The Practical Consequences Of The Doctrine Of St. Thomas On Grace

The Practical Consequences Of The Doctrine Of St. Thomas On Grace

CHAPTER III

MYSTICAL THEOLOGY AND THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF ST. THOMAS

ARTICLE I

Natural Intellectual Life and Supernatural Life

SEVERAL authors, struck by the difference which they find between the writings of the great mystical theologians (such as Dionysius, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bonaventure, Tauler, St. John of the Cross) and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, are surprised that we should expect to find in St. Thomas' writings the principles of mystical theology. Some even consider St. Thomas, not a great theologian who from a supernatural point of view used Aristotle for the defense and explanation of the divine truths of faith, but rather a philosopher of genius who gave us an interpretation of the Gospel, a Christian Aristotle, as later on Malebranche was a Christian Plato.

     Anyone who accepts this view must lack an intimate knowledge of the writings of St. Thomas, especially his treatises on the Trinity, the incarnation, the Holy Eucharist, grace, the theological virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Certainly such a person never read St. Thomas' commentaries on St. Paul, St. John, the Psalms, and the Canticle of Canticles. He must be ignorant of St. Thomas' short treatises on piety, his prayers, his office of the Blessed Sacrament; and he must be unacquainted with the saint's life, his nights spent before the tabernacle, his ecstasies, the eminent gift of contemplation which made him refer to his Summa as being only straw in comparison with what he beheld.

     In this article we wish to show that this judgment of the great doctor springs from an entirely material manner of reading his works. We have a tendency to give a materialistic interpretation to everything—doctrine, piety, rules of conduct, action. This is the inclination of our fallen and wounded nature unless it is profoundly regenerated and completely vivified by grace which heals and elevates, and unless we are free from domination by our temperament; or if, despite the state of grace, we preserve a host of purely natural judgments, quite unconformable to the spirit of faith.

     Influenced by these dispositions, we are unintentionally prone to interpret the loftiest doctrines materialistically; that is, we are inclined to note only their material elements which adapt themselves better to our tastes, and to lose sight of the spirit which determines their nature and is the soul of the doctrinal body. Once more St. Paul's expression is verified: "For the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth." ¹ Following this way, under pretext of reliance on what is tangible, mechanically exact, and incontestably certain even for the incredulous, we would end by explaining the higher by the lower, by reducing the first to the second, which is the very essence of materialism in all its forms. We would be inclined to explain the soul by the body, much more than the body by the soul; in the same way, to explain the life of grace by nature, theological doctrines by the philosophical elements which they have assimilated, the life of religious orders by the social conditions in which they had their origin, without thinking sufficiently of the incessant but invisible work of God, who alone can raise up great doctors and saints. From this point of view, we would rapidly dwarf everything and, instead of living supernaturally according to the true sense of this word, we might, despite certain appearances, flounder about in what is mediocre and mean.

     This disposition to explain the higher by the lower is found in varying degrees, from the gross materialism which explains spirit by matter up to that which places a materialistic interpretation on spiritual philosophy, theology, exegesis, the history of the Church, asceticism, and the liturgy, the letter of which is kept, and not the spirit.

     Even with a true desire to learn, we may read St. Thomas from this point of view. In his theological doctrine numerous material or philosophical elements are found, which he intends to subordinate to the idea of God, the Author of grace. If we unduly emphasize these lower elements, which are within the reach of reason, instead of rising to the summit of the synthesis, we will find a real opposition between this doctrine and that of the great mystical theologians, who have treated especially of union with God. The trees will prevent our seeing the forest. Absorbed in the details at the base of the structure, we shall fail to see the keystone of the arch. At least we shall be considering only from below the supernatural principle of this masterpiece of the mind; seeing it only by its reflection on the lower realities which it regulates, instead of judging these matters from above, as ought to be done by the "higher reason," so greatly prized by St. Augustine, and by theological wisdom, not to speak of the gift of wisdom, which is even more elevated. Thus the reading of St. Thomas' Summa and commenting on it may be only slightly supernatural and even anti-mystical. This manner of reading it directs the mind away from the view of the great commentators (Capreolus, Cajetan, Bannes, John of St. Thomas, the Carmelites of Salamanca), all of them inferior to the master. But they understood him better than we do, and lead us after him toward the same heights.

     A delicate instrument of precision is easily injured so that it is no longer accurate; likewise the doctrine of St. Thomas is easily distorted. This results if we misplace the emphasis on what is secondary and material, thus explaining in a banal manner and without due proportion what is formal and principal in it. By so doing, we fail to see the glowing summits that should illumine all the rest.

     We note here the chief confusions that would render this doctrine essentially anti-mystical. They have been made especially by nominalist theologians, who finally perceived nothing but words in the loftiest spiritual realities, when they did not see as materially evident that these realities had been revealed by God.² Nominalist theology is a considerable diminution of the science of God. We point out these confusions to show that the teaching of St. Thomas is, on the contrary, the same as that which St. John of the Cross and his disciples developed. We make this point evident by insisting on what constitutes the grandeur of his teaching, and by manifesting the supernatural wealth it contains. For one who has read the Salamanca theologians, evidently the Carmelite doctrine and that of the Angelic Doctor agree throughout, particularly with regard to the loftiest questions in the treatise on grace.

     Let us consider briefly, in the Thomistic synthesis, the fundamental doctrines which are most closely allied to the spiritual life; especially those bearing on our natural, intellectual knowledge; then those bearing on the supernatural life, on the infused virtues, on the gifts of the Holy Ghost, on the efficacy of grace, and lastly on the very nature of God.

     In the Thomistic synthesis our intellectual knowledge in the natural order is based on the first principles of reason: the principle of contradiction–no being, created or uncreated, can at the same time and under the same aspect be and not be; the principle of causality–all that has potential non existence, whether spirit or matter, has a cause; the principle of finality–every agent, whether material or spiritual, acts for an end; the first principle of morality–one must do good and avoid evil. St. Thomas declares that the intellectual knowledge of these primordial truths springs in a certain way from the senses, because our intelligence abstracts its ideas from sensible things. Understanding this doctrine materially, some people have thought that the intellectual certitude of the first principles resolves itself essentially or formally into sensation, and that it relies on sensation as on its formal motive.³ This point of view would reduce the higher to the lower, intelligence to sense; it would forget that rational principles are absolutely universal and necessary and that they reach even the loftiest realities, God Himself, whereas sensation reaches only sensible, singular, and contingent objects. Were this done, the absolute universality and necessity of rational first truths would no longer be explainable; reason would remain the prisoner of phenomena, like the senses of an animal, and our liberty, which follows from our intelligence, would disappear. We would not be able to resist the attraction of sensible goods, because we would not dominate them. Our nature, like that of animals, would be incapable of receiving grace and of being raised to the vision of God.

     According to St. Thomas, on the other hand, intellectual certitude of rational first principles resolves itself only materially into the prerequisite sensation; ⁴ it resolves itself formally into purely intellectual evidence of the absolute truth of its principles, which appear as the fundamental laws not only of phenomena but of being or of all intelligible reality, whether corporal or spiritual. This evidence presupposes in us a constantly increasing intellectual light of an order infinitely superior to sensation or to the most subtle imagination; an intellectual light which is a distant image of the divine light and which can illumine nothing without the constant concurrence of God, Sun of spirits, Master of intelligences.⁵ Although St. Thomas here treats of subjects in the natural order, he already speaks almost as a mystic: "As any human doctrine exteriorly proposed instructs us because of the intellectual light which we have received from God, it follows that God alone teaches us interiorly and as principal Cause." ⁶

     Malebranche and the ontologists exaggerated these words of St. Thomas and seemed to have a still higher idea of our natural intelligence by claiming that our intelligence sees first principles in God Himself. The apparent elevation of this Christian Platonism is not, however, that of true mystical theology because it tends to confound the natural order and that of grace, instead of maintaining the absolute superiority of the latter.

     According to the ontologists, our intellect is capable of knowing being, because it is capable of knowing God; according to St. Thomas, our intellect is capable of knowing God by grace, because it is first of all capable of knowing being by nature.⁷ This teaching places it infinitely above the senses.

     In respect to the supernatural life, we know the principle of St. Thomas: "Grace perfects nature and does not destroy it." ⁸ A great spirit of faith is necessary, however, if we are always to interpret this principle correctly without inclining practically toward naturalism. Some persons will understand this principle materially, or will be more attentive to nature which must be perfected than to grace which should produce this transformation in us. Furthermore, considering nature as it actually is since original sin, they will not sufficiently distinguish in nature what is essential and good, what ought to be perfected, from what ought to be mortified, egoism under all its forms gross or subtle. By failing to make this distinction, they find a real opposition between the doctrine of St. Thomas thus materialistically interpreted and the famous chapter of the Imitation (Bk. III, chap. 54), "On the Divers Movements of Nature and Grace." They forget what the holy doctor teaches about the wounds consequent upon original sin which remain in the baptized soul.⁹

     They will forget even more completely what he says about the infinite distance which separates the most perfect nature, even that of the most exalted angel, from the slightest degree of sanctifying grace, which St. Thomas declares "superior to the natural good of the entire universe" ¹⁰ of matter and spirit. All angelic natures taken together are not equal to the slightest movement of charity.

     Nominalists have diminished this doctrine to the point of thinking that grace is not a supernatural reality by its essence, but that it has only a moral value which gives us a right to eternal life, as a bank note gives us the right to claim a certain sum of gold.¹¹ Likewise for them the baptismal and sacerdotal characters are only extrinsic titles, relations established by reason without a basis in reality (for example, an adopted son). Luther, a disciple of the nominalists, went so far as to say that sanctifying grace is not a reality in us, is not a new life, but only the pardon of our faults exteriorly granted by God.

