The Steps of Truth .62
Ladders The Steps of Truth There are three degrees in the perception of truth. We must look for truth in ourselves, in our neighbor, in itself.
We look for truth in ourselves when we judge ourselves, in our neighbor when we have sympathy for their sufferings, in itself when we contemplate it with a clean heart.
It is important to observe the order of these degrees as well as their number. First of all, truth teaches us that we must look for it in our neighbors before we seek it in itself.
You will then see easily why you must seek it in yourself before you seek it in your neighbors. In the list of the beatitudes the merciful are spoken of before the clean of heart. The merciful quickly grasp the truth in their neigh bors when their heart goes out to them with a love that unites them so closely that they feel their neighbors7 good and ill as if it were their own. With the weak they are weak, with the scandalized they are on fire. They rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Their hearts are made more clear-sighted by love, and they expe rience the delight of contemplating truth, not now in others but in itself, and for love of it they bear their neighbors' sorrow. Those who do not live in harmony with their brothers and sisters, who mock at those who weep and sneer at those who are glad, have no sympathy with them because their feelings do not affect them. They can never really see
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the truth in others. The proverb fits them well: The sound person feels not the sick one's pains, nor the well-fed the pangs of the hungry. It is fellow sufferers that readily feel compassion for the sick and the hungry. For just as pure truth is seen only by the pure of heart, so also a brother's or sister's miseries are truly experienced only by one who has misery in one's own heart. You will never have real mercy for the failings of another until you know and realize that you have the same failings in your soul. Our Savior has given us the example. He willed to suffer so that he might know compassion. To learn mercy he shared our misery. It is written: "He learned obedience from the things he suf fered." And he learned mercy in the same way. I do not mean that he did not know how to be merciful before. His mercy is from eternity to eternity. But what in his divine nature he knows from all eternity he learned by experience in time.
(The Steps of Humility and Pride 6) If Jesus submitted himself to human misery so that he might not simply know of it but experience it as well, how much more ought you not make any change in your condi tion but pay attention to what you are, because you are truly full of misery. This is the only way, if you are to learn to be merciful. If you have eyes for the shortcomings of your neighbor and not for your own, no feeling of mercy will arise in you but rather indignation. You will be more ready to judge than to help, to crush in the spirit of anger than to instruct in the spirit of gentleness. "You who are spirited, instruct such a one in the spirit of gentleness," says the apostle [ Paul]. His counsel, or better, his precept is that you should treat an ailing brother or sister with the spirit of gentleness with which you would like to be treated yourself
Ladders in your weakness. He shows then how to find out the right way to apply this spirit of gentleness: "Considering yourself lest you also be tempted."
It is worth noticing that the Disciple of Truth follows the order of his master's thoughts. As I have said, just as in the beatitudes the merciful come before the clean of heart, so the meek are spoken of before the merciful. When the apostle tells the spiritually minded to instruct the earthly minded he adds: "In the spirit of meekness." The only ones who can instruct brothers and sisters are those who are merciful, those who are meek and humble. In other words, one cannot really be merciful if one is not humble. Thus the apostle clearly shows what I promised to prove to you, namely that we must look for truth first in ourselves and afterward in our neighbor.
"Considering yourself," he says, that is, considering how easily you are tempted and how prone to sin, you will become meek and ready to help others in the "spirit of gentleness."
If the words of the disciple do not impress you enough, r perhaps you will take warning from the stern words of the master: "Hypocrite, first cast the beam from your own eye and then you will see better to cast the mote from your brother's or sister's." The heavy, thick beam in the eye is pride of heart. It is big but not strong, swollen but not solid.
It blinds the eye of the mind and blots out the truth. While it is there, you cannot see yourself as you really are or even see the ideal of what you would be, but you think you are or hope to be what you would like to be.
(The Steps of Humility and Pride 13f) If you want to know the full truth about yourself, you will have to get rid of the beam of pride which blocks out the light from your eye, and then set up in your heart a ladder of humility so that you can search into yourself.
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When you have climbed its twelve steps you will then stand on the first step of truth. When you have seen the truth about yourself, or better, when you have seen yourself in the truth, you will be able to say: "I believed, therefore 1 have spoken, but I have been exceedingly humbled." It is as if you said with the psalmist: Because I have not been ashamed to confess the known truth about myself, I have attained to the perfection of humility. We can think of this as saying: When as yet I did not fully know the truth, I thought myself something, whereas I was nothing. But when I came to know Christ, to imitate his humility I saw the truth and exalted it in me by my confession, but "I myself was humbled exceedingly." In my own eyes, I fell very low. The psalmist has been humbled and now stands on the first step of truth.
When in the light of truth people know themselves and so think less of themselves, it will certainly follow that what they loved before will now become bitter to them. They are brought face to face with themselves and blush at what they see. Their present state is no pleasure to them. They aspire to something better and at the same time realize how little they can rely on themselves to achieve it. It hurts them and they find some relief in judging themselves severely. Love of truth makes them hunger and thirst after justice and conceive a deep contempt for themselves. They are anxious to exact from themselves full satisfaction and real amend ment. They admit that to make satisfaction is beyond their own powers — when they have done all that is commanded them they acknowledge that they are still unprofitable servants. They fly from justice to mercy, by the road Truth shows them: "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy." They look beyond their own needs to the needs of their neighbors, and from the things they themselves have suffered they learn compassion: They have come to the second degree of truth.
