’s knowledge in conjunction with His will is the cause of things as the artist’s art is the cause of the work of art” (Ia, q. 14, a. 8).

God, in fact, can no more go a begging to created things for His wisdom than Beethoven could learn anything new from his own score: that is quite clear. God can have nothing to learn from events as they occur; on the contrary, it is from the fecundity of His knowledge that He confers existence upon them. The reason is that His knowledge extends not only to all that He is Himself, but also to all that He can do, to all that He actually realizes, whether by His own power exclusively as when He created in the beginning, or with and through our co-operation as when He directs us to the free performance of our everyday actions. In the unique instant of eternity, God already knows all that will come to pass—all the prayers, for instance, that under His direction we shall freely offer Him later on in order to obtain the graces we need. We will return to this point when we come to speak of providence.

Obviously, then, God’s knowledge, far from being caused by things as it is with us, is itself their cause; they are the works of the divine art, of God’s genius.

But are these created things known to God only in a general, vague way, or distinctly and to the last detail? Revelation tells us that “all the ways of men are open to His eyes” (Prov. 16: 2), that the very hairs of our head are all numbered, that even the least of our actions are known to Him.

Why is this? Because in the production of every least thing God concurs, as to whatever reality and goodness are in it. Only one thing God cannot produce, and that is sin; for sin as such is a disorder, and disorder has no being but is simply the absence of what ought to be. Since, then, the divine causality embraces all things, down to the least detail, so also must the divine knowledge; for obviously God knows all that He does Himself and all that He concurs in producing. As for sin, He merely permits it, tolerates it in view of some greater good. It is through this permission that He has knowledge of it; and He sees it in its final overthrow, which in its own way will once more contribute to the manifestation of the good. We shall see this truth more clearly when we come to speak of God’s providence.

Therefore, God’s knowledge of whatever reality and goodness there is in the universe is from Himself; the source upon which He draws for that knowledge is Himself.

The divine wisdom compared with the highest human wisdom

With us, the knowledge of spiritual and divine things is obtained from below, in the mirror of sensible things. God, on the other hand, views all things from on high, in Himself and His own eminent causality.

Do what we may, we here on earth see the spiritual and the divine only through their reflection in material things. It is owing to this that we attach immense importance to material happenings, such as the loss of an eye, whereas events of the spiritual world, with consequences that are incalculable, are allowed to pass almost unnoticed, such as an act of charity in the order of goodness, or in the sphere of evil a mortal sin. In other words, we see the spiritual and the divine as in the twilight, in the shadow of the sensible; to use the expression of St. Augustine, ours is an evening vision.

With God it is quite the contrary. In the light of an eternal morning His knowledge is first of all directed to Himself, and in His own very pure essence He sees from above all possible creatures, and those that now exist or have existed or will exist. It is from on high and in spiritual things that He sees the material. To hear a symphony, He has no need of senses as we have; His knowledge of it is from a higher source, in the musical law that gave it birth, and thus it far surpasses the knowledge of the genius who composed it.

It is not through the body that God views the soul of the just; it is rather through the soul that He views the body as a sort of radiation of the soul. Hence His sight is not dazzled by outward show, by wealth and its trappings; what counts with God is charity. A beggar in rags but with the heart of a saint, is of incomparably greater worth in the sight of God than a Caesar in all the splendor of his human glory. Again, to Him there is an immense difference between a little child before it is baptized and the same child after baptism.

Looked at in the light of this world our Savior’s passion appears to us enshrouded in gloom, but how radiant it must be when seen from on high, as the culminating point of history, that point to which everything in the Old Testament led up and from which everything in the New descends!

God does not see created things immediately in themselves, in the dim glimmer of their created illumination, as though descending to their level and made dependent on them; He sees them in Himself and His own radiant light. God cannot see created things except from above: any other mode of knowledge would argue imperfection and would cease to be divine contemplation. Whatever reality and goodness there is in creatures is seen by the divine wisdom as a radiation of the glory of “Him who is.”

