LOVE IS THE LIFE OF THE SOUL CONTINUATION OF THE DISCUSSION ON THE ECSTATIC LIFE
The soul is the first act and principle of all the vital movements of the human person. As Aristotle says, it is “the principle by which we live, feel and understand." Hence it follows that we know the variety of lives from different kinds of movements. So animals which do not have any natural movement at all are without life. Thus, Theotimus, love is the first act and principle of our devout or spiritual life. By it we live, feel and move. The quality of our spiritual life is such as that of our affective emotions. A heart that has no movements of affection has no love whatever. On the contrary, a heart that has some love is not without affective emotions. So when we have placed our love in Jesus Christ, we have as a result placed our spiritual life in him. Now he is hidden in God in heaven just as God was hidden in him while he was on earth. Therefore our life is hidden in him. And when he will appear in glory (Col 3:4) our life and our love shall appear in the same way in God.
Thus, St. Ignatius [of Antioch], as told by St. Denis, used to say that his love was crucified. It is as though he wanted to say: “My natural and human love, with all the passions which arise from it, is nailed to the cross. I have made it to die as a mortal love which was leading my heart to live a perishable life in order to rise again to an immortal life. So also I have died with him on the cross to my natural love which was the temporal life of my soul. Thus I may rise to the supernatural life of love to be practised in heaven, hence unending.
We see a person who experiences raptures in prayer. By them he or she gets out of self to God. However he or she does not experience ecstasy of life. In other words such a person does not live a life raised above and devoted to God by renouncing worldly lusts and natural tendencies by interior gentleness, simplicity, humility and, above all, by continual charity. If so, believe me Theotimus, all those raptures are very doubtful and dangerous. These are raptures apt to make people admire them but not to sanctify them. For what good can be there for a soul to be ruptured in God in prayer if in company and daily life it is ravished by natural and mean earthly loves. To be above oneself in prayer and below oneself in life and activity, to be angels in meditation and beasts in daily life is to go limping with two different opinions (1Kings 18:21),[1] to bow down and swear to the Lord but also swear by Milcom (Zeph 1:5). In short it is an authentic sign that such rapture and such ecstasies are only deceptions and tricks of the devil.
Blessed are those who live a superhuman and ecstatic life raised above themselves though they are never enraptured above themselves in prayer. There are many saints in heaven who never had an ecstasy or rapture in contemplation. For how many martyrs, men and women saints, we see in history [of the church] who never had in prayer any other privilege than that of devotion and fervour! There has never been any saint who did not have the ecstasy of life and activity rising above self and its natural tendencies.[2]
In this, I pray you, Theotimus, is it not evident that it is about the ecstasy of life and activity that the great Apostle [St. Paul] mostly speaks when he writes: It is no longer I who live but it is Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20). He explains the same in other words to the Romans. He tells them: Our old self was crucified with Jesus Christ. We have died to sin with him. We are raised to life with him to walk in the newness oflife so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin (Rom 6: 4-11). Here indeed it means, Theotimus, that each one of us symbolizes two selves, consequently two lives: One is the old self which is an old life. As it is said the eagle which became old goes dragging its feathers but cannot fly. The other life is that of the new self (Rom 6:6) which is also a new life. It is like that of the eagle, freed from its old feathers which it has cast off into the sea, takes new feathers. Being made young again it flies in the newness of its strength (Ps 103:5).[3]
In the first life we live according to the old self. In other words, we live in harmony with our defects, frailties and weaknesses to which we are subjected by the sin of our first father Adam. Since we live in the sin of Adam, our life is a mortal life and even death itself. In the second life we live according to the new self. It means that we live by the graces, favours, statutes and the will of our Saviour. As a consequence we live in the path of salvation and redemption. This new life is a vigorous, vital and enlivening life. But whoever wishes to lead this new life has to pass through the death of the old life crucifying his flesh with all the vices and all its lusts (Gal 5: 24). He has to bury them under the waters of baptism or the sacrament of penance. It is like Naaman who drowned and buried in the waters of Jordan his old leprous, infected life to live a new life, healthy and clean (2 Kings 5:14). For we could rightly say of this man that he was no more the old Naaman, leprous, rotting, infected. Instead he is a new Naaman, clean, healthy and honest because he died to leprosy and is living in health and cleanliness.
Whoever has risen to the new life of the Saviour does not live any longer to self, in self or for self. But he lives to his Saviour, in his Saviour and for his Saviour. So you also must consider yourselves, says St. Paul, dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:11).
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[1] NRSV. Elijah tells the people: If the Lord is God follow him; but if Baal then follow him (1Kings 18:21)
[2] We may call it “The Heroic Practice of Virtues." The church demands clear proof of this before beatifying a christian
[3] Psalm no. NRSV. so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. In the in the original Ps 102:5