     Without going to such extremes, some theologians have thought that God could create an intelligence for which the beatific vision would be natural.¹² They failed to see the infinite distance which necessarily separates the nature of all created and creatable intelligence from grace, which is a "participation in the divine nature." ¹³

     To grasp what this distance is, we must bear in mind that grace is really and formally a participation in the divine nature precisely in so far as it is divine, a participation in the Deity, in that which makes God God, in His intimate life. As rationality is what makes man a man, the Deity is the constituent essence of God, such as He is Himself. Grace is a mysterious participation in this essence, which surpasses all natural knowledge. Even stones, by the fact of their existence, have a remote likeness to God in so far as He is being; plants also distantly resemble Him in so far as he is living; human souls and angels are by nature made to the image of God and resemble Him by analogy in so far as He is intelligent; but no created or creatable nature can resemble God exactly in so far as He is God. Grace alone can make us participate really and formally in the Deity, in the intimate life of Him whose children we are by grace. The Deity, which remains inaccessible to all natural created knowledge, is superior to all the divine perfections naturally knowable, superior to being, to life, to wisdom, to love. All these divine attributes, diverse as they appear to be, are one and the same thing in God and with God. They are in the Deity formally and eminently as so many notes of a superior harmony, the simplicity of which is beyond our comprehension.¹⁴

     Grace makes us participate really and formally in this Deity, in this eminent and intimate life of God, because grace is in us the radical principle of essentially divine operations, that will ultimately consist in seeing God immediately, as He sees Himself, and in loving Him as He loves Himself. Grace is the seed of glory. In order to know its essence intimately, we must first have seen the divine essence of which grace is the participation. By grace we are veritably "born of God," as St. John says. This is what makes Pascal say: "All bodies together and all spirits together and all their productions are not equal to the slightest movement of charity, which is of another and infinitely more elevated order."

     If we clearly understand this doctrine, we know that grace not only vivifies and spiritualizes us, but also deifies us. "As only fire can render a body incandescent," says St. Thomas, "God alone can deify souls." ¹⁵

     Hence the slightest degree of sanctifying grace is infinitely superior to a sensible miracle, which is supernatural only by reason of its cause, by its mode of production (quoad modum), not by its intimate reality: the life restored to a corpse is only the natural life, low, indeed, in comparison with that of grace. The paralytic, when his sins are forgiven him, receives infinitely more than his cure. At Lourdes the greatest blessings are not those which heal the body, but those which revivify souls. The "modal" supernatural, or the preternatural, does not count, so to speak, in comparison with the essentially supernatural.

     The slightest degree of sanctifying grace is, as a result, infinitely superior to the phenomenon of ecstasy, to the prophetic vision of future events, or to the natural knowledge of the loftiest angel.

     The natural knowledge of the highest angel could in its natural order grow indefinitely in intensity, yet it would never reach the dignity of the supernatural knowledge of infused faith or of the gift of wisdom. It would never even obscurely attain the intimate life of God, just as the indefinite progress of the imagination would never equal the intelligence; as the indefinite multiplication of the sides of a polygon inscribed within a circle never equal the latter, for the side, no matter how small it may be, never becomes a point. While in the state of probation, the angels, and likewise man, possessed, over and above the natural knowledge of God, the knowledge which proceeded from infused faith and from the gifts.

     From all this we see the distance separating the essentially supernatural character of sanctifying grace from the supernatural character of sensible miracles or even of prophecy.

     We have elsewhere ¹⁶ examined at length the value of this division of the supernatural, which is generally admitted, and of its subdivisions. This is an important point in theology, and a particularly important one in mystical theology. This fact can be noted in the tabulation on page 59, where the supernatural quoad substantiam (by its essence) is clearly distinct from the miraculous quoad substantiam (miracles of the first order). In the first we consider the formal cause; in the second, an extrinsic cause, the efficient cause. Thus sanctifying grace is supernatural by its essence, or formal cause; miracles, even of the first order, are supernatural only because no created force can produce them. By the resurrection of a dead person, natural life is supernaturally restored to him.

     The problem to be discussed in the present work can be reduced to the following terms: Does the mystical life belong to the category of sanctifying grace, the virtues, and the gifts, or to the relatively inferior category of miracles and prophecy?

     For the solution of the actual mystical problem, the greatest consideration must be given to the supernatural elevation of sanctifying grace as it was conceived by St. Thomas.¹⁷ No theologian, as we have shown,¹⁸ has been able to make as clear a distinction as he did between the natural order and the essentially supernatural order. No one has better affirmed the absolute gratuity of the life of grace, and its elevation infinitely surpassing, as it does, every claim and innate desire of human and angelic nature. Yet no one has better shown how this gift, gratuitous though it is, is wonderfully suited to our loftiest aspirations. Nothing is more gratuitous and desirable than the beatific vision, and in this life nothing is more so than holy communion.¹⁹

SUPERNATURAL

     When we consider the conformity of Christianity with our natural aspirations, very often we cease to note the absolute gratuity of the divine gift and thus we incline toward practical naturalism. On the other hand, whoever fails to see this admirable conformity is led to conceive a rigid supernaturalness which is contrary to nature and lacking in simplicity. This conception would lead to exaltation and the follies of false mysticism.

     St. Thomas maintains the infinite elevation of grace above our nature and also the harmony between the two. But he adds that this harmony really appears only after a profound purification of nature by mortification and the cross, as the lives of the saints show. He repeatedly tells us that this harmony has been fully realized in this world only in our Lord Jesus Christ. Bossuet says the same thing in speaking of Jesus: "Who would not admire the condescension with which He tempers the loftiness of His doctrine? It is milk for children and, at the same time, bread for the strong. It is full of the secrets of God, but it is evident that Jesus is not astonished at this, as other mortals to whom God communicates Himself. Our Lord speaks naturally of these matters, as one born in this secret and in this glory; and what He has without measure (John 3: 34) He bestows with measure that our weakness may be able to bear it." ²⁰

     By this marvelous conciliation of qualities so diverse, that is, of the absolute gratuity and supreme fitness of grace, St. Thomas directs us toward the loftiest orthodox mystical theology, which is in reality a commentary on our Lord's expression: "If thou didst but know the gift of God."

     We shall see this better when we speak of the supernaturalness of the infused virtues, both moral and theological, and of the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

ARTICLE II

Mystical Theology and the Essentially Supernatural Character of Infused Faith

     The doctrine of St. Thomas about our natural intellectual knowledge and the essence of sanctifying grace directs us toward the loftiest orthodox mystical theology. The same is true of his teaching about the supernatural character of the infused virtues and of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. In this article we will treat especially the supernatural character of faith. But first we must say a few words about the supernatural character of the Christian moral virtues.

     These moral virtues are the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) and the virtues joined with them, particularly those of religion (or justice in regard to God), of magnanimity, patience, perseverance (all related to fortitude), of chastity, gentleness, modesty, and humility.

     While reading the part of St. Thomas' Summa dealing with these Christian moral virtues, especially prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, many think these are only the natural virtues described by Aristotle and that they are clothed with a simple adventitious supernatural modality, springing from the influence of charity, which should direct all our acts to God. Some theologians have not gone beyond this conception.

     The thought of St. Thomas is far loftier. According to his teaching, the Christian moral virtues are infused and, because of their formal object, essentially distinct from the highest acquired moral virtues described by the greatest philosophers. These acquired moral virtues, useful as they may be, could be continually developed without ever attaining the formal object of the Christian virtues. An infinite difference exists between Aristotelian temperance, governed solely by right reason, and Christian temperance, ruled by divine faith and supernatural prudence. St. Thomas says: "Evidently the measure to be imposed on our passions differs essentially according as it springs from the human rule of reason or from the divine rule. For example, in the use of food the measure prescribed by reason has for its end the avoidance of what is harmful to health and to the exercise of reason itself, while according to the divine law, as St. Paul says, man must chastise his body and bring it into subjection by abstinence and other similar austerities"¹ This measure, which belongs to the supernatural order, is in fact animated by that which unaided reason is ignorant of, but which faith teaches us about the results of original sin and of our personal sins, about the infinite elevation of our supernatural end, about the obligation of loving God, the Author of grace, more than ourselves and above all, and of renouncing self in order to follow our Lord Jesus Christ.²

     St. Thomas is equally insistent on the necessity of a progressive purification in order that the Christian moral virtues, aided by the acquired virtues, may reach their perfection. He shows us what they should become in those who really strive for divine union. "Then," he says, "prudence scorns the things of the world for the contemplation of divine things; it directs all the thoughts of the soul toward God. Temperance abandons, so far as nature can bear it, what the body demands; fortitude prevents the soul from becoming frightened in the face of death and when confronted with the unknown supernatural. Justice leads the soul finally to enter fully on this entirely divine way." ³ Loftier still, he says, are the virtues of the soul that is already purified, those of the blessed and of the great saints on earth.

     This teaching is not less elevated than that offered by Tauler in his Sermons, or by St. John of the Cross (The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul) in the chapters which he devotes to the active and passive purification of the soul.