Whereas we can hardly conceive of eternity except by relating it to the particular time period in which we live, God sees the whole succession of time periods in the light of an unchanging eternity. As a man standing on the summit of a mountain takes in at a single glance all who follow one another in the plain below, so also in one eternal instant God sees the entire succession of time periods; our birth simultaneously with our death, our trials with the glory they merit, the sufferings of the just with the endless spiritual profit resulting from them. He sees the effects in their causes, and the means in the ends they subserve.

The lives of the saints are very beautiful even in their external aspect as history records them; but they are incomparably more beautiful in the mind of God, who sees everything in its true inwardness and from above, who sees directly the grace in the souls of the just with their actual degree of charity and the degree they will have reached at the end of their journey. He sees our lives in the light of the divine idea directing them, an idea that will be fully realized only in heaven. Between God’s wisdom and ours there is all the difference we observe between a stained-glass window as seen from within the church and as seen from without.

This infinite wisdom of God has been revealed to us in the person of our Lord the incarnate Word, in His life and preaching, His death, resurrection, and ascension. Our Lord has bestowed upon us a participation in this selfsame divine wisdom through living faith illumined by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the gifts of wisdom and understanding, enabling us to penetrate and experience the sweetness of the mysteries of salvation. Let our practical conclusion be to accustom ourselves by degrees to see all things from God’s higher point of view, considering them not as something that may give us pleasure or satisfy our self-love and pride, but in their relation to God the first cause and last end. In the spirit of faith and by the dim light it sheds let us accustom ourselves gradually to see all things in God. Let us see in the pleasant events of our life the tokens of God’s goodness, and also in the painful and unexpected afflictions a call to a higher life, as being so many graces sent for our purification, and therefore often more to be prized than consolations. St. Peter crucified was nearer to God than on Thabor.

By thus accustoming ourselves to live by faith and the gift of wisdom we shall become every day better fitted to enter into that knowledge which is to be ours at the end of our journey through life. We shall then see God face to face, and in Him all that emanates from Him, especially those things we have loved on earth with a supernatural love. St. Francis and St. Dominic thus behold in God the destinies of their orders, and a Christian mother on entering heaven sees in Him the spiritual needs of the son she has left on earth and the prayers she must offer for him.

This wisdom corresponds to the beatitude promised to peacemakers. In heaven, of course, it will be the source of unchanging peace as well as perfect joy; here on earth, even when the joy is absent, it brings us peace, that tranquillity which comes from order through union with God.

13. The Will And Holy Love Of God

Now that we have spoken of God’s intellect and wisdom, a right conception of providence requires further that we consider the nature of His holy will and the love He has both for Himself and for us. Providence in God, like prudence in us, presupposes the love of the supreme good, to which it directs all things.

No word is so much profaned as love. There is a carnal wisdom which St. Paul calls stupidity and foolishness, and there is also a baser sort of love which is simply the grossest egoism and which often through jealousy is instantly transformed into a raging hatred. But however low a soul may sink, it can never quite forget that in true love we have a perfection so exalted and so pure that we should look in vain for any trace of imperfection in it.

If we were asked whether God can be sad, we at once see that this cannot be. If we were asked whether He can be angry, we promptly understand that the term can be attributed to Him only by way of metaphor to express His justice. If we were asked whether love is to be found formally in Him, without the least hesitation we say that He loves us in the strict and fullest sense of the term.

Let us see, then, (1) in what way love is in God, in what way He loves Himself, and (2) the nature of His love for us. We will follow St. Thomas throughout (Ia, q. 19, 20), and while we are speaking of God’s love for us we shall see with him what is meant by the will of expression in God and the will of His good pleasure. This distinction is of the first importance for a right understanding of what self-abandonment to Providence must be.

The love of God for Himself

Love as it is in God cannot consist in a sensible passion or emotion, however well regulated. There can be no sensibility in God, because He is pure spirit.

But there can be no divine intellect, with its knowledge of the good, unless there is a divine will to will that good. This will cannot be a simple faculty of willing. It would be imperfect, were it not of itself always in act. The first act of the will is love for the good, a love entirely spiritual as is the intellect which directs it. The other acts of the will (desiring, willing, consenting, choosing, utilizing, and even hating) all proceed from love, that is the very awakening of the will in its contact with the good which is its object (Ia, q. 20, a. 1).