Ladders If they persevere in these things—sorrow of repentance, desire for justice, and works of mercy—they will cleanse their hearts from the three impediments of ignorance, weakness and jealousy and will come through contempla tion to the third degree of truth.
(The Steps of Humility and Pride 15ff) These are the three steps of truth. We climb to the first by the toil of humility, to the second by the deep feelings of compassion, and to the third by the ecstasy of contem plation. On the first step we experience the severity of truth, on the second its tenderness, on the third its purity. Reason brings us to the first as we judge ourselves; compassion brings us to the second when we have mercy on others; on the third the purity of truth sweeps us up to the sight of things invisible.
It occurs to me here that it is possible to allot each of these three works to one of the Persons of the undivided
Trinity, that is, insofar as we, still sitting in darkness, can make any distinctions in the world of the three Persons who always work as One. There would seem to be something characteristic of the Son in the first stage, of the Holy Spirit in the second, of the Father in the third. What is the work of the Son? "If I, your Lord and Master have washed your feet, how much more ought you also to wash each other's feet." The Master of truth gave his disciples an example of humility and opened to them the first stage of truth. Then the work of the Holy Spirit: "Charity is spread abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us." Charity is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Those who under the instruction of the Son were led to the first step of truth through humility, now under the guidance of the Holy Spirit reach the second stage through compassion for their neighbor.
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Finally, listen to what is said of the Father: "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven." Again: "The Father will make known the truth to the sons." And "1 confess to you, Father, for you have hidden these things from the wise and made them known to little ones." You see, by word and example the Son first teaches humility, then the Spirit pours out his charity upon those whom the Father receives finally into glory. The Son makes them his disciples, the Spirit consoles them as friends, the Father bestows on them the glory of sons and daughters. Ffowever, truth is the proper title, not of the Son alone but of the Spirit and the Father too, so that it must be made quite clear, while giving full acknowledgement to the properties of Persons, that it is the one truth who works at all these stages: in the first teaching as a Master, in the second consoling as a Friend and Brother, in the third embracing as a Father.
The Son of God, the Word and Wisdom of the Father, mercifully assumed to himself human reason, the first of our powers. Fie found it oppressed by the flesh, held captive by sin, blinded by ignorance, distracted by outward things.
He raised it by his might, taught it by his wisdom, drew it to things interior. More wonderfully still, he delegated to it his own power of judge. To judge is the proper act of truth, and in this it shared when out of reverence for the Word to which it is joined it became accuser, witness and judge against itself. Humility had been born from the union of the Word with human reason. Then the Holy Spirit lovingly visited the second power, the will. He found it rotten with the infection of the flesh but already judged by reason.
Gently he cleansed it, made it burn with affection, made it merciful until, like a skin made pliable with oil, it would spread abroad the heavenly oil of love even to its enemies.
The union of the Holy Spirit with the human will gives birth
Ladders to charity. See now this perfect soul, its two powers, the reason and the will, without spot or wrinkle, the reason instructed by the Word of truth, the will inflamed by truth's
Spirit. Sprinkled with the hyssop of humility, fired with the flame of charity, cleansed from spot by humility, smoothed of wrinkles by charity, the reason never shrinking from the truth, the will never striving against reason, this blessed soul the Father binds to himself as his own glorious bride.
Now the reason is no longer preoccupied with itself and the will is no longer concerned with others, for the blessed soul is lost in one delight: "The Iking has led me into his chamber." The soul has become worthy of this when she learned humility in the school of the Son, listening to the warning: "If you do not know yourself, go forth and pasture your flocks." She is twice worthy since she was led by the Holy Spirit from the school of humility to the storehouse of charity, for this is what is meant by guarding the flocks of the neighbors. She was brought there by love. Once there, she is cushioned by flowers, stayed up with apples, that is, by good morals and holy virtues. And finally she is led into the chamber of the Iking for whose love she languishes.
There for a short time, just one half-hour, while there is silence in heaven, she sleeps in the desired embrace. She sleeps but her heart watches and is fed with the secrets of truth on which later, when she comes to herself, her memory can dwell. There she sees things invisible and hears things unspeakable, which it is not given us to utter. They are beyond the knowledge which night can pass onto night, for this is the word that day utters to day. Wise persons speak wisdom to the wise, and spiritual things are made known to the spiritual.
(The Steps of Humility and Pride 19ff)
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I have quite work enough for my hands and feet beneath the lowest heaven. Thanks to the help of him who called me I have built a ladder to take me to it. This is my road to God's salvation. Already I see God, resting on the top of the ladder, already I have the joy of hearing the voice of Truth. He calls to me and I reply to him: "Stretch out your right hand to the work of your hands." You have numbered my steps, O Lord, but I am a slow climber, a weary traveler, and I need a resting place. Woe is me if the darkness should overtake me or if my flight should be in winter or on the Sabbath, seeing that now, in an acceptable time, on the day of salvation, I can hardly grope my way to the light. Why am I so slow? Oh, if anyone is to me a son or daughter, a brother or sister in the Lord, a comrade, one who shares my journey, let that one pray for me!
(The Steps of Humility and Pride 24)