     In regard to the theological virtues, some, who read the Summa theologica in an entirely material manner, reach the conclusion that our act of faith is a substantially natural act clothed with a supernatural modality: substantially natural, because it reposes formally on the natural, historical knowledge of Christ's preaching and of the miracles which confirmed it; clothed with a supernatural modality, so that it may be useful to salvation. This modality is often said to resemble a layer of gold applied to copper in order to make plated metal. We would thus have "plated supernatural" life and not a new, essentially supernatural life.⁴

     According to this conception, the certitude of our supernatural faith in the Blessed Trinity, the incarnation, and other mysteries, would rest formally in the last analysis on the inferior though morally certain knowledge which our unaided reason can have of the signs of revelation and of the marks of the Church. The act of faith would be a sort of reasoning, formally based on a certitude of inferior order. Often this certitude rests merely on the human testimony of our parents and of our pastors, for very few of the faithful can make a critical study of the origins of Christianity. The act of theological faith thus conceived is no longer infallibly certain, and preserves almost nothing that is supernatural and mysterious. It is no longer evident why interior grace is absolutely necessary not only to confirm it but to produce it. This last point was definitely defined by the Church against the Pelagians and the semi-Pelagians.

     This material conception is simply another case of the reduction of the higher to the lower. It is an error analogous to that discussed above in relation to rational first principles.

     St. Thomas teaches that, just as sensation is only an inferior knowledge prerequisite to that of principles, a knowledge which is founded on intellectual evidence, so also the rational knowledge of the signs of revelation plays only the part of a preamble to prepare our intellect to receive the influence of grace, which alone can make us adhere infallibly to the formal motive of faith, to the authority of God revealing, in an order infinitely superior to the reasoning that went before.

     St. Thomas saw the entire meaning and range of our Lord's words: "No man can come to Me, except the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him. . . . Everyone that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to Me. . . . Amen, amen I say unto you: He that believeth in Me, hath everlasting life." ⁵ "My sheep hear My voice." ⁶ "Everyone that is of the truth, heareth My voice." ⁷ St. Paul says the same thing: "Faith is a gift of God. . . . Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for," ⁸ or the seed, the beginning of eternal life.

     And the Council of Trent ⁹ defined as follows: "In justification man receives, with the remission of sins, the three virtues of faith, hope, and charity, infused at the same time into his soul by Jesus Christ, on whom he is grafted."

     Thus, as St. Thomas teaches, faith is substantially supernatural, specified by a formal motive of the same entirely supernatural order, a motive that faith attains in an absolutely infallible manner. This is why, rather than call it in question, we must undergo the worst torments, as the martyrs did.

     This absolutely infallible and essentially supernatural certitude resolves itself only materially into our morally certain knowledge (critical or non-critical) of the signs which confirmed Christ's preaching and also such knowledge of the marks of the Church. It is based formally on the authority of God revealing, on the first revealing uncreated Truth which reveals itself with the mysteries that it manifests, which is believed with the mysteries in an order infinitely superior to rational evidence, just as physical light appears and is seen at the same time as it makes us see colors.¹⁰ As the Thomists usually say, "The first revealing Truth is at once that which is believed and that by which one believes, as light is that which is seen and that by which one sees." ¹¹ St. Augustine expressed this idea in his commentary on St. John.¹²

     The question concerns not only belief in God, the Author of nature and of sensible miracles which reason can know by its own power; it concerns also belief in God, the Author of grace, in God considered in His intimate life, in God who leads us to a supernatural end by giving rise in us to essentially supernatural acts.¹³

     If God had supernaturally revealed only the natural truths of religion, as, for example, His natural providence, without telling us anything about supernatural mysteries (e. g., the Blessed Trinity), our faith would have been supernatural only by reason of its origin, by its mode of production, but not at all by its formal object or by its essence. It would have been specifically inferior to Christian faith, whatever the semirationalists, who wished to prove the mysteries of Christianity, may have said about it. On the contrary, our infused faith is not specifically inferior to that which the angels had before enjoying the beatific vision, even though our faith expresses itself in acquired ideas and theirs in infused ideas.

     In reality, it is the supernatural mystery of His intimate life which God has revealed to us. Consequently our faith is based on the very truth of God, the Author of grace, on the uncreated knowledge of His intimate life which He possesses: an entirely supernatural first Truth, to which the infused light of faith raises us, and to which it makes us adhere infallibly.¹⁴ It is eternal first Truth, which is still obscure for us because transluminous, says Dionysius, and is infinitely superior not only to the evidence of rational principles which enable us to recognize a miracle, but even to the evidence which the angels naturally enjoy, and which the demons preserve; ¹⁵ "the First Truth which interiorly illuminates and teaches man." ¹⁶

     Therefore without the infused light of faith man remains in the presence of the Gospel like a hearer deprived of musical sense who listens to a symphony without really perceiving its beauty. "But," says St. Paul, "the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined." ¹⁷

     The faithful, on the contrary, understand "the deep things of God" spoken of by the revelation which is proposed by the Church. "This school, where God teaches and is understood, is far removed from the senses," says St. Augustine. "We see many men come to the Son of God, since we see many who believe in Christ; but where and how they have heard and learned this truth of the Father, that we do not see. This grace is entirely too intimate and too secret for us to see it." ¹⁸

     St. Thomas says: "Three things lead us to believe in Christ: "first, natural reason; . . . secondly, the testimony of the law and the prophets; . . . thirdly, the preaching of the Apostles; but when thus led we have reached belief; then we can say that we believe, not for any of the preceding motives, but solely because of the very truth of God . . . to which we adhere firmly under the influence of an infused light; because faith has certitude from light divinely infused." ¹⁹ Elsewhere St. Thomas says: "God dwells in us by living faith, according to the expression of St. Paul: ²⁰ 'Christ dwells in your hearts by faith.' " ²¹

     This lofty doctrine has often been given a materialistic interpretation and has been considerably diminished. The great commentators of St. Thomas for the last seven centuries have always defended it and cherished it. To be convinced of this, we need only read what they have written about the articles of the Summa relative to the supernatural character of the theological virtues and especially of faith.²² One should read particularly the fine writings of the Carmelites of Salamanca on this point, which they regard as the foundation of the mystical doctrine of their father, St. John of the Cross.²³ Both St. Francis de Sales and Bossuet likewise express the same opinion.²⁴

     Among modern theologians, Scheeben, who clearly understood this teaching, wrote as follows: "The formal motive of faith is purely and immediately divine and therefore absolutely one and simple, firm and subsistent, identical with the first and immutable source of all truth (First Truth). On the other hand, faith itself appears as a direct commerce, an intimate union with the interior word of God, and consequently with His interior life. As this interior word not only existed at the time of the manifestation of the exterior word, but also subsists in its quality as eternal word of God, in an eternal present, it elevates our mind to participation in His truth and immortal life, and makes it rest therein.

     "The contrary opinion, according to which the exterior act of revelation would be a partial motive of faith, rests on a mechanical conception, in which faith appears as a deductive process helping us to discover the truth of its contents. It lessens the transcendental character of faith, which is essentially an impulse toward God." ²⁵

     This is what prompted Lacordaire to say: "What takes place in us when we believe is a phenomenon of intimate and superhuman light. I do not say that exterior things do not act on us as rational motives of certitude; but the very act of this supreme certitude, which I speak of, affects us directly like a luminous phenomenon (infused light of faith), like a transluminous phenomenon. . . . We are affected by a transluminous light. . . . Otherwise where would be the proportion between our adherence, which would be natural and rational, and an object surpassing nature and reason? . . . It is somewhat like a sympathetic intuition that in a single moment establishes between two men what logic could not do in many years. Just so a sudden illumination at times enlightens the intelligence." ²⁶ Bishop Gay holds the same opinion.²⁷

     To make us thus adhere to the supreme, essentially supernatural Truth, infused faith should therefore also be supernatural in its essence and not merely by an accidental modality. It is thus infinitely superior to the light of reason, as the latter is to the senses.²⁸

     When this great doctrine of St. Thomas is not lessened by a materialistic interpretation, it is, by reason of its loftiness, evidently the foundation of mystical theology, and is in no way inferior to the most beautiful pages on the life of faith in the writings of Dionysius,²⁹ Tauler,³⁰ Blessed Henry Suso,³¹ or St. John of the Cross. We shall see that the passive purifications of the spirit especially, which are described in The Dark Night of the Soul, can be understood only by what we have just said about the absolute supernaturalness of the formal motive of the theological virtues. These painful passive purifications, in which the gifts of the Holy Ghost have a great share, bring out strikingly this pure, supernatural motive by freeing it more and more from every inferior motive accessible to reason.

     To show that mystical contemplation is only the plenitude of the life of faith, the essence of which we have just determined, we need only quote some characteristic passages from the writings of St. John of the Cross. In The Ascent of Mount Carmel³² he writes: "To be prepared for the divine union, the understanding must be purified, emptied of all that comes from the senses, of all that may present itself clearly. It must be intimately at peace, recollected, and abandoned in faith. This faith alone is the proximate and proportionate means which can unite the soul to God, for faith is in such intimate connection with God that what we believe by faith and what we see by the beatific vision are one and the same thing. God is infinite; faith proposes the infinite to us. God is one and triune; faith proposes Him to us as one and triune. In the same way that God is darkness for our mind, faith enlightens our understanding by blinding it. By this means only does God manifest Himself to the soul in a divine light which exceeds all understanding; whence it results that the greater faith is, the more profound is the union. . . . For under the darkness of faith, the understanding is united to God; under cover of this mysterious darkness, God is found hidden."

