This We Believe! Meditations on the Apostles Creed

Our naive reality, our childlike helplessness in the void, our deep-seated absurdity, the ridiculousness that is our prerogative, our abysmal weakness they are our masks and our court dress. For these the angels laugh and weep; s ln Hebrew, strength and power are called horns. Claudel preserves this sense in his allusion to the horns of the cross, or the wounds in Christ's hands, where his power was concealed. Presence, 37 Providence The true God is equally concerned with the luminosity of a nebula and the structure of an earthworm.

With what in- credible attention to detail, what sympathy, what benevo- lence, what wisdom, what compassion, what humor! He car- ries on an uninterrupted conversation with all His creatures. How, then, could He not be concerned for us? In man, the relation of cause to effect takes on the conscious quality of filiation, of the relation of a father to a son. He resides at the roots of all things, He is in no one place because He Himself is the Father of all location, of all geometric and mathematical co- ordinates of space. Theology tells us that He is pure Action, the living substance residing in itself.

Our heart tells us simply that He made us, that He is involved in our existence and our lives as the author of the idea by virtue of which we came to be. It is not God who exists in rela- tion to the heart, it is the heart which exists in relation to Him. Wherever God is, the heart is with Him. It is in Him. We should try to meet Him within our hearts by im- mersing ourselves in His divine Presence.

The proud man who has been knocked to the ground suddenly someone is at his throat, a knee is on his chest , the invalid, at the mercy of his private monster for days and months and years, the husband surrounded by the children his wife has just abandoned, the merchant facing the threat of bankruptcy, the mother beside the child who has just died "Dost thou love Me?

So much the worse if you find Me abrupt and sudden, cruel and fierce! At least, I have suc- ceeded in knocking you off your perch. I am down here. The Hindus told you to ascend, well, I tell you to come down! Lord, who is it You are after? Surely not this nonentity, this cipher whose name can be found in the telephone book! You show me someone deep inside me, beyond me, older than I, but more myself than I am.

Emmaiis, 39 God alone can teach us to love God. All we can do is prepare the inflammable substance as best we can and, as the physicists say nowadays, wait for the chain reaction. All we can do, within the limitations of our miserable egotism, is listen for and help along that feeble cry which struggles to say, Father! The conversion of the mind is difficult enough, but how much more so the conversion of the heart! For the love of God is total, embracing all things, and jealous; it is at once 26 I Believe in God personal and transcendent.

It beckons us to that path which leads to His heart of hearts, for God is love. He is not too weary after all the miracles, nor all the miseries in which we founder, nor all the extremities through which our fortunes lead us, to reveal Himself to us as our one hope of salvation, Emmatis, 40 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength!

We are only too glad to pass on these formidable words to our children, and if You ordered us, as You did the Israelites, to inscribe them on our doors, to wear them on little bands around our arms and foreheads, this would be far easier than to engrave them on our souls. You do not ask much just our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole strength. Even in our own interests and to satisfy our most urgent and immediate needs, we manage to use only a weak, inadequate, and incoherent portion of those potentialities which are attributed to us.

Average Man, even when backed to the wall and hard pressed on all sides by circumstance, he can scarcely manage to summon, for better or worse, a feeble last recourse. And we are to do all this for Yow sake, for the sake of the Absentee par excellence, the how shall I say? My reader may say, "I do not know about those Israelites, but as for me, the person under discussion, I manage to get along pretty well without all this. There is a heart in your breast that knows more about God's command, and has known it longer, than you do. For this heart incessantly and tirelessly makes, unmakes, and remakes I Believe in God, the Father Almighty 27 you, drenches you in Him, and forces you back to the very extremity of your being.

Which is another way of saying that we live by God, we take fire from God, through God alone we nourish that flame which we must keep alive for our allotted time. I am well aware that we do not meet God face to face, but what more ingenious chemistry could He devise than to blend Himself with our breathing? Emmaus, 41 It is only after the deliverance from Egypt, after the manna, the parting of the waters, after Sinai, after those forty years when an entire nation took their nourishment from His very hands, that God, through the mouth of His representa- tive, Moses, on the eve of His death, removes the veil from a dread choice, as if it could no longer be withheld, and de- cides to betray His inmost thoughts and desires.

