THE SECOND TYPE OF RAPTURE
God attracts our mind to himself by his supreme beauty, and goodness beyond all understanding. However, these two perfections are only one supreme Divinity uniquely beautiful and absolutely good. All activity is for gaining the good and the beautiful. All things look at this goodness, are moved by it and held by it and for the love of it. The good and the beautiful are desirable, lovable and dear to all. All things work for it. They desire for it in all that they do and will. As regards the beautiful, it attracts and draws all things to itself. So the Greeks call it by a name which is derived from a word meaning to call.[1] In the same way, as regards the good its true symbol is the light. It is because the light above all gathers, receives, reduces and changes into itself all that is there. (So the Greeks call the sun with a word which shows that it brings together all things, holds them close and gathers together the scattered just as goodness changes all things to itself). For goodness is not only the supreme unity but also supremely unifying as all things desire it as their principle, their preservation and last end. Hence, in short, the good and the beautiful are one and the same thing only, since all things desire the beautiful and the good.
This teaching is taken almost word for word from St. Denis the Areopagite.[2] Indeed, it is true that the sun is the source of physical light. It is a genuine symbol of the good and the beautiful. For among the purely material creatures there is no goodness or beauty equal to that of the sun. The beauty and goodness of the sun consists in its light. Without its light nothing would be beautiful, nothing would be good in this physical world. As beautiful, its light illumines everything. As it is beautiful and bright it attracts all the eyes that have sight in this world. As it is good, it warms up, draws to itself all the desires and all the inclinations of the physical world. For it causes and raises mists and vapours. The light of the sun draws out and makes plants and animals to come to life. There is no life for which the vital heat of this great luminary does not contribute.
Thus, God the Father of all lights (Jas 1:17) is supremely good and beautiful. By his beauty he draws our minds to contemplate him. By his goodness he attracts our will to love him. As beautiful, he fills our intellect with delights. He pours out his love into our will. As good filling our will to the brim with his love, he arouses our intellect to contemplate him. Love stirs us to contemplation and contemplation prompts us to love. As a consequence, ecstasy and rapture depend solely on love. For it is love that leads the intellect to contemplate and the will to union. It is in such a way that finally we must conclude with the great St. Denis that “divine love is ecstatic. It does not allow lovers to be alive to themselves but to be alive to the thing loved."[3] This is the reason why this wonderful apostle St. Paul, possessing this divine love and sharing in its ecstatic power, divinely inspired says: ...it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20). Thus like a lover gone out of himself to God, he did not live his own life but the life of his Beloved as supremely lovable.
This rapture of love takes place in the will in this way: God touches the will with the attractions of his loving kindness. Then it is like a needle touched by the magnet turns itself and moves towards the north pole forgetting that it is unable to feel. So too the will touched by heavenly love soars up and moves towards God. It leaves all its earthly tendencies. By this means it enters into a rapture not of knowledge but of experience, not of sight but of taste and relish. It is true that, as I have already indicated, sometimes the intellect experiences wonder on seeing the sacred delight the will experiences in its ecstasy. Similarly the will often receives some delight seeing the intellect in admiration. Thus these two faculties communicate their raptures to each other, the sight of beauty leading us to love it and love leading us to contemplate the beauty. Rarely does the rays of the sun shine on us without warming us nor warm us without shining on us. Love easily leads to admiration and admiration easily leads to love.
However, the two ecstasies of the intellect and the will are not so related that one cannot exist without the other. Philosophers had more knowledge of the Creator than love of him. Similarly good Christians many times have more love than knowledge. Hence, the abundance of knowledge is not always followed by an excess of love. So too the excess of love is not always followed by that of knowledge, as I have mentioned before.[4] The ecstasy of wonder alone does not make us better. In this we follow what was said of it by the one who was enraptured in ecstasy to the third heaven (2 Cor 12:2). He says: If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing (1Cor 13:2)
The evil Spirit, therefore, can cause ecstasy, if we may say so, can ravish the intellect representing to it marvellous insights which keep it raised and held up above its natural powers. By such enlightenments it can still give to the will some kind of empty love, soft, tender and imperfect by way of satisfaction, self-complacency and sensible consolation. But there is a genuine ecstasy of the will by which it clings uniquely and firmly to divine goodness. But to give such an ecstasy by which God’s love is poured out into our hearts (Rom 5:5) belongs to the Supreme Spirit alone.
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[1] To Kalon from Kaleo.
[2] The Divine names 4
[3] The Divine names 4
[4] TLG Bk VI, Ch. 4