Chapter VI
"The Goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down to the lowest part of our need"
THIS Shewing was made to learn our soul wisely to cleave to the Goodness of God.
And in that time the custom of our praying was brought to mind: how we use for lack of understanding and knowing of Love, to take many means whereby to beseech Him.
Then saw I truly that it is more worship to God, and more very delight, that we faithfully pray to Himself of His Goodness and cleave thereunto by His Grace, with true understanding, and steadfast by love, than if we took all the means that heart can think. For if we took all these means, it is too little, and not worship to God: but in His Goodness is all the whole, and there fails right nothing.
For this, as I shall tell, came to my mind in the same time: We pray to God for the sake of His holy flesh and His precious blood, His holy Passion, His precious death and wounds: and all the blessed kindness, the endless life that we have of all this, is His Goodness. And we pray Him for the sake of His sweet Mother's love that Him bare; and all the help we have of her is of His Goodness. And we pray by His holy Cross that he died on, and all the virtue and the help that we have of the Cross, it is of His Goodness. And on the same wise, all the help that we have of special saints and all the blessed Company of Heaven, the precious love and endless friendship that we have of them, it is of His Goodness. For God of His Goodness has ordained means to help us, fair and many: of which the chief and principal mean is the blessed nature that He took of the Maid, with all the means that go before and come after which belong to our redemption and to endless salvation. Wherefore it pleases Him that we seek Him and worship through means, understanding that He is the Goodness of all.
For the Goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down to the lowest part of our need. It quickeneth our soul and brings it on life, and makes it for to waxen in grace and virtue. It is nearest in nature; and readiest in grace: for it is the same grace that the soul seeketh, and ever shall seek till we know truly that He has us all in Himself enclosed.
For He has no despite of that He has made, nor has He any disdain to serve us at the simplest office that to our body belongs in nature, for love of the soul that He has made to His own likeness.
For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed. Yea, and more homely: for all these may waste and wear away, but the Goodness of God is ever whole; and more near to us, without any likeness; for truly our Lover desires that our soul cleave to Him with all its might, and that we be evermore cleaving to His Goodness. For of all things that heart may think, this pleases most God, and soonest speeds the soul.
For our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it passes the knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may fully know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loves us. And for that we may with grace and His help stand in spiritual seeing, with everlasting marvel of this high, overpassing, inestimable Love that Almighty God has to us of His Goodness. And for that we may ask of our Lover with reverence all that we will.
For our natural Will is to have God, and the Good Will of God is to have us; and we may never cease from willing nor from longing till we have Him in fullness of joy: and then may we no more desire.
For He wills that we be occupied in knowing and loving till the time that we shall be fulfilled in Heaven; and for that was this lesson of Love shewed, with all that follows, as you shall see. For the strength and the Ground of all was shewed in the First Sight. For of all things the seeing and the loving of the Maker makes the soul to seem less in his own sight, and most fills him with reverent fear and true meekness; with plenty of charity to his fellow-Christians.