And simi- larly, it is only after three years of preaching, teaching, and petitioning, of the revelation of all the mysteries, corroborated by all the miracles, after the Last Supper, the Cross, and the Resurrection, that Our Lord ventures to ask His chief disciple, almost with a certain timidity, the question which has been postponed until then, "Peter, dost thou love me? Do you love Me? Is it really from the bottom of your heart and your soul and your mind? He is there like the light, ready to take advantage of the tiniest crack.

And what an enormous breach is being widened every hour of the day and night by those thousands of priests and believers who, surrendering to their duty, are beginning to speak to God in His own language! Accompagnements, 44 There is an intelligence at work on us which the learned theologian calls subtle, which I like to read as in- genious. Under this penetrating gaze, at once grave and per- sistent, we feel our soul becoming clear even in its own eyes. Being pure, "she penetrates and pervades all things by reason of her purity. It releases our stiffened limbs, and teaches us not to use the left hand to make the sign of the cross.

It penetrates all things. This does not mean that it has any traffic with sin, but it has that simplicity and sincerity which is able to distinguish light from shadows and, by separating the shadows, renders them distinct and ready to disappear at the confessional grill. It impregnates us to the roots, it takes a sort of plaster cast of us. This vigorous and pithy benevolence, which is not put off by any dodge or denial, pushes quietly and relentlessly into our inmost vitals. It blends baptism, union, spirit with our breathing. In its presence, the ordinary man suddenly feels that he is accepted, that he can be understood.

Just let it try to withdraw now, and the sense of loss would wring from man a cry of anguish and despair. The Church knows what it is saying when it speaks of an inner light, a lifegiving light! Just as one says that a patient has a fever, here we in our turn "have" light and truth. This Creator God on whom the most powerful spirits fear to gaze becomes, against all the laws of nature, our Lover in the most 30 I Believe in God possessive sense of the word, adhering to the deepest root of our being.

He becomes not only our lover but our son, for He has also assumed our face and our flesh! Overcome with wonder, I can only say it is madness, it is too much. Look, see God striding across the earth like a sower; He takes His heart in both hands, and scatters it over the face of the earth! Isdie, , 46 "Could you not then watch one hour with me? The Eternal is at your feet, Israel, do you not hear Him begging for the favor of an hour? Has He done nothing for you, ungrateful people?

Have you found Him faithless or untrue? What cause has He given you that you now refuse Him your trust? For all eternity I have loved you, He says, I have cared for you, I have been yours. One would say that I am God just for your sake. And you, can you not give Me an hour? One hour is all the time I need to give you everything. One hour is all I need to restore to my beloved Son all that I created for his sake.

If you only knew what need you have of Me and I, in turn, of you! Each day we give Him food and drink, we offer Him the fruits of our labors. There is a whole race whose sole duty is to serve Him. And surely not without an element of fear, that fear which is the beginning of wisdom. Nor without an ele- ment of interest; why not? God knows the human heart. He wants us to love Him with our whole heart and our whole strength; why should He not want us to invest in Him a vital I Believe in God, the Father Almighty 31 interest, a daily interest, a basic interest composed of all other types of interest, including the most humble?

Emmaus, 48 Intimacy with God By means of intimacy, by means of forcing His com- pany on us, by means of that fine net of obligations and ges- tures which He spreads over all the activities of our lives, God hopes that eventually we will feel at home, that we will gain confidence, and through confidence, Faith, and through Faith, good faith. God hopes that we will no longer respond ration- ally but instinctively to His wishes, and that we will learn to show to Him, Who is Grace itself, something other than an ill grace.