     Farther on in the same work,³³ St. John of the Cross says of spiritual visions in which creatures are seen: "I do not deny that the memory of them may give rise to some love of God and contemplation; but pure faith and detachment in darkness from all this stimulates and raises the soul much more thereto, without the soul's knowing how or whence it comes. If it happens that the soul experiences an anguish of very pure love of God, and is ignorant of its cause and motive, it is the effect of faith, which has developed in the night, in nudity and spiritual poverty, and which is accompanied by a more profound, infused love of God. Whence it follows that the more eager the soul is for obscurity, for annihilation in regard to every exterior and interior object which it is capable of possessing, the more it increases its faith, and also hope and charity, inasmuch as the three theological virtues form a unity. Often the person favored does not understand this love and has no feeling of it, since it is not established in the senses by tenderness, but in the soul by a fortitude, courage, and daring hitherto unknown."

     Previously St. John of the Cross had written: ³⁴ "In order to be supernaturally transformed, the soul must enter the darkness (not only in regard to creatures, but in regard to what reason can know of God). It must remain in the darkness, like a blind person, relying on obscure faith, taking it as light and guide. The soul cannot help itself with any of the things which it understands, tastes, feels, or imagines. . . . Faith dominates all these ideas, tastes, sentiments, and images. If the soul does not wish to extinguish its lights by preferring total obscurity to them, it will not reach what is superior, that is, what faith teaches. . . . The soul creates great obstacles for itself in its ascent toward this lofty state of union with God when it relies on reasoning or is attached to its own judgment or will." Elsewhere the saint states that by so doing the soul mingles with its supernatural acts an act of coarse quality which does not attain the end.³⁵

     And again St. John of the Cross says: ³⁶ "To busy oneself with things which are clear to the mind and of little value is to forbid onself access to the abyss of faith where God in secret supernaturally instructs the soul, and without its knowledge enriches it with virtues and gifts. . . . The Holy Ghost enlightens the recollected intellect according to the measure of its recollection. But the most perfect recollection is that which takes place in faith, and for this reason the Holy Ghost does not communicate His lights outside of faith." In all these texts the saint is concerned with living faith enlightened by a gift of the Holy Ghost. ³⁷

     We find the same teaching for more advanced souls in The Dark Night of the Soul: "The soul ought then to enter the second night in order to strip itself perfectly of all perceptions and savors, whether of sense or of spirit, in order to walk in the purity of obscure faith. There only can it find the fitting means by which the soul is united to God, as He Himself declares by the prophet Osee (2: 20); 'I will espouse thee to Me in faith.' " ³⁸

     In The Spiritual Canticle, St. John beautifully sums up this doctrine and shows its loftiness. He insists on the absolute supernaturalness of the object which faith attains by the articles of the Credo:

"O crystal well!

Oh, that on Thy silvered surface

Thou wouldest mirror forth at once

Those eyes desired ³⁹

Which are outlined in my heart!"

     "By 'silvery surfaces' the soul means the propositions or articles of faith. To understand these verses and those which follow, we must observe that the articles of faith are represented by silver as compared to gold, which is the substance of faith or the truths which it contains considered in themselves. During our lives we adhere to this substance of faith, although it is hidden in a silvered envelope. It will appear unveiled in heaven, and we shall contemplate this pure gold with delight. . . . Thus faith gives us God even in this life, although under a veil of silver. This does not hinder us from truly receiving Him." ⁴⁰

     St. Thomas holds the same opinion. In correcting Hugh of St. Victor, he observes that the only contemplation that surpasses faith is the beatific vision. According to his opinion, the contemplation of the angels and that of Adam before the fall was not superior to faith, but, he says, they received the light of the gift of wisdom in greater abundance than we do.⁴¹ And he shows that uniform or circular contemplation, of which Dionysius speaks, presupposes the sacrifice of the senses and of reasoning, or the multiplicity in which they tarry.⁴²

     St. Thomas is not speaking here merely of the contemplation called "ordinary," and not at all of mystical contemplation. If we should thus misunderstand him, we would confound the latter with its concomitant phenomena and would forget that the holy doctor recognizes that the superior degree of uniform or circular contemplation is that called by Dionysius the great darkness, or the plenitude of faith. St. Thomas says: "Then we know God through ignorance, by a union which surpasses the nature of our soul and in which we are enlightened by the depths of divine wisdom, which we cannot scrutinize." ⁴³ St. Albert the Great teaches the same doctrine.⁴⁴

     This teaching is confirmed by the testimony of souls experienced in the mystical ways. "One day," says Blessed Angela of Foligno, "I saw God in a darkness and necessarily in a darkness, because He is situated too far above the mind, and no proportion exists between Him and anything that can become the object of a thought. It is an ineffable delectation in the good which contains all. Nothing therein can become the object either of a word or a concept. I see nothing, I see all. Certitude is obtained in the darkness. The more profound the darkness, so much the more does the good exceed all. This is the reserved mystery. . . . Pay attention. The divine power, wisdom, and will of which I have had marvelous visions at other times, seem less than this which I saw. This is a whole; one would say that the others were parts." ⁴⁵ It is the Deity superior to being, to wisdom, to love, which are identical with each other in its infinity.

     Such is manifestly the full development of infused faith, of which St. Thomas has so well determined the essential supernaturalness; it is faith based on a formal motive, inaccessible to reason and to the natural knowledge of the angels. Contemplative souls have found great light in learning the true thought of the holy doctor on this fundamental point.⁴⁶

     In fact, if we are truly convinced of the essential supernaturalness of faith, we understand that mystical contemplation is the normal blossoming of this theological virtue united to charity and to the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Only the contemplative rises to the heights of his faith.

     The certitude of his contemplation is based formally on a secret illumination of the Holy Ghost, while the concomitant phenomena of suspension of the faculties and of ecstasy are only effects and signs of a state with a supernatural quality beyond the grasp of observation. Here, as also for the natural knowledge of first principles and for the certitude of faith, we must distinguish clearly between the entirely spiritual, formal motive of our adherence and the sensible signs accompanying it.

     If, on the other hand, the teaching of St. Thomas on the supernatural character of faith is interpreted materialistically, mystical contemplation will be materialized. Too much attention will be paid to the phenomena that sometimes accompany it, and it will be declared absolutely extraordinary because the fundamental law of the continual development "of the grace of the virtues and of the gifts" will be lost sight of.

     What the holy doctor teaches about hope and charity will also be materialistically interpreted. If anyone should imagine that reason alone, studying historically the Gospel confirmed by miracles, can without grace attain the formal motive which specifies infused faith, he would be led to think that reason can in the same way know the formal motive of hope and of charity. Were this the case, the acts of these virtues would be substantially natural, and would require only a supernatural modality in order to be useful to salvation. Our act of charity would thus resemble a natural and reasonable affection which had been supernaturalized in order to become meritorious. In this case we no longer see the infinite distance which separates, in their very essence and in their essential vitality, the natural desire to be happy from the act of infused hope, or again that distance which separates the natural love of the sovereign Good, which Plato speaks of in The Banquet, from the divine charity which is mentioned so repeatedly in the Gospel.

     Some theologians, following the nominalists, have seriously diminished the supernatural character of the Christian virtues, even of the theological virtues; but such diminution is certainly not found in St. Thomas. In his opinion, these virtues are supernatural in their very essence, which raises infinitely the vitality of our intelligence and of our will. They are specified by a formal object, or a formal motive, which infinitely surpasses the natural powers of the human soul and those of the highest angels.

     This doctrine of the essentially supernatural, formal motive of the three theological virtues places the teaching of St. Thomas on the same level as that of the greatest orthodox mystics.⁴⁷

     Finally, we are confronted with the question of the gifts of the Holy Ghost and of the supernatural inspiration to which they render us docile, as sails render a ship responsive to the breath of the wind. Some theologians, who did not see the necessity of the infused moral virtues, which are superior to acquired moral virtues, were surprised to learn that in every soul in the state of grace there are, in addition, gifts of the Holy Ghost, superior by their divine mode to the infused moral virtues. They denied this essential superiority because they failed to recognize the supernatural riches which the mystical life especially manifests to us. Understanding St. Thomas materially, they confused the inspiration of the Holy Ghost with the actual grace necessary for the exercise of the virtues as soon as some special difficulty presents itself.

     St. Thomas, on the contrary, teaches explicitly the essential distinction between the virtues and the gifts, and consequently he distinguishes exactly the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, which surpasses the human mode, from the simple actual grace which is adapted to this mode.⁴⁸ On this point also, by declaring the gifts necessary to salvation, St. Thomas agrees with the greatest mystics. He adds, as they do, that the gifts, although subordinated to the theological virtues, greatly assist in their development. The Holy Ghost communicates His lights to us in the recollection of faith. Thus the difference is very great between that supernatural faith which subsists without charity in a soul in the state of mortal sin, and living faith which is aided by the gifts and profound touches of the Holy Ghost.

     We shall find the same loftiness in the doctrine of St. Thomas on actual grace, on the mode of God's presence in the just soul, and on the eminent and absolute simplicity of the divine essence.

     The humble Thomas Aquinas, who was always inclined to silence and always recollected, lived this supernatural doctrine. His whole heart was given up to the love of God while he was pondering and solving the most difficult questions. How could it be otherwise in a great saint destined to remain throughout the centuries the light of theology? The heavenly gift of wisdom illumined his research, directed his intelligence and will toward an ever deeper possession of divine truth and life, and this it did although he was engaged in the most diverse studies. Questions seemingly remote from this supreme end are so only for a soul that has not yet reached that height where all is lost in God, the beginning and end of all things. Undoubtedly St. Thomas was raised to the highest degrees of mystical contemplation, and certainly his teaching will not hinder souls in their ascent.

ARTICLE III

Mystical Theology and the Doctrine of St. Thomas on the Efficacy of Grace

     Those who are surprised that we seek the principles of mystical theology in the writings of St. Thomas should consider especially his teaching on the efficacy of grace.