In God, then, a wholly spiritual and eternal act of love for the good necessarily exists, and this good loved from all eternity is God Himself, His infinite perfection, which is the fullness of being. God loves Himself as much as He is capable of being loved, that is, infinitely. This necessary act is not inferior to liberty but transcends it. Indeed this love is identified with the sovereign good, the supreme object of love. From its ardor it is rightly termed a zealous love; it is like an eternally subsisting burning flame, ignis ardens. As the Scripture says, “God is a consuming fire” (Deut. 4: 24).

We do well to contemplate this burning love for the good which exists from all eternity in God, especially when we consider the amount of injustice and jealousy that is in the world and feel in our hearts how feeble at times is our own love for the good, how lacking in constancy and perseverance.

We read in the Gospel: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill” (Matt. 5: 6). This is that burning love for the good which is mightier than all contradictions, than all weariness and temptations to discouragement we may meet with, a love mighty as death, even mightier than death, as seen in our Lord and the martyrs. Yet this mighty, ardent love for the good, which must eventually dominate everything in our hearts, is but a spark springing from that spiritual furnace in God, the uncreated love for the sovereign good.

The characteristics of this love

In the first place, it is supremely holy, or rather it is holiness itself; that is to say, it is absolutely pure, and in its purity unchangeable. Absolutely pure, for obviously it cannot in any way be sullied or debased by sin or imperfection, since sin consists in turning one’s back on God and His commands, and imperfection is a refusal to follow His counsels.

And in its purity it is unchangeable. God can never cease to be the sovereign good. He can never cease to know and hence to love Himself. He necessarily loves Himself, and His love not only cleaves unalterably to the sovereign good, but is identified with it, loving it above all things. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 19, a. 3, 7.)

Certain philosophers, such as Kant, have gone so far astray as to see in this love of God preferring Himself to all else, not the absolute holiness it is, but the very height of egoism. They have also maintained that God cannot love Himself above all things, that He could not have created us for His own glory, but for ourselves alone, and that consequently it is not He but our own personal dignity that should hold the supreme place in our love.

On the plea of absolving God of egoism, this novel aberration places egoism before us as the ideal we should aim at. It confounds the two extremes, holiness and egoism, because it neglects to define what egoism is.

Egoism is an inordinate self-love in which self is preferred to God the sovereign good, or to one’s family or country. But how can God prefer Himself to the sovereign good, since He is identified with it?

Hence God in preferring Himself to all things is preferring the sovereign good. For Him to do otherwise would be an intolerable disorder; He would be like the miser who prefers his gold to his own personal dignity. For God to prefer any creature to Himself would amount to a mortal sin in Him, and that is the final absurdity.

When God creates, therefore, it is not out of egoism at all; on the contrary, it is to manifest His goodness externally. In subordinating everything to Himself He is subordinating us to the sovereign good, and this He does for our greater happiness. Our beatitude is incomparably greater in the possession and love of God through praise than if it were a mere complacency in our own personal dignity. The more we give glory to God, the greater will be our own glory.” Not to us, O Lord, not to us: but to Thy name give glory” (Ps. 113: 1). Our greatest glory, O Lord, is to give glory to Thee.

God’s love for Himself has no taint of egoism; rather it is holiness itself. And not only is it absolutely pure and incapable of sin, but it has as its inevitable sequel a holy hatred of everything that is evil. In fact, no true love of the good can exist without a detestation of evil; we cannot love the sovereign good above all things without a sovereign detestation of sin. God cannot have that holy zeal for His own glory, which is the manifestation of His goodness, without an equally ardent detestation of sin. This is quite evident. With Him there can be no bargaining or compromising with evil. This, in the divine light and shade, stands out in clear relief. Nevertheless—and here is the shadow—sin does occur. Where sin is willfully persisted in, the love of God, which is gentleness itself, becomes a thing of terror.” Love is as strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell” (Cant. 8: 6). God detests sin with a burning hatred, which is simply the obverse of His ardent love for the good.

God’s love for Himself is at once an alluring holiness and a thing of dread, gentle yet terrible, like the house of God which Jacob speaks of (Gen. 28: 17).

