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Page 18
Is it any wonder then that, now and again, some chosen child of hers
catches a mirrored glimpse of what she herself beholds with unveiled
face; that some Catholic soul, now and again, chosen and called by God
to this amazing privilege, should suddenly perceive, as never before,
that God is the one and only Absolute Beauty, and that, compared with
the contemplation of this Beauty--which contemplation is, after all, the
final life of Eternity to which every redeemed soul shall come--all the
activities of earthly life are nothing; and that, in her passion for
this adorable God, she should run into a secret room and _shut the door
and pray to her Father Who is in secret_, and so remain praying, a
hidden channel of life to the whole of that Body of which she is a
member, an intercessor for the whole of that Society of which she is one
unit? There in silence, then, she sits at Jesus' feet and listens to the
Voice which is _as the sound of many waters_; in the whiteness of her
cell watches Him Whose _Face is as a Flame of Fire_, and in austerity
and fasting _tastes and finds that the Lord is gracious._
Of course this is but madness and folly to those who know God only in
His Creation, who imagine Him merely as the Soul of the World and the
Vitality of Created Life. To such as these earth is His highest Heaven
and the beauty of the world the noblest vision that can be conceived.
Yet to that soul that is Catholic, who understands that the Eternal
Throne is indeed above the stars and that the Transcendence of God is as
fully a truth as His Immanence--that God in Himself, apart from all
that He has made, is all-fair and all-sufficient in His own Beauty--to
such a soul as this, if called to such a life, there is no need that the
Church should declare explicitly that the Contemplative Life is the
highest. She knows it already.
(ii) The _First Great Commandment_ of the Law, then, is inevitably
followed by the Second, and the Catholic interpretation of the Second is
thought by the world, which understands neither, to be as extravagant as
her interpretation of the First.
For this Divine Church that knows God is also a Human Society that
dwells among men, and since she in herself unites Divinity and Humanity,
she cannot rest until she has united them everywhere else.
For, as she turns her eyes from God to men, she sees there immortal
souls, made in the image of God and made for Him and Him alone, seeking
to satisfy themselves with Creation instead of with the Creator. She
hears how the world preaches the sanctity of the temperament, and the
holiness of the individual point of view, as if there were no
Transcendent God at all and no objective external Revelation ever made
by Him. She sees how men, instead of seeking to conform themselves to
God's Revelation of Himself, attempt rather to conform such fragments of
that Revelation as have reached them to their own points of view; she
listens to talk about "aspects of truth" and "schools of thought" and
the "values of experience" as if God had never spoken either in the
thunders of Sinai or the still voice of Galilee.
Is it any wonder, then, that her Proselytism appears to such a world as
extravagant as her Contemplation, her passion for men as unreasonable as
her passion for God, when that world sees her bring herself from her
cloisters and her secret places to proclaim as with a trumpet those
demands of God which He has made known, those Laws which He has
promulgated, and those rewards which He has promised? For how can she do
otherwise who has looked on the all-glorious Face of God and then on the
vacant and complacent faces of men--she who knows God's infinite
capacity for satisfying men and men's all but infinite incapacity for
seeking God--when she sees some poor soul shutting herself up indeed
within the deadly and chilly walls of her own "temperament" and
"individual point of view," when earth and heaven and the Lord of them
both is waiting for her outside?
The Church, then, is too much interested in men and too much absorbed in
God. Of course she is too much interested and too much absorbed, for she
alone knows the value and capacity of both; she who is herself both
Divine and Human. For Religion, to her, is not an elegant accomplishment
or a graceful philosophy or a pleasing scheme of conjectures. It is the
fiery bond between God and man, neither of whom can be satisfied
without the other, the One in virtue of His Love and the other in virtue
of his createdness. She alone, then, understands and reconciles the
tremendous Paradox of the Law that is Old as well as New. _Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart ... and thy neighbour as
thyself _.
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