watch so that when the bridegroom comes he may not find himself shut out, and make his departure. If you were to sleep, if your heart were not wide awake, he would not knock and go away; but if your heart is watchful, he knocks and asks you to open the door to him.
Our soul has a door; it has gates. ‘Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, eternal gates, and the King of glory will enter.’ If you open the gates of your faith, the King of glory will enter your house in the triumphal procession in honour of his passion. Holiness too has its gates. We read in Scripture what the Lord Jesus said through his prophet: ‘Open for me the gates of holiness.’
It is the soul that has its door, its gates. Christ comes to this door and knocks; he knocks at the gates. Open to him; he wants to enter, to find his bride waiting and watching.
Tuesday after Epiphany 3
A Reading from The Scale of Perfection by Walter Hilton
You can grow in knowledge if you take pains to set your heart most upon one thing. That thing is nothing other than a spiritual desire toward God – to please him, love him, know him, see him and have him, here by grace in a little feeling, and in the glory of heaven with a full being. If you nourish this desire, it will teach you well which is sin and which is not, and which is good, and which is the better good. And if you are willing to fasten your thought to it, it will teach you all you need and get you all that you lack. And therefore, when you arise against the ground of sin in general, or else against any special sin, hang fast on to this desire and set the point of your thought more upon God whom you desire than on the sin which you reject, for if you do so, then God fights for you and he shall destroy sin in you. You shall much sooner come to your purpose if you do this than if you leave the humble desire that looks principally to God and resolve to set your heart only against the stirring of sin, as if you wanted to destroy it by your own strength: in that way you shall never bring it about.
Do as I have said, and better if you can, and by the grace of Jesus I think you will make the devil ashamed, and so break away these wicked stirrings that they shall not do you much harm; and in this manner that image of sin can be broken down in you and destroyed, by which you are deformed from the natural shape of the image of Christ. You shall be formed again to the image of the man Jesus by humility and charity, and then you shall be fully shaped to the image of Jesus God, living here in a shadow by contemplation, and in the glory of heaven by the fullness of truth. St Paul speaks thus of this shaping to the likeness of Christ: ‘My little children, whom I bear as a woman bears a child until Christ is again shaped in you.’ You have conceived Christ through faith, and he has life in you in as much as you have a good will and a desire to serve and please him; but he is not yet fully formed in you, nor you in him, by the fullness of charity. And therefore St Paul bore you and me and others in the same way with travail, as a woman bears a child, until the time that Christ has his full shape in us, and we in him.
For Christ is the door, and he is the porter; and without his leave and his livery, no one can come to God. As he says: ‘No one comes to the Father but by me.’ That is to say, Nobody can come to the contemplation of the Deity unless by the fullness of humility and charity he is first reformed to the likeness of Jesus in his humanity.
Wednesday after Epiphany 3
A Reading from a treatise entitled The Teacher by Clement of Alexandria
When a dispute arose among the apostles as to which of them was the greatest, we are told that Jesus stood a little child in their midst and said: ‘Whoever would be humble, becoming like this little child, is of the greatest importance in the kingdom of heaven.’
By ‘child’ Jesus did not mean someone who has not yet reached the use of reason because of immaturity, as some like to suggest. Similarly, when Jesus says: ‘Unless you become like little children you shall not enter the kingdom of God,’ his words should not be taken literally to mean without learning. We are not ‘little children’ in the sense that we roll on the ground or crawl on the earth like snakes as we did in our infancy. On the contrary, we are ‘little children’ only in the sense that we stretch our minds to contemplate the things of heaven, and in so doing are set loose from the world and our sins. We touch the earth only with the tips of our toes and so appear to be in the world, but inwardly we are pursuing holy wisdom, even though such a quest is deemed folly to those whose souls delight in wrong-doing.
Hence, in the gospel by ‘children’ is really meant those who know God alone as their Father, who are simple, little ones, without guile. To these, surely, who have made progress Jesus proclaimed this utterance, bidding them to dismiss anxiety about the things of this world and exhorting them to devote themselves to the Father alone in imitation of children. That is why he goes on to tell them: ‘Do not worry about tomorrow. Today has troubles enough of its own.’
He enjoins them to lay aside the cares of this life and depend on the Father alone. Whoever fulfils this command is in reality a child and an heir both to God and to the world – to the world, in the sense of one who appears to have lost his wits; to God, in the sense of one dearly beloved.
Indeed, if the detractors of spiritual childhood ridicule us, you should understand that they are really speaking evil of the Lord. They are implying that those who seek the protection of God are somehow lacking in intelligence. But if they were to understand the designation ‘children’ in its true and spiritual sense of innocent ones, we glory in that name. Such children are indeed new spirits who were infants in the folly of old misguided ways, but have newly become wise and have sprung into being according to the new covenant. Only recently, in fact, has God become known by the coming of Christ: ‘No one knows the Father but the Son – and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.’
Therefore, in contrast to the older people, the newer people are called young, for they have learned the new blessings. We possess the exuberance of life’s morning, the prime of a spiritual youth which knows no age; indeed, we are ever growing to maturity in wisdom, ever young, ever responsive, ever new. For those who have become partakers of the Word will necessarily be renewed in themselves. And whoever partakes of eternity assumes the qualities of the incorruptible. Thus, the name childhood designates for us a life-long springtime of the heart, since the truth which is in us, as well as our way of life, being saturated with the truth, cannot be touched by old age. Surely, wisdom is ever-blooming, ever fixed on the same truth, and never changing.
Thursday after Epiphany 3
A Reading from A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law
There is no principle of the heart that is more acceptable to God than a universal fervent love to all mankind, wishing and praying for their happiness, because there is no principle of the heart that makes us more like God, who is love and goodness itself and created all beings for their enjoyment of happiness.
The greatest idea that we can frame of God is when we conceive him to be a Being of infinite love and goodness, using an infinite wisdom and power for the common good and happiness of all his creatures. The highest notion, therefore, that we can form of man is when we conceive him as like to God in this respect as he can be, using all his finite faculties, whether of wisdom, power, or prayers, for the common good of all his fellow creatures, heartily desiring they may have all the happiness they are capable of and as many benefits and assistances from him as his state and condition in the world will permit him to give them.
And on the other hand, what a baseness and iniquity is there in all instances of hatred, envy, spite, and ill will, if we consider that every instance of them is so far acting in opposition to God and intending mischief and harm to those creatures which God favours, and protects, and preserves, in order to their happiness. An ill-natured man amongst God’s creatures is the most perverse creature