     This doctrine, precisely because it is very lofty, is not generally well understood except by speculative theologians and souls that have entered the passive ways. The reason for this is found in the fact that speculative theologians are accustomed to consider everything in relation to God, the universal first cause and Author of salvation. Souls in the passive ways know from experience that in the work of salvation everything comes from God, even our co-operation–in this sense, that we can distinguish therein no part that is exclusively ours and that does not come from the Author of all good.

     The expression "no part exclusively ours" occurs frequently in the works of the fathers and in those of St. Thomas. As we shall see, it clearly expresses his thought; but to grasp all its loftiness and profundity, we shall, first of all, state the less lofty conceptions proposed by certain theologians. It will be to our advantage to understand the efficacy of actual grace which we need for our conversion, then to resist temptation which at times is violent, so as to merit, to grow in the love of God, to pass through the crucible of the purifications, and to persevere in good until death.

     Some theologians ¹ thought that the grace which is profitable to salvation is called efficacious, not at all because of itself it leads us gently and mightily to consent to good, but because it is given to us at the moment when God has foreseen that by ourselves alone we would choose to accept it rather than to resist it. The divine prevision of man's response is what distinguishes efficacious grace from grace that is not efficacious. In other words, this efficacy does not come from the divine will, but from the human will; the grace is efficacious, not at all because God wills it so, but because man accepts it. According to this idea, it may happen that of two sinners under the same circumstances receiving equal actual graces, one will be converted and the other will remain in his sin. Hence this difference of determination between these two men springs solely from the human will, and not at all from the difference in the divine help which they received. The same grace, which was only sufficient and which remained sterile in one, was efficacious in the other because he himself made it efficacious. If this is the case, evidently the salutary act is called forth by the divine attraction, but the initial distinction separating the just from the sinner does not come from God; it is exclusively ours. And this conception of the efficacy of grace is applied not only to the salutary acts preceding justification, but also to all meritorious acts, even to the last which crowns the work of salvation.²

     Does such a very human explanation of this divine mystery preserve the grandeur of the mystery? The School of St. Thomas has never thought so.³ Is not free determination the most important part of the work of salvation? This determination is what distinguishes the just from the sinner in the production of every salutary act; every time he avoids sin in the course of his life, every time he triumphs over temptation, or merits and perseveres in good. According to St. Thomas, we cannot admit that this important distinction comes exclusively from us and not at all from God, the Author of salvation. St. Paul says: "For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?" ⁴ "Without Me," says our Lord, "you can do nothing."⁵ In these words the fathers, especially St. Augustine and following him St. Thomas, have seen the affirmation that in the work of our salvation all comes from God, even our co-operation, even the distinction between the just and sinners, so that we cannot find therein a part which is exclusively ours.⁶ Moreover, if God were in no way the cause of our choice, He would not have been able to foresee it infallibly from all eternity; for He alone is eternal, and our free acts are future from all eternity ⁷ only because He decided to produce them in us and with us, or at least to permit them if they are bad.⁸

     Other modern theologians have sought to correct the doctrine which we are examining, by saying that grace, followed by consent to good, is called efficacious because it is more adapted (congrua), than simply sufficient grace, to the temperament of the subject who receives it and to the circumstances of time and place in which he is. Grace thus urges us to give our consent, but the free determination of the latter remains exclusively our work. God's action inviting us to good, is analogous to that of a mother who, when she wishes to do so, can find the best means to persuade her child and to lead him to conduct himself well.

     In spite of this slight modification, we can truly say that in this second doctrine as in the preceding the efficacy of grace does not come from the divine will, but from the human will and also from our temperament and circumstances. In other words, grace, in this doctrine also, solicits our good consent, but the determination of the latter is exclusively ours. If this were the case, the most important part of the work of salvation would not come from the Author of salvation; it would only have been foreseen by Him.⁹

     In reality, according to St. Thomas, the action of God on the will of a converted sinner is infinitely deeper than that of a mother on the heart of her child. The mother's action could grow forever without ever attaining the action of God. Of God alone, Holy Scripture says: "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will."¹⁰ He Himself says by the mouth of Ezechiel: "And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit in the midst of you; and I will cause you to walk in My commandments, and to keep My judgments, and do them." ¹¹ "As the division of waters, so the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: whithersoever He will He shall turn it."¹² And St. Paul asks: "Or who hath first given to him, and recompense shall be made him?" ¹³ "So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy" ¹⁴ . . . "but the same God, who worketh all in all."¹⁵ "For in Him we live and move and are."¹⁶ "For of Him and by Him and in Him are all things." ¹⁷

     After quoting two of these texts from Scripture,¹⁸ St. Thomas remarks: "Some, who do not understand how God can cause in us the movement of our will without prejudice to liberty, have done their best to wrest a different interpretation from these divine words. For them, they mean that God causes in us the will and the act, in as far as He gives us the faculty to will, but not in as far as He makes us will this or that. Origen has understood it thus (Peri Archon, Bk. III). . . . To hold this opinion is manifestly to resist the authority of Holy Scripture. It is said in Isaias (26: 12): Thou hast wrought all our works for us. It is not, therefore, only the faculty of will that we have from God, but the very operation." ¹⁹

     The Council of Orange explains these words of Scripture by saying: "God effects in man several blessings without man's co-operation, but man can do no good without the help of God, who enables him to accomplish all his good works.²⁰ No one has anything of himself except his deceitfulness and sin. Whatever truth and justice we have in us, we have received from that source whence we should all drink in this life, if we do not wish to faint on the way." ²¹

     Following in this the doctrine of St. Augustine, expressed in the Council of Orange, St. Thomas teaches that grace is efficacious of itself and not by reason of the consent following it. Let us consider what occurs in the innermost depths of the will of a converted sinner. If God wishes efficaciously that a certain sinner should be converted at a given moment, "this divine will," says St. Thomas, "cannot fail to be accomplished"; as St. Augustine observes: "It is by the grace of God that all who are saved are very surely saved." "If then," continues St. Thomas, "it is in the intention of God, who moves wills, to convert or to justify a certain sinner, this sinner will be infallibly justified according to the expression of Jesus: Everyone that hath heard of the Father and hath learned cometh to Me." ²²

     According to St. Thomas, divine grace, which efficaciously inclines us to salutary good, is not, therefore, indifferent or changeable. It is not made efficacious by our foreseen consent; but it moves us surely, powerfully, and gently to follow the way of good rather than that of evil.²³

     Thus in the work of salvation man can do nothing without the help of God, but unfortunately he is sufficient unto himself to fall or to sin. And precisely because sin as such is a deficiency or the privation of a good, it demands for its production only a defectible and deficient cause according to Scripture: "Destruction is thy own, O Israel: thy help is only in Me." ²⁴ God permits this failure to occur, or rather does not prevent it, only because He is sufficiently powerful and good to draw a greater good from it–the manifestation of His mercy or justice.²⁵

     Accordingly no one who has attained the use of reason is deprived of the efficacious grace necessary for salvation, except for having freely resisted a sufficient grace, a good inspiration which recalled the duty to be accomplished. The sinner thus placed an obstacle in the way of efficacious grace which had been offered in the sufficient help. For example, fruit is offered in the flower, but if hail falls on a tree in blossom, we will never see its fruit. St. Thomas observes: "Only those are deprived of grace, who place in themselves an obstacle to grace. Thus when the sun is shining, if someone closes his eyes and falls over a precipice it is his own fault, even though sunlight is necessary for him to see. . . . On the subject of certain sinners, we read in Job (21: 14): Who have said to God: Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. . . . They were enemies of the light." ²⁶

     God is not obliged to remedy our voluntary faults, especially when they are repeated. The truth of the matter is that He often does remedy them, but not always. Therein lies a mystery.²⁷

     In this sense we understand the profound meaning of the words of the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, chap. 13): "If men do not resist His grace, as God has begun in them the work of salvation, He will pursue its accomplishment by working in them both to will and to accomplish.²⁸ But he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall,²⁹ and let him with fear and trembling work out his salvation." ³⁰ In the same chapter, the Council reminds us that "the grace of final perseverance can come only from Him who has the power to sustain those who stand,³¹ that they may persevere, and to lift up those who have fallen. No one can be absolutely certain of obtaining this final grace, although all should constantly place firm hope in the help of God."

     The Church speaks as follows in her liturgy: "Forestall, we beseech Thee, O Lord, all our thoughts, words, and actions by Thy holy inspirations and carry them on by the assistance of Thy grace, so that every prayer and work of ours may begin always from Thee and by Thee be happily ended."

     As St. Augustine says, "Free will is of itself sufficient for evil but, so far as good is concerned, it does nothing unless aided by all-powerful goodness." ³² Although our resistance to sufficient grace is of ourselves alone, we freely give our cooperation, our consent, to good only in virtue of intrinsically efficacious grace, a new gift of God which produces in us the will and the act. "Without Me you can do nothing," says our Lord; and, on the other hand, the soul united to God says with St. Paul: "I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me"; ³³ that is, co-operate in His sanctifying work, labor for eternity.

     Some have thought that this doctrine of intrinsically efficacious grace destroys human liberty and contains an absurdity. Far from being absurd, in the opinion of St. Thomas it expresses a sublime mystery: the mystery of God more intimately present to our free will than our free will is to itself.