This holiness implies all perfections, even those so apparently opposed as infinite justice and infinite mercy, the two great virtues of divine love.

In this holy love of God for Himself is contained a twofold lesson. In the first place, since God is infinitely better than we are, we must love Him more than ourselves, at least in preference to ourselves with a love based on a right estimation of values, with a love, too, that is efficacious and orients our whole life to Him. Secondly, as God loves Himself with a holy love, so ought we to love with a holy love our own soul and its destiny, for it has been created to give glory to God eternally. Let us love ourselves with this holy love, in God and for His sake; this is the way to overcome that inordinate love of self in which egoism consists. With the egoist, self-love is in one sense excessive, since he devotes too much love to the lower element in him; but in another sense it falls short of what it should be: he does not love sufficiently the spiritual element in his soul, that element which was created to hymn the glories of God. (Cf. St. Thomas, Ia IIae, q. 29, a. 4; IIa IIae, q. 25, a. 7.)

God’s love for us

Such being the love God has for Himself, how can it be directed to anything else besides? Some unbelievers, as also the deists, hold that God cannot possibly love us in the true sense of the term: the use of the word “love” in this connection is purely metaphorical. To love some other being, they say, is to be attracted by it. But God, the plenitude of all good, can find nothing in us to attract Him; He cannot be passive to an attraction exerted by so paltry a good as we are.

The answer to this deist objection is that in the love God has for us there is no passivity whatever; it is essentially active, creative, life-giving: it is sheer generosity and is supremely free. It is true love in the strictest and highest sense of the word.

No passivity is possible in the love God has for us. Obviously He cannot be attracted by a created good, or be passive under the attraction of a good so paltry, or be captivated by it. He loves us, not because He found us worthy of love; on the contrary, in His sight we are made worthy of His love because He has first loved us.” What hast thou that thou hast not received?” says St. Paul (I Cor. 4: 7) ; and St. Thomas says: “The love of God is the cause infusing and creating goodness in things” (Ia, q. 20, a. 2).

Any good in us, whether natural or supernatural, can come only from God, the source of all good, can come only from His creative, life-giving love. This love of His does not presuppose anything worthy of love in us, but is the very source of that worthiness, creating, conserving, increasing it in us, yet without violence to our liberty.

For what reason, then, has God loved us with this creative love? Why has He given us existence, life, intellect, and will? Out of sheer generosity. Is it not characteristic of goodness to be diffusive of itself and to give itself in generous abundance? Since goodness tends naturally to communicate itself, it is essentially diffusive of itself. In the physical order the sun gives out light and genial heat; plants and animals, upon reaching maturity, tend to reproduce themselves. In the moral and spiritual order a person who, like the saints, has a passion for goodness will know no rest until he has aroused in others the same aspirations, the same love. Since God is the sovereign good and the fullness of all being, the eternal love of the good having all the zeal and ardor of love, it is most fitting that He should give of the riches that are in Him, even as a singer delights in re-echoing abroad the rich melodies of his song. It is in the highest degree fitting, therefore, that God should love us with this creative love by giving us existence and life.

But does it follow that creation is not a free act; that, unless He created, God would be neither good nor wise? By no means. Scripture tells us that “God worketh all things according to the counsel of His will” (Ephes. 1: 11), and the Church proclaims the absolute liberty of creative love. It is indeed highly appropriate that God should create, but also that He should be altogether free in creating, so that there would have been nothing derogatory to Him in not creating: in His own intimate life God would have none the less been infinitely good and infinitely wise. As Bossuet says, God is no greater for having created the universe. The fact of His conferring existence on us cannot bring the smallest increase to His infinite perfection. Creation is an absolutely free act of love. In this sense even the natural gifts we have received are gratuitous.

But in God there is a still greater and freer act of love, by which He has bestowed on us the even more gratuitous gift of grace, that participation in His intimate life, a gift to which our nature has no claim whatever. By this life-saving love He has made us worthy to be loved in His sight, and that not merely as creatures but as His children, thus fitting us to behold Him and love Him for eternity.

We are loved by God far more than we think. To realize the extent of His love for us, we should have to know fully the value of grace when it has reached its final development in the glory of heaven; we would have to see God, if only for an instant.