God hopes that one day there will move deep in our hearts, like an underground stream, the meaning of this cry: Emmaus, 49 God, Motive of Our Actions God, on whom no good intention is lost, nor any lovely object, nor any kind deed, and who knows the true value of the orchid and the diamond which no human eye will ever see, also knows anything that we do for His sake, which should be our sole motive. All this passes from the outside in the whole Creation, all things visible and invisible, in one draught, and with it that part of me which is perpetually creating it anew.

It is worth your while to linger for a moment with eyes and ears closed so that, when you reopen them, you may partake more fully and deeply of the Cause. It is staggering to realize that for this work He needed us, and continues to need us.

Hence the incomparable dignity of the Blessed Virgin over all other saints. And we, too, according to our station in life, according to our vocation in the Church, are called to God's assistance.

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Indeed, in the course of the working days, in the occupations and preoccu- pations of the week, we are inclined to forget God, to stop thinking about Him. It is therefore necessary to set aside one day for the express purpose of thinking of Him, a day to be consecrated to Him, to be lived in His presence and in His awareness. We must insert a pause, suspend the course of our I Believe in God, the Father Almighty 33 activities and our labors in order to place ourselves in an atti- tude of meditation and retreat, and to give our Master time to see and judge what we have done.

This abstention, this recess, is therefore the first condition of sanctification. Sophie, 53 Man and the Angels What do you think of this idea: Man was made to give God the acknowledgment, the free and intelligent homage of the various ranks of the material Creation which are ranged above and beside and around him, down to the lowest form of life.

The Angel draws his reason for being directly from God Whom he translates at sight, thereby real- izing his own existence in that peculiar manner which dis- tinguishes him from the other spirits around him who are necessary to his apparition. Presence, 54 GocFs Relations with Man in the Bible The terrible Yahweh of Sinai, who manifested Himself in thunder and earthquakes, a woman has ravished with one glance of her eyes, with one bead of her necklace. She brings Him into her mother's house, where she will prepare for Him that cup which He will have ample time to savor at Gethsemane and on Calvary.

And He in turn will teach her something which conquers death, which is above death, and in comparison with which the gift of one's person, or indeed one's very substance, is worth nothing at all. From this point on, sacred history is nothing but a love 5 The woman represents Humanity; cf. Canticle of Canticles, 4: This Humanity who is a woman and who was so moving in the part of Rebecca and of Ruth, and so strong in the role of Delilah and of Bathsheba, we now see rescued from devils by a youth sent into the heart of Asia for this purpose; we see the King of the Universe sharing his scepter with her, before the courage of a besieged city puts a victorious sword in his hands.

You are the human plot which I have set aside for myself in order to obtain, out of all coun- tries and ages, the perfect blossom for which I have waited. I chose you, I transplanted you, I carried you in my arms. For forty years I, Myself, fed and watered you. It is My will that you be fed and watered only by Me; it is My will to possess you and to give Myself to you to possess in utter de- pendence, to instil in you forever the taste for Me, for the Father and the Mother that I am. I wish there to be no human activity, whether it be to eat or to work, to fight or to propagate, or to exercise whatever form of possession has escaped My glance.

The problem now is to give the desired form to this instrument of My will which is what you must be. This is not the work of a day. For it is not enough for Me to fashion you a body, I must fashion you a heart to match. Sarah and Tobias, Esther and Assuerus, and Judith.

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I Believe in God, the Father Almighty 35 by having to do without Me, by all the methods which I will use to train you, by not being able to get along without Me and My love. Learn from Me what it has cost to teach you to be My son. I am not only One who imposes, but One who proposes. Thus speaks the Eternal to His people, as the basket maker speaks to the basket taking shape in his hands. Emmaiis, 56 God the Creator God has sown the world with His likeness. J'aime, 26 57 From the first lines of Genesis, how happy we are to see divine Love operating not so much by way of injunction as by way of solicitation.

