WE ARE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT ALL THE LOVE WE HAVE FOR GOD IS FROM GOD
The love of humans for God has its origin, its progress and its perfection in God’s eternal love for humans. This is the universal sense of our Mother, Church. With an ardent jealousy she wants us to acknowledge that our salvation and the means to it is due solely to the mercy of the Saviour, in order that on earth as in heaven to him alone be honour and glory (1 Tim 1:17). What do you have that you did not receive? (1 Cor 4:7) asks the saintly Apostle [Paul] speaking of the gifts of knowledge, eloquence and other such qualities of Church pastors. And if you have received it, why do you boast as if you had not received? (1 Cor 4:7). It is true, we have received everything from God, but above all we have received the supernatural blessings of holy love. And if we have received them, why should we take glory for them? Surely if anyone were to glorify himself for having made a little progress in the love of God, we would say to him, “Alas, miserable man, you were lying unconscious in your sin. You had neither strength nor life left in you to enable you to rise (as it happened to the princess in our parable).[1] God in his infinite kindness ran to help you and cried out with a loud voice, Open the mouth of your attention and I will fill it (Ps 8:10). He put his own fingers between your lips and unclenched your teeth, placing within your heart his holy inspiration which you received. After that, having been brought back to your senses, he went on by various movements, and different means to strengthen your spirit, until he poured into it his charity as your vital and perfect health."
Well, tell me now, miserable creature, in all this what have you done about which you can boast? I know it well that you have consented. The movement of your will freely followed that of heavenly grace. But all this - is it anything else than to receive the divine action without resisting it? And what is there in this thatyou have not received? Wretched man that you are, you have received even the reception in which you glory and the consent about which you boast. Please tell me, will you not admit that if God had not reached out to you in advance, you would never have perceived his goodness and as a result never have consented to his love? No, you would not have even a single good thought of him (2 Cor 3:5). His movement gave being and life to yours. If his generosity had not enlivened, aroused and inflamed your will by the powerful attractions of his gentleness, your liberty would have remained forever useless for your salvation. I admit that you cooperated with the inspiration by consenting. But if you do not know it, I assure you that your cooperation was born from the working of grace and your will together. Nevertheless in such a way that if grace had not gone ahead and filled your heart with its action, it would never have had the power or the will to cooperate in the least.
But please tell me once again vile and miserable man, do you not make yourself ridiculous when you think that you have a share in the glory of your conversion because you did not reject the inspiration? Is it not the fantasy of thieves and tyrants to think that they give life to those from whom they do not take it? And is it not an insane irreverence to think that you have given holy, efficacious and living activity to the divine inspiration because you did not remove it by your resistance? We can prevent the effects of inspiration, but we cannot give it its effects. It draws its strength and virtue from the divine goodness, which is the place of its origin, and not from the human will, which is the place of its destination.
Would we not be angry with the princess of our parable if she boasted that it was she who gave virtue and power to the cordials and other medicines? Or that she had cured herself because if she had not received the medicines which the king gave her and poured into her mouth when she was half-dead and almost without feeling they would not have worked at all? “Yes," we could say to her, “ungrateful that you are, you might have obstinately refused to receive those medicines. Or having received them in your mouth you could have spat them out again. But for all that, it is not true that you gave them power and virtue. This they had as their natural quality. You have only agreed to receive them and let them do their work. Besides, you would never have agreed if the king had not first reinvigorated you and then persuaded you to take them. Never would you have received them, had he not helped you to receive them. He opened your very mouth with his fingers, and poured the medicine into it. Are you not then a monster of ingratitude for wanting to attribute to yourself a benefit that you owe for so many reasons to your dear husband?"
The wonderful little fish called echineis, remora or ship-stopper, indeed has power to stop or not to stop a ship sailing on the high seas under full sail. But it does not have the power to make it set sail, or move ahead or to suddenly appear. It can prevent movement but it cannot give it. Our free will can stop or prevent the flow of inspiration. When the favourable wind of heavenly grace fills the sails of our spirit, it is in our liberty to refuse our consent. In this way we hinder the effect of the wind in our favour. But when our spirit sails along and makes a pleasant voyage, it is not we who bring the wind of inspiration, nor do we fill our sails with it, nor do we give movement to the ship of our heart. But we only receive the wind that comes from heaven, consent to its movement and let the ship go along with the wind, without stopping it with the remora of our resistance. It is the inspiration, then, which impresses on our free will the joyful and gentle influence. Thus inspiration makes the will see the beauty of the good. It also warms it, helps it, strengthens it and moves it so gently that by this means it turns and freely flows towards the good.
The sky in springtime produces fresh dewdrops and showers them down on the face of the sea. The pearl oysters that open their shells receive these drops which are transformed into pearls. The pearl oysters that keep their shells closed do not prevent the drops from falling on them. However they prevent them from falling into them. Now, has not the sky sent its dew and its influence on the one pearl oyster as on the other? Why then did the one in fact produce its pearl and the other not? The sky was generous to the one that remained sterile, as much as was needed to empearl it and make it pregnant from this fair union. But it prevented the effect of the sky’s favour by keeping itself closed and covered. As for the one that conceived the pearl on receiving the dew, it has nothing in this which it did not receive from the sky, not even its opening whereby it received the dew. Without feeling the rays of the morning sun gently arousing it, it would not have risen to the surface of the sea nor would it have opened its shell.
Theotimus, if we have any love for God, to him be the honour and the glory. He has made everything in us and without him was not anything made (Jn 1:3). Ours is the benefit and the obligation. For this is the sharing of his divine goodness with us. He leaves us the enjoyment of his blessings and reserves for himself the honour and the praise. And truly, because we are all of us nothing but by his grace (1 Cor 15:10), we should be nothing but for his glory.
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[1] See Book 3, Ch 3.