On deification:
...When death comes, grace will lead me to God immediately seen and possessed, and my soul will be filled to overflowing. But even now, in the night of faith, my soul takes hold of God, and that is what is called the indwelling of the divine Persons.
8. This profound mystery is revealed in several places in Scripture, which speaks of God's indwelling in us, or of the indwelling of the divine Persons or of the Holy Spirit who represents the whole Trinity, for where one of the divine Persons dwells there dwell inseparably the two others. 'Know you not,' says St Paul to the Corinthians, 'that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which you are' (I Cor. iii. 16-17). God comes as a guest asking us to admit him, and he converses with us if we really desire it. It is no longer a simple relation of creature and Creator, servant and master, but of friend with friend. St Paul says again: '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' (I Cor. vi. 19-20). We do not belong to ourselves, we belong to God and his infinite love. From time to time, man questions himself: What am I? Is this life in time something of real value, if I am of such slight account? Yes, this life has a great value, since I belong to God who wishes to take possession of my whole being. The being and soul of a man are more precious than we can imagine: 'We are the temples of the living God' (II Cor. vi. 16).
St Paul goes on to say, in the Epistle to the Romans (viii. 9): 'You are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.' For it is certainly possible to refuse the descent of God's love into us. But if we do not refuse, he takes the initiative himself. 'The Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you.' The infinite God will immortalize in heaven these poor habitations he has borrowed from us for a moment at one point of time and space.
We have the great text of St John (xiv. 23): 'If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and will come to him and take up our abode with him.'You see: if anyone loves me. If there is created love, that is to say created grace with all that goes with it, with its virtues of faith, hope and charity, then 'my Father will love him, we will take up our abode with him.' We have a guest with us, we are never alone; and who is our companion? No other than the Trinity in its entirety.
In the Apocalypse, Chapter iii, 20, we read: 'Behold I stand at the gate and knock. If any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.' It is like an evening meal, when we venture to speak of the most intimate and profound matters which we would not mention in the daytime. And he will come, not only to speak to us, but to give us the power to reply to him ourselves: 'and he with me.' When anyone is in the state of grace, then there is a dialogue, conversation of friend with friend. So we see that the dissipation of mind which so prevails in the world today is a form of madness. We need times of silence: 'Be silent, and see that I am thy God in thy heart.' In times of difficulty or sadness, in times of suffering, if you frequently call to mind that God is in you to give you his love, you will not be alone, you will find the Guest within you, and he will answer you.
9. The indwelling of the divine Persons is, then, always the accompaniment of grace. The two mysteries are co-relative. Grace is like a net we throw over the Trinity to hold it in captivity. Or here is another way to visualize it: when you bring into a room a source of light, it illuminates the walls; so, when the divine Persons come to us (here we have the source, uncreated grace), they illuminate the walls of the soul (here we have the effect, created grace). And if you possess grace, then the source of grace, the three divine Persons, is there too. In the very gift of sanctifying grace, says St Thomas, the Holy Spirit himself is sent and given to man to dwell in him. The uncreated Spirit is given in created grace, as the sun is given in its rays. The uncreated Gift of the Spirit and the created gift of grace are simultaneous. There are differences of degree in the life of individual souls; but in each of them the intensity of grace and the intensity of the indwelling increase with the same movement.
The saints come to such a vivid awareness of these riches that at times they feel as if their heart would burst. Admittedly, God may lead them by desert paths, and St John of the Cross says that, at times, God seems to be asleep in the soul. But all at once he arouses himself, and the impact he makes is so violent that, if it lasted, it would be mortal: the soul, as yet unfortified by the light of glory, seems then to be unable to support the power of the divine Persons.
Each Holy Communion should intensify in us this grace and this indwelling. We should come away from it, our souls more open to, and more deeply penetrated by, the Trinity.
Such are the gifts God makes to the least of souls that rises from a state of mortal sin. A man who has made only a poor confession, with a love still weak, and who has received absolution, already possesses grace and is dwelt in by God. Both the grace and the indwelling desire to grow stronger in him.
10. If grace, in the words of St Peter, makes us 'participators in the divine nature' and communicates to us, in some measure, the divine nature, it makes us children of God, sons of God. The child has the nature of its parents; what is born of a bird is a bird, what is born of man is a man, what is born of God is God. 'The light', says St John, 'came into the world, and to as many as received it, to them he gave power to be the sons of God, to them that believe in his name, who are born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God' (John i. 13). And again: 'Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be, the sons of God.... We are now the sons of God (I John iii. 1-2). And St Paul: 'The Spirit himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God' (Rom. viii. 16).
Jesus, also, is Son of God. We are, therefore, brothers of Jesus. God has predestined us to reproduce the image of his Son, 'that he might be the first-born among many brethren' (Rom. viii. 29). Those he sanctifies, Jesus 'is not ashamed to call brethren when he says: I will declare thy name to my brethren' (Heb. ii. 11).
And if Jesus is heir, we, as brothers, shall be his co-heirs: 'If we are sons, we are also heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ: yet so if we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him' (Rom. viii. 29). See, then, the ways in which we resemble Jesus.
Consider now the differences. Jesus is Son 'by nature,' he possesses necessarily the divine nature, by reason of the identity of his being and nature with the being and nature of the Father. We are sons of God 'by adoption,' we possess the divine nature by a free effect of the divine goodness, by a finite participation in the being and infinite nature of God.
Jesus is Son of the Father by eternal generation; we are sons of the three Persons of the Trinity by creation and adoption. There is an impassable distance between the first-born who is above all creation (Col. i. 15) and the multitude of his brethren, between his fraternity which is source and ours which is derivation. This is the meaning of the words of Jesus to Mary of Magdala, the morning of Easter: 'Go to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God' (John xx. 17).
Jesus is heir by 'identification' of his glory with that of the Father: we are his co-heirs by 'participation' in this destiny. There is again an abyss between being heir of the divine glory by right of nature and being heir by right of merit, like the servant to whom it will one day be said, 'Well done, good and faithful servant . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord' (Mt. xxv. 21).
It is necessary to insist on the reciprocal relation between the finite gift of grace and the infinite gift of indwelling. This view is alone capable of bringing out the full dimensions of grace. Our catechism speaks of sanctifying grace, but scarcely at all of the fact of indwelling, which is of greater value, being the source of which grace is the effect...
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