The Fiat lux does not present light as a fabrication but as a spontaneous eruption in answer to a wish. And how could the sea and the desert ever bring them- selves to begrudge the fish, the birds, and all the other animals to that Lover who questions them with such irresistible sweet- ness? Rose, 70 58 During the last two centuries, Christians have had only two attitudes toward the world. The first has been to regard it as bad, as sordid and contemptible, a source of temptation or, at best, of distraction.

This attitude amazes me and strikes me as close to heretical. For after all, the world is God's work, it speaks to us of its Author in a language which we should learn 36 I Believe in God with infinite reverence, joy, and care; it is made up of things which God Himself has solemnly declared to be good and very good. The second attitude is one of filial placidity.

These people believe in God and calmly accept His benefits, simply taking them at face value as useful for the welfare of their bodies, without trying to discover whether by any chance God's benefits might be useful for the welfare of their souls. This is somewhat the attitude of a stockholder.

The truly Christian view is that all God's works are not only good, but very good, not only in relation to us, whom they delight, but in relation to God, Whom they signify; and although their material usefulness may result from the labor of our body, their spiritual meaning is the result of the search- ing of our mind. Toi, 49 59 The Virtuosity of the Creator You created all things at once, and behold all things grow at Your summons like the seedlings in a flower bed of whom the gardener says, "They're coming along nicely.

Isaie, 60 I have only to breathe, and behold, a plant, an animal. And wonder of wonders! Isdie, I Believe in God, the Father Almighty 37 61 God has a design which He carries out in successive stages, not by virtue of an arbitrary decision but in order that each day may make its contribution to the one that follows, and each evening contain the innovations of the new day. First He creates light, as if in order to see clearly, and next, that vast expanse [of firmament] which is at once a principle of adhesion in form and a principle of variation in hierarchy.

Without light and space, there could be no plant life. God "orders" a plant as one orders some item from a workshop already in operation. One could just as well say that he re- quests it and lo, the whole mechanism, dimly conscious of its own hidden potentialities, responds multifariam multisque modis to what is required of it. And so it goes as the Creator orders the reptiles, the fish, the birds, from the earth, the sea, and the sky and finally man.

J'aime, 77 62 It is easy to imagine that God created the world not so much by a succession of tours de force as by a series of re- quests. This is how nature must have received the order for the palm tree, the mushroom, the fern, the insect, the four- footed animal and why not the two-footed animal as well? God acts in His own unique way, and when we con- sider those mysterious propositions which He addresses to nature, how can we imagine that He abstains from them in the case of his favorite creature? Discours, 38 I Believe in God 63 For all created things, inequality and particularity is a condition of life.

It is a whole catalogue that is dis- closed at once. The creatures not only multiply, they com- pete. Their whole reason for existence lies in diversity. They act as each other's boundaries, that is to say, limitations. Each is defined outwardly by its form and inwardly by its needs. One finishes what another started. One supplies the answer to the question unconsciously posed by the other.

The giant ovens are operating on all sides, the scales rise and fall, the continents are subjected to an alternating sys- tem of baths and emersions, enormous vegetable masses are put on the fire, thickened, kneaded, sprinkled with salt and sand, and treated with powerful sauces.

A mineral darkness is created, in which fire finds its fuel and modern man the ma- terials for his kitchen. We have arrived at the age of the giant reptiles. These are veritable animal tanks which had to be con- trived in order to clear a passage through the undergrowth of cycads, ferns, and creepers. The earth trembles, uprooted trees crash to the ground, the woods are filled with a mon- strous noise of cracking, crunching, and trampling, and in the clearing giant creatures appear.

This geological period comes to its end. The experiments are finished, nothing remains but to send all these absurd carcasses to the rubbish heap. The time has come to take a step forward and conquer this obsession I Believe in God, the Father Almighty 39 with the reptile which has definitely run its course and no longer meets the requirements of the situation. She hides surprises, and puts riddles inside certain of her creations, as the cook sometimes bakes favors into birth- day cakes.