     Grace does not destroy our liberty by its certain efficacy; rather by that very efficacy divine grace moves the free will without doing violence to it. This is the inspired idea of St. Thomas Aquinas when he interprets revelation. "When a cause," he says,³⁴ "is efficacious to act, the effect follows upon the cause, not only as to the substance of the effect, but also as to its manner of being and of being made; when a cause is feeble, on the contrary, it does not succeed in giving to its effect the manner which is in it." It is not capable of leaving its imprint on the effect. The property of powerful agents in the physical, intellectual, and moral order is to imprint by the very force of their action their likeness on their works, on their children, on their disciples. Artistic geniuses are aware of it in themselves, great military leaders experience it. St. Thomas says: "Since the divine will is perfectly efficacious, it not only follows that things happen that God wills to happen, but happen also in the way that He wills from all eternity. God wills some things to happen necessarily, some contingently and freely." ³⁵ With this end in view He has given us free will. And why should He be unable to produce in us and through us even the free manner of our acts? As Sophocles, Dante, and Corneille have their way of touching us and of stirring up our emotions, just so God has His way when He moves our will. St. Thomas states: "Free will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, who moves both natural and voluntary causes. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature." ³⁶ Thus a great master communicates to his disciples not only his knowledge, but his spirit and his manner. Leo XIII says the same thing in the encyclical Libertas. "God," adds St. Thomas, "immutably moves our will because of the perfect efficacy of His power, which cannot fail; but liberty remains because of the nature (and of the unlimited amplitude) of our will (which is ordered to universal good, and which is as a result) indifferent in regard to the particular good which it chooses. Thus in all things Providence works infallibly, and yet contingent causes produce their effects in a contingent manner, for God moves all things proportionately to the very manner of the nature of each being." ³⁷

     Under the impulse of intrinsically efficacious grace, the will moves itself freely, for it is moved by God in a manner befitting its nature. By nature it has for its object universal, limitless good, conceived by the intellect, which is infinitely superior to the senses; only the attraction of God seen face to face could invincibly captivate this faculty to will and to love.³⁸ It enjoys a dominating indifference in regard to every particular good, judged good under one aspect, but insufficient under another. The relation of our will to this object is not necessary; rather our will dominates the attraction of this good. The act is free because it proceeds, under the indifference of judgment, from a will, the universal amplitude of which projects beyond the particular good toward which it is inclined.³⁹ By His efficacious motion God does not change, and even cannot change, this contingent relation of our voluntary act with this object, since the act is specified by this object itself. The divine motion does not do violence to our will, since it exercises itself interiorly according to the natural inclination of our will toward the universal good, an inclination which comes from God and of which He is the master.⁴⁰ To say that liberty remains, is not contradictory; but in all of this we have an infinitely profound mystery analogous to that of the creative act: the mystery of God nearer to His creatures, whose existence He preserves, than they are to themselves.⁴¹

     God moves our liberty fortiter et suaviter. Power and gentleness are so intimately united in efficacious grace that failure to recognize the first is a suppression of the second; it is a failure to see the infinite abyss separating the divine influence from the created influences that exert themselves on our free choice. The beings dearest to us exercise a great persuasive influence on us. Let us suppose it is continually on the increase. Then let us consider the influence which the greatest of the angels can exercise; and let us remember that God can always create more perfect angels who would exert over us a still greater influence. But all this will never attain the efficacy of divine grace.

     Does it follow that efforts and willing are useless? Quite the contrary. Precisely because good will and holy effort are most important in the work of salvation, they cannot be exclusively our work. Grace is what causes us to make this choice, what makes us struggle against temptation and overcome it. As St. Augustine frequently says, God moves us, not that we should do nothing, but precisely that we should act. And often, if we demand too little of ourselves, this is because we do not count sufficiently on grace, because we do not sufficiently ask for it. If our spiritual life declines to a lower level, and if we are satisfied with an entirely natural life, this is a consequence of our believing we are alone in acting, forgetting that God is in us and with us, nearer to us than we are to ourselves.

     We now come to the foundation of the loftiest mystical theology, that of St. Paul, St. Augustine, Dionysius, St. Bernard,⁴² St. Thomas, Tauler, Ruysbroeck, the author of the Imitation, and St. John of the Cross. In the work of salvation, all comes from God, even our co-operation. We cannot glory in contributing a single part, however small, that would be exclusively ours. Man of himself is sufficient for evil; but for good, he can do absolutely nothing without the natural or supernatural help of God. On the other hand, with God and through Him he can achieve the greatest actions: he can co-operate in the salvation of souls, each of which is of more value than the entire material universe; he can make acts of charity, the least of which has greater value than all angelic natures taken together.⁴³ "But they that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall take wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."⁴⁴

     In conclusion, we simply quote the masterly passage where Bossuet, in the eighth chapter of his treatise on free will, sums up this doctrine of St. Thomas. "To reconcile God's decree and His omnipotent action with our free will, we need not attribute to Him a concurrence (in our action) which is equally ready for anything, and which will become whatever we choose to make of it. Still less is it necessary for Him to await the decision of our will, that He might thereupon form His decree in accordance with our resolutions. Aside from this weak device, which deforms the whole idea of first cause, we need merely consider that the divine will, with its infinite power reaching not only into the essence of all things but into their every mode of being, is of itself in accord with the whole and entire effect, producing in it whatever we conceive to be in it, because His will ordains that it shall come into being endowed with every property that belongs to it."

     The same chapter continues: "In the creature there is nothing that has being, no matter how little of it, but what has, for that very reason, received from God everything it possesses. And no one may object that the special property of the exercise of free will is that it comes solely from free will itself. This would be true if man's liberty were a primary and independent liberty and not a liberty which flows from a higher source. God, who, as first being, is the cause of all being, as first mover must be the cause of all action so that He produces in us the action itself, just as He placed in us the power to act. And the created action does not cease to be an action because it was produced by God. On the contrary, it is action all the more because God has invested it with being. . . .

     "If the power to produce our action in us were attributed to any other but our Maker, it might well be believed that He would do violence to our liberty and by moving it would break so delicate a spring which He had not made. But God does not have to guard against His action taking anything out of His work, because He produces everything in it down to the last detail. Consequently He produces not only our choice, but also the very freedom that is in our choice. . . . To put freedom in our action is to cause us to act freely; and to accomplish this, is to will that the action should exist; for with God, to accomplish is to will. . . . Thus in order to understand that God creates our free will in us, we must understand only that He wills us to be free. But He wills not only that we should be free in power, but that we should be free in its exercise. And He wills not only in general that we should exercise our liberty, but that we should exercise it in such and such an act. For He, whose knowledge and will extend to the uttermost detail of things, is not satisfied to will that they exist in general, but descends to what is called such and such, that is, to what is most particular; and all of this is comprised in His decree.

     "Thus God from all eternity wills every future exercise of human liberty in so far as it is good and real. What could be more absurd than to say that it is not, because God wills it to be? On the contrary, we must say that it is, because God wills it; and since it happens that we are free in virtue of the decree which wills that we should be free, the result is that we act freely in such and such an act in virtue of the decree which reaches into all this detail."

     Therefore absolutely everything in the world of material bodies and of spirits, in their being and their actions, comes from God, with the single exception of evil, which is a privation and a disorder. Evil is permitted by the supreme goodness only because God is powerful enough to draw an even greater good out of it: the striking manifestation of His mercy or justice.⁴⁵

     This doctrine praises the glory of God. Often it is not understood, because it is at one and the same time too lofty and too simple. Those who do not attain its loftiness disdain its simplicity. "But the humble of heart enter the depths of God without being disturbed and, remote from the world and its thoughts, they find life in the loftiness of the works of God." ⁴⁶ They do not feel their liberty oppressed by the divine force of grace; rather they find in this power deliverance and salvation.

     St. Thomas and the greatest mystics who have come after him tell us that this doctrine should lead us to great depths of humility, continual prayer, practical and sublime faith, abandonment in hope, thanksgiving, and intimacy of love.

ARTICLE IV

The Practical Consequences of the Doctrine of St. Thomas on Grace

     St. Thomas, following St. Augustine and opposing Pelagian or semi-Pelagian naturalism, grasped the depth and the height of our Lord's words: "Without Me you can do nothing," ¹ and of St. Paul's words: "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will." ² "For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received?" ³ In the work of salvation we cannot distinguish any part that is exclusively ours; all comes from God, even our free co-operation, which efficacious grace gently and mightily stirs up in us and confirms.

     This grace, which is always followed by its effect, is refused to us, as we said, only if we resist the divine, auxilium praeveniens, sufficient grace, in which the efficacious help is already offered us, as fruit is in the flower. If we destroy the flower, we shall never see the fruit, which the influence of the sun and of the nourishment of the earth would have produced. Now man is sufficient to himself to fall; drawn from nothingness, he is by nature defectible. He is sufficiently assisted by God so that he falls only through his own fault, which thus deprives him of a new help. This is the great mystery of grace. We have elsewhere explained what St. Thomas and his best disciples teach about this mystery.⁴ With him and St. Augustine we must submit our intelligence before this divine obscurity, and as Bossuet says, "confess these two graces (sufficient and efficacious), one of which leaves the will without excuse before God, and the other does not permit the will to glory in itself." ⁵ Is this not in conformity with what our conscience tells us? According to this doctrine, all that is good in us, naturally or supernaturally, has its origin in the Author of all good. Sin alone cannot come from Him, and the Lord allows it to happen only because He is sufficiently powerful and good to draw from it a greater good, the manifestation of His mercy or justice.

     This teaching of the great doctors of grace lifts our mind to a lofty contemplation of God's action in the innermost depths of our heart. To prove this, we have only to demonstrate that this doctrine should lead those who understand it well to profound humility, to almost continual interior prayer, to the perfection of the theological virtues and of the corresponding gifts of the Holy Ghost. Besides, we find it in the writings of all the great masters of the spiritual life. Considering the importance and the difficulty of the problem, we shall affirm nothing in this article except according to the very words of Scripture, as the greatest doctors explain them.

