Light, Life, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics of the Middle Ages · Chapter 58How Man Is Like God by Grace, and Unlike Him by Mortal Sin
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NOW examine this thought with care, for if you understand well what I wish to say to you, and what I have already said, you will understand all the divine truth which a creature can apprehend at present, and even things far more sublime. In the second mode, our spirit keeps itself actively in this same unity, and subsists by itself as in its personal created essence. This is the foundation and origin of the supreme faculties, and this is the beginning and end of all the works of a created nature, accomplished according to the mode of the creatures, both in nature and above nature.
Nevertheless this unity does not operate as unity; but all the faculties of the soul have their power entirely in their foundation—that is to say, in the unity of the spirit, where it resides in its personal essence. In this unity the spirit must always be like unto God, by grace and virtue, or unlike Him by mortal sin; for man is made in the likeness of God, which he must understand in the sense of grace; for grace is a deiform light which shines through us and makes us like unto God; and without this light we cannot be united supernaturally to God, even though we can never lose the image of God, nor our natural unity in Him. If we lose this likeness—that is to say, grace, we are damned. And this is why, so soon as God finds in us something which is capable of receiving His grace, He wishes to enliven us by His goodness, and to make us like unto Himself by His gifts. And this happens whenever we turn towards Him with full purpose; for at the same moment Christ comes to us and in us, with and without intermediary—that is to say, by the virtues and above all the virtues. And He impresses His image and likeness upon us—that is to say, Himself and all His gifts, and He relieves us from sin and makes us like unto Himself.
By the same operation in which God relieves us from sin, and makes us like Him and free in charity, the spirit is plunged in joyous love. And here take place a meeting and a union, which are without intermediaries and supernatural, and wherein resides our supreme blessedness. Although all that He gives by love and pure goodness is natural to God, yet to us it is accidental and supernatural, according to our mode, since formerly we were strangers and unlike, and only subsequently have become like God and obtained union with Him.