In the incarnation, the redemption, and the Eucharist, God’s love for us reaches its consummation. To realize how intense is this love, we should have to appreciate to the full the infinite value of the redemptive part of the incarnation and the merits our Lord gained for us, and hence the value of all the spiritual graces that flow from them. In giving birth to Mary, St. Anne was far more loved by God than she knew, for she could not have foreseen that the child God had given her would be the mother of the Savior and of all mankind. So, too, is it with us, though with due reserves: God loves us far more than we think, especially in times of trial when He appears to desert us; for it is then He bestows upon us His most precious, most profound, most life-giving graces. At such times as these, let us say with St. Teresa: “Lord, Thou knowest all things, canst do all things, and Thou dost love me.”

Such in essence is the love God has for us, a creative and life-giving love; supremely generous and supremely free.

The characteristics of this love

They are principally four: It is universal; yet it has its free preferences; and these are wholly actuated by wisdom; and it is invincible.

It is universal, extending to the very least of creatures. God loves them as a farm owner loves his fields, his house, and the animals that serve his needs. But first and foremost this love is directed to the souls of human beings: to the soul of a sinner that it may be converted, to the soul of a just man that it may persevere, to the soul tried by temptation that it may not faint, and to the soul in its last hour on earth before it comes before God’s judgment seat (Ia, q. 20, a. 2, 3).

Nevertheless, for all its universality, this love has its free preferences. If to every soul it gives the graces sufficient and necessary for salvation, upon some—St. Joseph, for instance, St. Peter, St. John, St. Paul, the founders of religious orders-it confers graces of predilection. And every one of these saints will confess with St. Paul (I Cor. 4:7), “What hast thou that thou hast not received?” and again, “It is God who worketh in us both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will” (Phil. 2: 13). As the singer imparts at will a greater resonance to certain notes, so also God in the bestowal of His graces shows His predilection for some over others. The divine seed that God casts into souls depends for its degree of beauty entirely upon His good pleasure.

Yet this supreme liberty in His preferences preserves always that admirable order which wisdom and charity demand.” It is always the best that God prefers, ” says St. Thomas, “for, since He is the source of all goodness, one thing would not be better than another, did He not love it with a greater love” (Ia, q. 20, a. 3).

God prefers spiritual to corporeal beings, the latter being created for the former. The Mother of the incarnate Word is preferred before every other created being; and God’s only Son is preferred before His Virgin Mother. Christ was delivered up on our behalf, not because He was loved less by God than we are, but that by saving us He might emerge gloriously triumphant over the devil, sin, and death (Ia, q. 20, a. 4 ad Ium).

In the love of God everything is subordinated to the manifestation of His goodness. This is the constant refrain of the psalm: “Praise the Lord for He is good; for His mercy endureth forever” (Ps. 135).

One last perfection of divine love: in its strength it is invincible, in the sense that without its divine permission nothing can resist it and that by its power everything is made to conspire to the eventual fulfilment of the good. In this sense the love of God is mightier than death: mightier than physical death, since it raised up Christ Jesus and will raise us up at the last day; mightier than spiritual death, for it is able to convert the most hardened sinner, raising to life again the soul that is dead, and that not once, but many times, in the course of its earthly existence.

The will of expression and the will of good pleasure in God

That our will should be made to conform to the divine will and its holy love is of course obvious; for, as St. Thomas says, 24 any goodness in our voluntary acts and in the will itself depends on the end to which they are directed. Now the ultimate end of the human will is the sovereign good, which is also the primary object of the divine will, that object in view of which all other things are willed by it.

Here, however, we must distinguish with the whole of tradition between the divine will of good pleasure and the divine will of expression. 25 By the divine will of expression we mean all those external signs that reveal God’s will-commands, prohibitions, the spirit underlying the counsels, and everything that happens by His will or permission. The divine will thus expressed, especially in commands, comes within the domain of obedience, and, as St. Thomas remarks, 26 is what we refer to when we say in the Our Father, “Thy will be done.”