Or at times she becomes bored, she plays the fool, she repeats herself stubbornly, she falls prey to all the abuses of industrial production, she overproduces the most ordinary articles at die expense of superior models; one would say that she can no longer stop herself. Or again, having evidently just received an order, she stops in the middle of her work as if she finds it too difficult, or has suddenly thought of something else. She no sooner hears the word Horse than she pro- duces that ridiculous little chess piece called a sea horse, which she drops into her aquarium.

She is told Lizard, and she makes an ichthyosaurus. Now the preparations are made for the coming of Man. The rhythm of the seasons has been established, mod- ern plant and animal life have been introduced and perfected, the voices of the birds are heard, all has been refashioned for man's use, to his scale, and in his image. It is the dawn of His- tory, springtime in Paradise. The myth of Prakriti: Figures, , et passim.

No, not molded, but called forth. All the ele- ments rushed eagerly together from all sides at the scent of your fragrance. The sculptor works from the outside, whether he kneads the clay or carves the marble with great mallet- blows. But here the human creature, consisting of a soul and a body, yields to the touch of inner hands. At work on us are fingers more seductive than myrrh, and nothing in us can resist their pervasive influence. This odor of immortality has passed over us and left its lingering scent.

What are these fingers, you will ask, these hands at work on us whose impression we Christians never cease to feel? All that proceeds from the supreme Anointed One is unction, 7 and we, religious animals whom He quickens with His breath, are the recipients of His multiform sacrament: Tu septiformis munere, digitus paternae dexterae. Like an artist whose mind and hand separately, and one might almost say competitively, pursue the same design, God's justice throughout the six days was already plotting the means of making man the prisoner of His mercy. Already Space had infringed on Infinity and Time on Eternity, and Weight and Measure, which were pledged to His creature's profit, had fixed boundaries to His liberty.

An eye and a voice have wakened to take endless 7 Christ; the word Christ in Greek means anointed. The reference is to His sacer- dotal unction received at the Incarnation. Something has been born out of nothing, which can give Him an exposition of His goodness, its study, apprenticeship, and imitation. Something good has been born to tell Him in multiplicity and in harmony, in the rhythm of evening and morning, in appearance and disap- pearance tell Him endlessly that He is better. On earth as in heaven, behold the Father can now no longer escape His own Word.

The service, the chorus, the liturgy of nature has be- gun. Something with innumerable voices has been tuned har- moniously to tell Him that He exists. Something that is perish- able reappears tirelessly to tell Him that He endures. It is not enough. Above and beyond all this activity God has found for Himself someone in His image, someone in and above the universe whose function is to understand Him, to explain what He means, what He says, and what He does with regard to His Creation, to put Him to work, to make the most of Him, to guide Him, to add speech to song and mean- ing to ceremony.

AccompagnementSy 67 Man Before the Creation In all that God has made we have nothing to scorn or reject; we have everything to understand. It is up to us to dis- cover in each creature the mark of its Creator, of whose praise He has made it the faithful guardian.

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What it has to teach us of God, we must read from within intelligere and confront without prejudice but with respect, patience, and sympathy; not with the attitude of a judge or a superior, but as a brother, as St. Francis used to address himself to Brother Fire and Brother Wolf.

The idea is not to turn nature over to artifice, but to set her on fire. The idea is to come to an understanding with her and to teach her why she was made. What is im- 42 I Believe in God portant is for every creature to make the most of its essential individuality, of what St. Denis calls its "dissimilitude. The lily is purity; the lamb, obedience; the ox, pa- tience; the hen, maternal love; the serpent, the deadly and in- visible enemy; the weeds and what variety!

All things arrive punctually for our instruction and welfare, our ordeal or punishment. When Job complains and blasphemes, God's only defense is to exhibit His works. What apparent connection is there between the Pleiades and this man on his dung heap, consumed by ulcers? And yet both live under the same watchful eye. And later Our Lord will tell us that He knows not only the number of His stars, but of His sparrows, and that not one hair can fall from our heads with- out His leave.

