Spirit Quotes - page 98
There, the Father with the Son and all the beloved are enfolded and embraced in the bond of love, that is to say, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. It is this same unity, which is fruitful according to the bursting-out of the Persons and in the return, an eternal bond of love, which can nevermore be united. And all those who know themselves to be bound therein must remain eternally blissful. They are all rich in virtues and enlightened in contemplation and simple where they rest enjoyably, for in their turning-in, the love of God reveals itself as flowing out with all good and drawing in into unity and is superessential and without mode (method or system) in an eternal repose. And so they are united to God, by intermediary, without intermediary, and also without difference.
John Ruysbroeck
When we soar up above ourselves, And become, in our upward striving towards God, So simple, that the naked Love in the Heights can lay hold on us, There where Love cherishes Love, above all activity and all virtue (That is to say, in our Origin, wherefrom we are spiritually born)- Then we cease, and we and all that is our own die into God. And in this death we become hidden Sons of God, and find in ourselves a new life, And that is Eternal Life. And of these Sons, St. Paul says: ‘Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.' In our approach to God we must bear with us ourselves and all that we do, As a perpetual sacrifice to God; And in the Presence of God we must leave ourselves and all our works, And, dying in love, soar up above all created things into the Superessential Kingdom of God.
And of this the Spirit of God speaks in the Book of Hidden Things, saying: ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.
John Ruysbroeck
See, the bliss and the joy which this Bridegroom brings in His coming are fathomless and incommensurable, for He Himself is that bliss and joy. And therefore, the eyes with which the spirit contemplates and gazes upon its Bridegroom are so widely dilated that they will never again be closed. For the gazing and contemplation of the spirit remain eternally fixed on the hidden revelation of God, and the comprehension of the spirit is so widely dilated for the coming of the Bridegroom that the spirit itself has become the wideness which it apprehends. And so God is apprehended and seen with God; in this all our blessedness resides.
John Ruysbroeck
To comprehend and to understand God above all similitudes, as He is in Himself, is to be God with God, without intermediary, and without any otherness that can become a hindrance or an intermediary. Whosoever wishes to understand this must have died to himself, and must live in God, and must turn his gaze to the eternal light in the ground of his spirit, where the Hidden Truth reveals Itself without means.
John Ruysbroeck
And this divine light is granted in the simple being of the spirit, where the spirit receives the brightness –which is God Himself- above all gifts and above all creaturely activity, in the empty void of the spirit in which it has lost itself through enjoyable love and receives the brightness of God without intermediary. And without cease, it becomes the very brightness which it receives.
John Ruysbroeck
But yet another thing is necessary, Purity of spirit; for an intelligence in repose without images, an intuition in the light of God, and a spirit elevated in Purity to the Face of God, these three qualities united constitute the true contemplative life, where none can err; for the pure spirit expands ceaselessly and follows rapidly in purified love, the enlightened intelligence towards its Cause.
John Ruysbroeck
Thirdly, he must have lost himself in a waylessness and in a darkness in which all contemplatives wander around in enjoyment and can no longer find themselves in a creaturely way. In the abyss of this darkness in which the loving spirit has died to itself, there begin the revelation of God and eternal life. For in this darkness there shines and is born an incomprehensible light which is the Son of God, in whom one contemplates eternal life. And in this light one becomes seeing.
John Ruysbroeck
This contemplation establishes us in purity and in limpidity above all our understanding, for it is a special enrichment and a heavenly crown, and in addition, an eternal reward for all virtues and for all lives. And no one can arrive at this by means of science or subtlety, nor by any practice, but only he whom God wishes to unite with His Spirit and to illumine with Himself may contemplate God, and nobody else. The hidden divine nature is eternally active, contemplating and loving with respect to each person, and always enjoying the embrace with each person, in unity of essence.
John Ruysbroeck
And this is without time, that is to say, without before or after in an eternal present, for in the embrace in unity all things have been consummated. And in the out-flowing of love all things are being achieved. And in the living fruitful nature all things have the potentiality to occur, for in the living fruitful nature the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, and the Holy Spirit in them both. For it is a living and fruitful unity which is the source And the fount of all life.
John Ruysbroeck
When in the inmost Above all knowledge and science, we find within us a limitless ignorance when, passing beyond every name given to God or creatures, we expire and pass to an eternal Unnamable where we are lost Being the Soul follows the Divine drawing and gives itself up freely to the Spirit of God, it tastes infinite happiness impossible to comprehend, in which the whole being dissolves, caught and embraced between immense Love and unending Happiness, under the regard of Love Himself.
John Ruysbroeck
And though the union is without intermediary, The manifold works that God does In heaven and earth are, however, Hidden from the spirit. For though God gives Himself as He is with a clear distinction, He gives Himself in the soul's essence, Where the soul's powers are unified Above reason And undergo God's transformation In simplicity. In this place all is full And overflowing, for the spirit feels itself As one truth and one richness And one unity with God.
John Ruysbroeck
The inward stirring and touching of God makes us hungry and yearning; for the Spirit of God hunts our spirit: and the more it touches it, the greater our hunger and our craving. And this is the life of love in its highest working, above reason and above understanding; for reason can here neither give nor take away from love, for our love is touched by the Divine love. And as I understand it, here there can never more be separation from God. God's touch within us, for as much as we feel it, and our own loving craving, these are both created and creaturely; and therefore they may grow and increase as long as we live.
John Ruysbroeck
When we have thus become seeing, then we can contemplate, in joy, the eternal coming of our Bridegroom, which is the second point about which we are going to speak. Now, what is the coming of our Bridegroom which is eternal? It is a new birth an a new enlightenment without cease. For the ground out of which the brightness shines, and which is the brightness itself, is living and fruitful. And therefore, the revelation of the eternal light is renewed without cease in the hiddenness of the spirit.
John Ruysbroeck
Christ prayed that He should be in us, and we in Him. This we find in many passages in the Gospel. And this is the union that is without intermediary, for the love of God is not only out-flowing, but it is also drawing into unity. And those who feel and experience this become interior, enlightened men. There the faculties are raised above all practices to the bareness of their very essence. There the faculties become simplified above reason in their essence and because of this they are filled and overflowing. For in this simplicity the spirit finds itself united with God without intermediary. And this union, together with the exercise, which is proper to it, will endure eternally, as I have already said.
John Ruysbroeck
And for this reason all creatures are there without themselves as in their eternal origin, one essence and one life with God. But in the bursting-out of the Persons with distinction, so the Son is from the Father and the Holy Spirit from them both. There God has created and ordered all creatures in their own essence.
John Ruysbroeck
See, all creaturely activity and all practice of virtues must fail here, for here what God works is nothing but Himself in the highest nobility of the spirit. And here there is nothing but an eternal contemplation and gazing at the light with the light and in the light. And the coming of the Bridegroom is so rapid that He is always coming and is indwelling with fathomless richness, and that He is coming anew personally, without crease, with such new brightness just as though He had never come before. For His coming consists in an eternal now, without time, which is always received with new lust and in new joy.
John Ruysbroeck
As much as is iron, so much is fire;
And as much as is fire, so much is iron;
Yet the iron doth not become fire,
Nor the fire iron,
But each retains its substance and nature.
So likewise the spirit of man doth not become God,
But is deified,
And knows itself breadth, length, height and depth:
And as far as God is God,
So far the loving spirit is made one with Him
In love.
John Ruysbroeck
The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument. ... If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will then argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true. ... You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your arguments and refute them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits.
C. S. Lewis