     This doctrine leads first of all to profound humility. According to this doctrine man has as his own, as something coming exclusively from himself, only his sin, as the Council of Orange declared.⁶ He never performs any natural good act without the natural aid of God, or any supernatural good act without a grace which solicits or attracts him, and also efficaciously moves him to the salutary act. As St. Paul says: "Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God." ⁷

     Even holy souls that have reached a high degree of charity are always in need of an actual grace in order to merit, to advance, to avoid sin, and to persevere in goodness.⁸ They should say: "For the thoughts of mortal man are fearful, and our counsels uncertain," ⁹ "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven . . . and lead us not into temptation." After striving greatly, they should admit: "We are unprofitable servants," ¹⁰ for the Lord might have chosen others who would have served Him much better. In all truth we should say, according to the teaching of St. Thomas, that there is no sin committed by another man which I might not commit in the same circumstances by reason of the infirmity of my free will, and of my own weakness (the Apostle Peter denied his Master three times). And if actually I have not fallen, if I have persevered, this is doubtless because I worked and struggled, but without divine grace I should have done nothing.¹¹ "Not to us, O Lord, not to us; but to Thy name give glory";¹² "as the potter's clay is in his hand, to fashion and order it . . . so man is in the hand of Him that made him." ¹³ "Thy hands have made me and formed me";¹⁴ "Thou hast redeemed us to God, in Thy blood." ¹⁵ "If I have not perished, it is because of Thy mercy." ¹⁶ "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit." ¹⁷ "This," says St. Augustine, "is what must be believed and said in all piety and truth, so that our confession may be humble and suppliant, and that all may be attributed to God." ¹⁸ Such is true humility. "Or what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?" ¹⁹

     The saints, considering their own failures, say to themselves that if such and such a criminal had received all the graces the Lord bestowed on them, he would perhaps have been less unfaithful than they. The sight of the gratuity of the divine predilections confirms them in humility. They recall our Lord's words: "You have not chosen Me: but I have chosen you."

This doctrine leads also to continual intimate prayer, to profound thanksgiving, to the prayer of contemplation.

     It leads to intimate prayer; for this is a very secret grace that must be asked. We must ask not only the grace which solicits and excites the soul to good but also that grace which makes us will it, which makes us persevere, which reaches the depths of our heart and of our free will; that grace which moves us in these depths, so that we may be delivered from the concupiscence of the flesh and the eyes, and from the pride of life. God alone saves and snatches us from these enemies of our salvation. At the same time He does not wound our liberty, but establishes it by delivering us from the captivity of these things of earth.

     Thus Scripture teaches us to pray: "Have pity on me, O Lord, according to Thine infinite mercy. Be propitious to a sinner. Help my unbelief. Create a clean heart in me, and renew a right spirit within me. Convert me, O Lord, make me return to Thee, and I shall return.²⁰ Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Give me Thy sweet and mighty grace in order that I may truly accomplish Thy holy will. As St. Augustine says: "Lord, give what Thou dost command, and command what Thou pleasest."

     Thus again the Church prays in the Missal: "Lord, direct toward Thyself our rebellious wills; grant that unbelievers, who are unwilling to believe, may have a will to believe. Apply our hearts to good works. Give us good will. Convert us and draw us strongly to Thyself. Take from us our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, a docile and pure heart. Change our wills and incline them toward what is good." ²¹

     Such is the holy confidence of the prayer of the Church because she is sure that God is not powerless to convert the most hardened sinners. What should a priest do who cannot succeed in converting a dying sinner? Persuaded that God can convert this guilty will, above all the priest will pray. If, on the contrary, he imagines that God holds this will only from without, by circumstances, good thoughts, good inspirations, which remain external to the consent to salutary goodness, will not the priest himself delay too long in the use of superficial means? Will his prayer possess that holy boldness which we admire in the saints, and which rests on their faith in the potent efficacy of grace?

     Likewise prayer should be, in a sense, continual, since our soul needs a new, actual, efficacious grace for every salutary act, for each new merit. With this in mind, we clearly see the profound meaning of our Lord's words: "We ought always to pray, and not to faint." ²² This truth is fully realized only in the mystical life, in which prayer truly becomes, as the fathers say, "the breath of the soul," which hardly ceases any more than that of the body. The soul constantly desires grace, which is like a vivifying breath renewing it and making it produce constantly new acts of love of God.

     Such ought to be the prayer of petition. And we ought also to thank God for all our good actions, since without Him we could have done nothing. This is what makes St. Paul say: "Pray without ceasing. In all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you all." ²³ "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God and the Father." ²⁴

     This doctrine of the intrinsic efficacy of grace leads also directly to the prayer of contemplation, which considers chiefly the profound action of God in us to mortify and to vivify, and which is expressed by the fiat of perfect abandonment. In contemplation we see realized in the intimate depths of souls the words of Scripture: "Thou are great, O Lord, forever. . . . For Thou scourgest, and Thou savest: Thou leadest down to hell, and bringest up again." ²⁵ "Thy word, O Lord, which healeth all things." ²⁶ To utter a perfect fiat to this intense and hidden work of grace in us, even when it crucifies and seems to destroy all, is the most secret but also the most fruitful co-operation in God's greatest work. It is the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane and that of the Blessed Virgin at the foot of the cross.

     Lastly, this doctrine reminds us that even for prayer efficacious grace is necessary. "Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit Himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings. And He that searcheth the hearts, knoweth what the Spirit desireth; because He asketh for the saints according to God." ²⁷ This mystery is verified especially in the mystical union, often obscure and painful, in which the soul learns by experience what great need we have of grace in order to pray, as also to do good. But, says St. John of the Cross,²⁸ souls that have reached a certain degree of union "obtain from God all that they feel inspired to ask of Him, according to the words of David, 'Delight in the Lord, and He will give thee the request of thy heart' " (Ps. 36: 4). Moreover, every humble, confident, persevering prayer by which we ask what is necessary or useful for our salvation is infallibly efficacious, because our Lord uttered such a promise and because God Himself caused this petition to well up in our hearts. Resolved from all eternity to grant us His benefactions, He leads us to ask them of Him.²⁹

     This doctrine of the powerful efficacy of grace leads finally to great heights in the practice of the theological virtues. This it does because it is intimately bound up with the sublime mystery of predestination, the grandeur of which it fully preserves. St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, tells us: "And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be saints. For whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Son; that He might be the first-born amongst many brethren. And whom He predestinated, them He also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who is against us?" ³⁰ St. Paul teaches the same doctrine in the Epistle to the Ephesians.³¹

     St. Augustine ³² and St. Thomas ³³ have explained these words of St. Paul without lessening their real meaning. Bossuet, their disciple, sums them up with his usual mastery by saying: "I do not deny the goodness of God toward all men, or the means which in His general providence He offers them for their eternal salvation. The Lord does not will that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.³⁴ But however great His designs may be on everyone, He fixes a certain particular gaze of preference on a number that is known to Him. All those on whom He gazes in this way, weep for their sins and are converted in their time. That is why Peter burst into tears when our Lord looked at him benignly. Peter's repentance was the result of the prayer which Christ had offered for the stability of his faith; for it was necessary, first of all, to rekindle his faith, and then to strengthen it that it might endure to the end. The same is true of all those whom His Father has given Him in a special manner. Of these He said: 'All that the Father giveth to Me shall come to Me. . . . Now this is the will of the Father who sent Me: that of all that He hath given Me, I should lose nothing; but should raise it up again in the last day' (John 6: 37, 39).

     "And why does He make us penetrate these sublime truths? Is it to trouble us, to alarm us, to cast us into despair, to disturb us and make us question whether or not we are of the elect? Far be it from us to indulge in such thoughts, which would make us penetrate the secret counsels of God, explore, so to speak, even into His bosom, and sound the profound abyss of His eternal decrees. The design of our Savior is that, contemplating this secret gaze which He fixes on those whom He knows and whom His Father has given Him by a certain choice, and recognizing that He can lead them to their eternal salvation by means which do not fail, we should thus learn first of all to ask for these means, to unite ourselves to His prayer, to say with Him: 'Deliver us from evil' (Matt. 6: 13); or, in the words of the Church: 'Do not permit us to be separated from Thee. If our will seeks to escape, do not permit it to do so; keep it in Thy hands, change it, and bring it back to Thee.' " ³⁵

     This prayer assumes its full value in the plenitude of the life of faith, which is the mystical life; faith, as practical as sublime, in the wisdom of God, in the holiness of His good pleasure, in His omnipotence, in His sovereign dominion, in the infinite value of the merits of Jesus Christ, and in the infallible efficacy of His prayer.

     Faith in the wisdom of God. "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways! . . . Or who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made him? For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory forever. Amen." ³⁶

     Faith in the holiness of the divine good pleasure. "I confess to Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. Yea, Father; for so hath it seemed good in Thy sight." ³⁷ Jesus spoke in the same manner to the Pharisees: "Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to Me, except the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him; and I will raise him up in the last day." ³⁸

     Faith in the divine omnipotence. God can convert the most hardened sinners. "The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord: whithersoever He will He shall turn it." ³⁹ "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will." ⁴⁰ "My sheep hear My voice; and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them life everlasting; and they shall not perish forever, and no man shall pluck them out of My hand. That which My Father hath given Me, is greater than all: and no one can snatch them out of the hand of My Father. I and the Father are one." ⁴¹

     Faith in the sovereign dominion of the Creator. "Behold as clay is in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hands, O house of Israel." ⁴² "Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction, that He might show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He hath prepared unto glory?" ⁴³

     Faith in the infinite value of the merits and of the prayer of Jesus. "The Father loveth the Son: and He hath given all things into His hands." ⁴⁴ "Amen, amen I say unto you: He that believeth in Me, hath everlasting life." ⁴⁵ "I have manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou hast given Me out of the world. Thine they were, and to Me Thou gavest them; and they have kept Thy word. . . . I pray for them. . . . Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given Me; that they may be one, as We also are. . . . While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name. Those whom Thou gavest Me have I kept; and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the Scripture may be fulfilled. . . . I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from evil. . . . And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in Me. . . . Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me; that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world." ⁴⁶ This act of serene and invincible faith in the infinite merits of Christ ravishes the heart of God, who at times allows everything to seem outwardly lost, that He may give His children the opportunity to prove their faith in Him by such an act.