Here is the primer of theology which should be taught to children and simple people before proceeding to the mysteries. Ruth, 77 69 The Splendor of Creation: The Stars When at the world's prow I consider that vast rice field, my lips begin to murmur the opening words of that first prayer which the good sister at Bar-le-Duc taught me to say: I Believe in God, the Father Almighty 43 "Our Father who art in Heaven," and the first verse of that great book to which I returned on the evening of my conver- sion, never to put it down again: I lift my eyes to the zenith and in the vault I perceive a Giant, his foot on the Milky Way, delivering a sermon to the accompaniment of that dread millstone which he whirls round and round in his hands.

I look to the west and there I recognize a million and a half throbbing maidens endlessly reciting the Rosary.



My mind may wander elsewhere but I am sure to find you always in your places, O unwearying daughters! It is at once a timepiece and a paradise Presence, 70 Surrounded by this sea of blackness and of milk, my soul feels every porthole thrown open and everything rushes into it to raise the water level of joy. What do I care for the operations of algebra or the findings of physics? What knowl- edge and what pleasures are comparable to those told of in the Apocalypse and which the Latin text specifically calls cal- culations?

They filled the hand of a Sower more prodigal than Hop-o'-my-Thumb. From pole to pole these unalterable specks describe the pathway which we are to take in pursuit of the pilgrim's staff of St. But what fascinates the be- holder, what sends a holy shudder to the roots of his hair, is the prodigious activity which animates this swarm of bees, this arithmetical meadowland. It was the Seer Rimbaud who was the first to see "the shores of the sky all covered with these snowy nations of joy.

Is not a star as familiar to our hearts as a sprig of lily of the valley, as precious as a garnet? We have only to gather them. We have only to lift our eyes to read on all sides the proclamation of Peace. Why complain of an excess of riches? What does our timidity mean, if not a desire to limit them? And I ask you, why speak of silence when I have only to be still to hear a Hallelujah and a chant, a poem and a Credo, a Hosannah and a Confiteor, and, caught in the vast coil of the explications of the Father, the cries of swallows and children and the sobbing of a woman wild with job?

The Psalmist is right when he tells us that "the heavens declare the glory of God," and Isaia when he im- plores the islands to be still. Taceant insulae ad me. Be- hold their kind of silence. I see the huntress Artemis with her bow, Venus like a green Psyche, a lamp in her hand, Mars all stained with the blood of sacrifice and, supreme among the Pleiades in the most crowded part of the firmament, Jupiter dispensing jus- tice in his mantle caught with a purple sash.

I never tire of gazing on this direct confirmation of movement in fixity, frozen for me by distance. Presence, 71 Glory, the Prerogative of God Glory is the exclusive property of God, as we are told in the Epistle to the Romans: But it does mean that He alone is its true dispenser, just as He alone is the object worthy of it This is why we see Him in the Apocalypse crowned with many diadems while the twenty-four elders fall on then- faces and cast their crowns at His feet.

Although that crown belonged to Him by eternal right, He nevertheless chose to earn the right to wear it, for in the words of Isaia: Fur- ther on he added, "There is only one truth, and that is to love Jesus Christ and to teach others to love Him, to give Him our poor miser- able and lacerated hearts. The Church tells us: He is the Word incarnate, God made man. The very Son of God who, seeing into what a state of disorder sin had thrown the very good work of His Father, seeing what havoc it had wrought among men, freely offered Himself to put everything to rights by means of His incarnation and redemption.

Conceived of the Holy Spirit, He assumes flesh in the womb of the Virgin, receiving at that mo- ment the sacerdotal unction which anoints Him High Priest of the Most High, Mediator between sin- ful humanity and His Father, King of the numberless multitude whom He comes to redeem by be- coming the expiatory victim, Teacher of these ignorant men who walk in the shadow of error, Head of that Church which He has come to found, Doctor of the souls and bodies on which He is to lavish His benefits.

