Light, Life, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics of the Middle Ages · Chapter 15On the Third Spiritual Going Forth, to All the Virtues
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NOW understand and observe. Christ says at the beginning of our text, "See"—that is to say, see by charity and pureness of conscience, as you have been told. Now, He has shown us what we shall see—namely, His three comings.
He orders us what we must do next, and says, "Go forth" if you have fulfilled the first necessary condition—that is to say, if you see in grace and in charity, and if you have well observed your model, Christ, in His "going forth"; there leaps up in you, from your love and loving observation of your Bridegroom, an ardour of justice— that is to say, a desire to follow Him in virtue. Then Christ says in you, "Go forth." This going forth must have three modes. We must go forth towards God, towards ourselves, and towards our neighbour by charity and justice; for charity always pushes upward, towards the kingdom of God, which is God Himself; for He is the source from which it flowed without any intermediary, and He remains always immanent in it. The justice which is born of charity wishes to perfect the manners and the virtues which are suitable to the kingdom of God—that is to say, to the soul. These two things, charity and justice, establish a solid foundation in the kingdom of the soul where God may dwell, and this foundation is humility. These three virtues support all the weight and all the edifice of all the virtues and all sublimity; for charity maintains man in presence of the unfathomable good things of God from whence it flows, so that it perseveres in God, and increases in all the virtues and in true humility; and justice maintains man in presence of the eternal truth of God, so that truth may be discovered by him, and that he may be illuminated, and may accomplish all the virtues without error. But humility maintains man always before the supreme power of God, so that he remains always abased and little, and abandons himself to God, and holds no longer by himself. This is the way in which a man must bear himself before God, that he may grow alway in new virtues.