The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Religion
The Mystical Element of Religion, as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her friends, Volume 1 (of 2)
Hügel, Friedrich, Freiherr von
Catherine, of Genoa, Saint, 1447-1510
Perhaps the most classic expression of the true Unity is that implied
by St. Ignatius of Loyola, when he tells us that “Peace is the
simplicity of order.” For order as necessarily implies a multiplicity
of things ordered as the unity of the supreme ordering principle.
Fénelon, doubtless, at times, especially in parts of his condemned
_Explication des Maximes des Saints_, too much excludes, or seems to
exclude, the element of multiplicity in the soul’s intention. Yet,
both before and after this book, some of the clearest and completest
statements in existence, as to the true unity and diversity to be
found in the most perfect life, are to be found among his writings. In
his Latin Epistle to Pope Clement XI he insists upon the irreducible
element of multiplicity in the motives of the very highest sanctity.
For he maintains first that, though “in the specific act of Love, the
chief of the theological virtues, it is possible to love the absolute
perfection of God considered in Himself, without the addition of any
motive of the promised beatitude,” yet that “this specific act of love,
of its own nature, never excludes, and indeed most frequently includes,
this same motive of beatitude.” He asserts next that though, “in the
highest grade of perfection amongst souls here below, deliberate
acts of simply natural love of ourselves, and even supernatural acts
of hope which are not commanded by love mostly cease,” yet that in
this “habitual State of any and every most perfect soul upon earth,
the promised beatitude is desired, and there is no diminution of the
exercise of the virtue of hope, indeed day by day there is an increase
in this desire, from the specific motive of hope of this great good,
which God Himself bids us all, without exception, to hope for.” And he
declares finally that “there is no state of perfection in which souls
enjoy an uninterrupted contemplation, or in which the powers of the
soul are bound by an absolute incapacity for eliciting the discursive
acts of Christian piety; nor is there a state in which they are
exempted from following the laws of the Church, and executing all the
orders of superiors.”[39]
All the variety, then, of the interested and of the disinterested; of
hope and fear and sorrow; of gratitude and adoration and love; of the
Intuitive and Discursive; of Recollection and external Action, is to be
found, in a deeper, richer, more multiple and varied and at the same
time a more unified unity, in the most perfect life; and all this in
proportion to its approach to its own ideal and normality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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