In a word, the Messiah promised for long centuries by the prophets and, on the last day, Judge of the quick and the dead. Amazing privileges accorded to a man, these are counterbalanced by the crushing weight of the re- demptory anguish. His counte- nance is both supremely glorious and infinitely pitiful in which the extremes of beatitude and suffer- ing meet without diminishing each otter. Claudel speaks to us of his Sa- viour with a fervor that is now ecstatic, now compassionate. His very glance has power: He is a benefactor, a doctor who gathers together the wounded, the good shepherd in search of the lost sheep, the father who embraces the dishonored son!

He works "like a fire, like a leaven, like a catalyst. In His Eucharistic aspect which continues the Messianic life of Jesus, there is tenderness for all those who come to refresh them- selves at His table. It is the Creator in my arms, weeping for His crea- ture. The Bible tells us that the specific charge brought against Christ was blasphemy, that is, the crime against the Deity itself, the at- tribution to the Deity of some quality that disparaged its majesty. What was this blasphemy?

For answer we have the contemporary testimony of St.

From the first historical evidence of any Christian, from the first undeniably authenti- cated conversion, that Christian believed that Christ was the Son of God. And if he believed that Christ was the Son of 1 The point of this passage lies in a play on the words: In the heart of the Jewish world, such a claim was something unprecedented and shocking. It was therefore ab- solutely necessary that Jesus prove the assertion, that He give impressive testimony of both His wisdom and power, that He produce proofs of Himself both by His sanctity and His miracles.

Positions II, The orthodox theory is that in the person of Christ there are two natures bound together in a substantial or hypo- static union and that, as our Credo asserts, He is at once true God and true Man. The human nature, consisting of a soul and a body, acts as the support of the divine nature which in- forms, pervades, feeds, and illumines it, marks it with its seal, and lends it life and intelligence. The same word which fathered Christ in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary con- tinues to be the source of His existence after He is separated from her.

Take the world, says the prophet, [Daniel 7] take eternity! Ascend the throne of David, ascend the throne of Solomon, the one His mother prepared for Him and whose center is made of a beating heart! Become the center of all our scattered longing! In the center of all this has been driven a kind of nail to prevent my ever leaving again. It is love which has achieved this. There is a man who holds God fast by means of His Word. Isaie, 46 The Coming of the Messiah The fulfillment has begun, the earth is pondering the signs, and from all directions die enlisted nations are on their way to Bethlehem.

But today is the day I have promised My- self to celebrate all alone. Now nothing can prevent Me from being God! There is no longer any way to contain this heart which longs to give itself, this mind which longs to open and reveal itself utterly to those it loves, even to that mystic and unfathomable degree where Someone vows to Himself that He is a hidden God. Look where He comes even as He came on that great day of Grace and Glory when there rose on a light-drenched land a Sun which marveled at itself!

The time has come; I feel them trembling within me, and soon I will no longer be able to contain them, those legions of saints unborn, that long roll call of names almost ready to be released, all those silent na- tions whom I already hear saying Ave Maria. It is only now, only today, that we can cry in truth, You are God among men!

Isaie, By means of a wondrous ingenuity, and as a conse- quence of the perfect sanctity, simplicity, and innocence of one of His creatures, God has succeeded in overcoming the obstacle of the flesh. We read it every day at mass: Well, it is this wretched and cramped condition that God, the Perfect, the ineffable Being, chose to take upon Himself with all humility and meekness.

He asked a creature like us to share her heart with Him. He had need of her, and thanks to her an extraordinary Being ap- pears in the midst of History who calls Himself not only the son of Man, but the Son of God. That it was partly out of pity for the sinful creature, we cannot doubt. But we have been taught, and firmly believe, that God is the first and the last, and that just as He is the Beginning, so also He alone is the supreme End of all.

If the Son became flesh it was not because it was in the Father's interests to become someone, but because it was in the Father's interests to do something. It is the service which explains the appearance of the Servant; it is the re- demption which necessitated the incarnation. There was an order to be restored, the order which had been upset by the rebellion of Satan and his angels. There's a problem loading this menu right now.

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