     This doctrine of grace leads us also to an entirely supernatural hope composed of confidence in the divine mercy and abandonment to it. The formal motive of hope is, in fact, the infinitely helpful divine mercy (Deus auxilians). That this virtue of hope may be divine and theological, we must hope in God and not in the power of our free will. "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool; but he that walketh wisely, he shall be saved." ⁴⁷ Considering our weakness, we must "with fear and trembling work out our salvation," ⁴⁸ and "he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall." ⁴⁹ But, considering God's infinitely helpful goodness, we must say to Him: "In Thee, O my God, I put my trust; let me not be ashamed." ⁵⁰ "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit." ⁵¹ "O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet; blessed is the man that hopeth in Him." ⁵² "Preserve me, O Lord, for I have put my trust in Thee." ⁵³ "In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded." ⁵⁴ "Behold, God is my savior, I will deal confidently, and will not fear: because the Lord is my strength, and my praise, and He is become my salvation." ⁵⁵ "I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me." ⁵⁶

     Such is the abandonment which Christ wishes us to learn. It has no quietism in it, as Bossuet so well explains. He says: "We must abandon ourselves to the divine goodness. This does not mean that we need not act and work, or that, in opposition to God's command, we may yield to unconcern or to rash thoughts. Rather, while acting to the best of our ability, we must above all abandon ourselves to God alone for time and for eternity. . . .

     "A proud man fears that his salvation will be uncertain unless he keeps it in his own hand, but he is deceived. Can I rely on myself? I feel that my will escapes me at every moment. If Thou, O Lord, didst wish to make me the sole master of my fate, I should decline a power so dangerous to my weakness. Let no one tell me that this doctrine of grace and preference leads good souls to despair. How mad for me to think I can be reassured by being hurled back on myself and delivered up to my inconstancy! To this, O my God, I do not consent. I find assurance only in abandoning myself to Thee. And in this abandonment I find even greater trust, for those to whom Thou dost give this confidence in entire abandonment, receive in this gentle impulse the best mark we can have on earth of Thy goodness. Increase this desire in me; and by this means put into my heart the blessed hope of being at last among the chosen number. . . . Heal me and I shall be healed; convert me and I shall be converted." ⁵⁷

     In the painful, passive purifications of the spirit, souls are often tempted against hope and are troubled about the mystery of predestination. In this temptation all created helps fail them, and they must hope heroically against all hope for this single, pure reason, namely, that God is infinitely helpful and does not abandon the just unless they desert Him, that He does not let them be tempted beyond their strength aided by grace, that He sustains them by His all-powerful goodness, as He said to St. Paul: "My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in infirmity." "Gladly, therefore," says the great Apostle, "will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ For when I am weak, then am I powerful." ⁵⁸

     We ought in great difficulties to think of this formal motive of hope: God our helper; for He comes efficaciously to our assistance by the grace that urges us to the practice of goodness, and in a gentle and powerful way causes it to be accomplished.⁵⁹ "But the salvation of the just is from the Lord, and He is their protector in the time of trouble. And the Lord will help them and deliver them: and He will rescue them from the wicked, and save them, because they have hoped in Him." ⁶⁰

     Lastly, this doctrine of the efficacy of grace confirms our charity toward God and souls. This charity is a friendship based on God's communication to us of the divine life through grace. Therefore the more intimate and efficacious the grace which is given us, the more we should love God and correspond to His love. "Not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us." ⁶¹ The Master Himself said to His Apostles: "You have not chosen Me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit: and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in My name He may give it you." ⁶² And in the exercise of the apostolate, because he believed in the potent efficacy of grace, St. Paul wrote: "Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword? . . . But in all these things we overcome, because of Him that hath loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present . . . nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." ⁶³ Christ said to His heavenly Father: "Those whom Thou gavest Me have I kept. . . . Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me. . . . And I have made known Thy name to them, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me, may be in them, and I in them." ⁶⁴

     These words of our Lord are fully realized on earth only in the mystical life, the prelude to the life of heaven. And the great theology of St. Augustine and St. Thomas on grace thus reaches the loftiest orthodox mysticism, if care is taken not to lessen its meaning.

     No power is gentler than the infallibly efficacious grace of God. It diffuses itself gently in the soul which begins to will; the more the soul wills and the greater its thirst for God, the more it will be enriched. When God becomes more exacting and wishes pure crystal where there has been only sin, then He will give His grace in abundance that the soul may correspond to His demands. He Himself said: "I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly." ⁶⁵ The purified soul ends by praising the power of God: "The right hand of the Lord hath wrought strength. I shall not die, but live: and shall declare the works of the Lord." ⁶⁶

     We are not surprised to find this doctrine in the works of the greatest masters of the spiritual life.

     St. Bernard says: "Grace is necessary to salvation, free will is equally so; but grace in order to give salvation, free will in order to receive it. . . . Therefore we should not attribute part of the good work to grace, and part to free will. It is performed in its entirety by the common and inseparable action of both; entirely by grace, entirely by free will, but springing completely from the first in the second." ⁶⁷

     St. Bonaventure is of the same opinion: "Devout souls do not seek to attribute to themselves in the work of salvation some part that does not come from God. They recognize that all issues from divine grace." ⁶⁸

     Tauler speaks of the efficacy of grace as St. Thomas does.

     In The Imitation of Christ we read: "Never esteem thyself to be anything because of thy good works. . . . Of thyself thou always tendest to nothing: speedily art thou cast down, speedily overcome, speedily disordered, speedily undone. Thou hast not whereof to glory, but many things for which thou oughtest to account thyself vile; for thou art much weaker than thou art able to comprehend." "For I am nothing and I knew it not. If I be left to myself, behold I become nothing but mere weakness; but if Thou for an instant look upon me, I am forthwith made strong, and am filled with new joy." "From Me, as from a living fountain, the small and the great, the poor and the rich, do draw the water of life; and they that willingly and freely serve Me, shall receive grace for grace. . . . Thou oughtest, therefore, to ascribe nothing to thyself, nor attribute goodness unto any man, but give all unto God, without whom man hath nothing. I have given thee all, and My will is to have all again. . . . This is the truth whereby vainglory is put to flight, and if heavenly grace enter in and true charity, there will be no envy or narrowness of heart, neither will self-love busy itself. For divine charity overcometh all things and enlargeth all the powers of the soul." "O most blessed grace, that makest the poor in spirit rich in virtues. . . . Come Thou down unto me, come and replenish me early with Thy comfort, lest my soul faint for weariness and dryness of mind. . . . This alone and by itself is my strength; this alone giveth advice and help; this is stronger than all enemies, and wiser than all the wise. . . . Without this, what am I but a withered branch and an unprofitable trunk, meet only to be cast away? Let Thy grace, therefore, O Lord, always go before and follow me, and make me continually intent on good works." "I am to be praised in all My saints; I am to be blessed above all things, and to be honored in all whom I have thus gloriously exalted and predestined without any merits of their own.⁶⁹ . . . These all are one through the bond of love. . . . They love Me more than themselves. . . . For being ravished above self and self-love, they are wholly absorbed in the love of Me, in whom also they rest with full fruition." ⁷⁰

     Whenever St. Teresa touches on the question of grace, her doctrine is similar to that of St. Augustine and St. Thomas.⁷¹ St. John of the Cross always assumes the truth of this doctrine.⁷²

     St. Francis de Sales states this doctrine in the following terms: "The chains of grace are so powerful, and yet so sweet, that though they attract our heart, they do not shackle our freedom. . . . Our yielding to the impulse of grace is much more the effect of grace than of our own will, and resistance to its inspirations is to be attributed to our will alone. . . . 'If thou didst know the gift of God.' " ⁷³

     Good spiritual authors, no matter to what theological school they belong, are led to the same doctrine by the loftiness of the subjects with which they deal.⁷⁴

     All the difficulties of the mystery of grace are solved practically by humility. Bossuet says: "Behold a terrible danger for human pride. Man says in his heart: I have my free will. God made me free, and I wish to make myself just. . . . In my free will, which I cannot harmonize with this abandonment to grace, I wish to find something to cling to. Proud foe, do you wish to reconcile these things, or rather to believe that God reconciles them? He reconciles them in the way He wishes, without releasing you from your action and without ceasing to demand that you attribute to Him all the work of your salvation, for He is the Savior, and He said: 'I am the Lord; and there is no savior besides Me' (Is. 43: 11). Believe firmly that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and all difficulties will vanish." ⁷⁵

     As is evident in the passages quoted from the writings of St. John of the Cross, this great doctrine of St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas, manifestly turns souls toward the loftiest mystical union, which is none other than the fulness of the life of faith. This truth will become clearer in the two following chapters, where we will treat of the nature of Christian perfection and of what constitutes the essence of mystical contemplation.

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