The divine will of good pleasure is the interior act of God’s will, which often is not yet revealed or expressed externally. Upon it depends our still uncertain future—future events, future joys and trials, whether of long or short duration, the hour and circumstances of our death, and so on. As St. Francis of Sales remarks 27 and Bossuet after him, 28 whereas the expressed will of God is the domain of obedience, the will of His good pleasure is the domain of trusting surrender. As we will explain at some length later on, in making our will conform daily to the divine will as expressed, we must for the rest abandon ourselves in all confidence to the divine will of good pleasure, for we are certain beforehand that it wills nothing, permits nothing, unless for the spiritual and eternal welfare of those who love God and persevere in that love.

Such is God’s holy will and His love for us. It is this love that has been revealed to us in our Lord, whose heart is a glowing furnace of charity.

Christ’s love for us, like that of His heavenly Father, is absolutely holy and inspired by sheer generosity: He has not been drawn to us, but we to Him: “You have not chosen me, ” He says, “but I have chosen you” (John 15: 16). Again, the love of Jesus for His Father and for us has ever been invincible: it constrained Him to submit to death, and by His death he raises up souls to a new life, once again directing upon them the stream of the divine mercies.

As a practical conclusion, we must allow ourselves to be loved by this exceedingly holy, purifying, life-giving love, and submit to its purifications, however painful they may be at times. And it should be met with a generous response, according to these words of St. John: “Let us love God: because He hath first loved us” (I John 4: 10). We must love the Lord for His own sake, with a purity of intention rising above the promptings of vainglory and pride and that self-seeking which is induced by jealousy and the desire for the esteem of men.

The beginning in us of a pure love for God will then be some participation in that love which God has for Himself, a spark from that divine furnace of His own self-love. And as our love grows purer daily, it will increase in holiness, generosity, and strength. Indeed it will make us invincible, according to the phrase of St. Paul (Rom. 8: 1), “If God be with us, who is against us?” And finally, our love thus gradually purified will enable us to triumph over death itself and will open the gates of paradise to us. When we enter into glory, we shall be established forever in a supernatural love for God that can nevermore be lost or lessened.

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13

It must be noted, however, that the act of creation, being a free act, cannot be deduced from the divine nature; neither can the exercise of mercy and justice with respect to creatures.

14

Although our happiness in heaven will have a beginning, it will be rightly called eternal life, for it will have as its measure a participated eternity. The beatific vision, in fact, is an ever-unchanging act, far transcending the continuous time of our earthly life, and that discrete time marking the thought succession of the angel. This is the element of truth in Plato’s allegory of the cave.

15

This is the element of truth in Plato’s allegory of the cave.

16

Scripture more often speaks of that lower darkness in which the soul perishes; but it also speaks of the higher obscurity of faith, corresponding to the “light inaccessible” where God abides. Of the lower darkness it is said: The wicked man “shall not depart out of darkness” (lob 15: 30). The nations before the coming of Christ “sat in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Ps. 106:10). It was in the midst of this darkness that the Light of salvation descended from on high: “To the righteous a light is risen up in darkness” (Ps. 111: 4) ; “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light’, (Is. 9: 2; Matt. 4: 16) “For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord” (Eph. 5: 8; “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness” (I John 1: 5). But sometimes, relatively to us, God is spoken of as a divine darkness: “Clouds and darkness are round about Him…. His lightnings have shone forth in the world” (Ps. 96: 2, 4) ; “And the glory of the Lord dwelt upon Sinai, covering it with a cloud six days: and the seventh day He called him out of the midst of the cloud’, (Ex. 24:16: cf. Ex. 19: 9; 20: 21).

17

Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 12, a. 4; q. 56, a. 3.

18

Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 12, a. 2.

19

Cf. St. Thomas. Ia. q. 12, a. 1.

20

Cf. Comment. 5. Thomae in Job, chaps. 4, 6, 8.

21

John 8:12.

22

Cf. St. Thomas. Ia. n. 12. a. 1.

23

Cf. John 8:12.

24

Cf. St. Thomas, Ia IIae, q. 19, a. 9.

25

Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 19, a. 11, 12.

26

Cf St. Thomas, Ia, q. 19, a. 11.

27

Treatise on the Love of God, Bk. VIII, chap. 3; Bk. IX, chap. 6.

28

Etats d’oraison, Bk. VIII, 9.

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