De visione Dei

How Jesus sees and how he worked. The eye of the mind cannot be sated with seeing you, Jesus: because you are the complement of all mental beauty. and in this icon I behold your gaze, most blessed Jesus, exceedingly marvelous and stupendous. For you, Jesus, while you walked in this sensible world: used fleshly eyes like ours. for with them you saw one thing and another no differently than we men. for in your eyes there was a certain spirit which was the form of the organ: as it were the sensible soul in the body of an animal. In that spirit there was a noble discerning power: by which you saw, Lord, distinctly this colored thing thus, and another otherwise. and yet more deeply from the lineaments of the face and eyes of the men whom you saw: you were a true judge of the passions of the soul: of anger, joy, and sorrow. and yet more subtly from few signs: you grasped what lay hidden in the mind of man. for nothing is conceived in the mind: which is not in some way signed in the face, and most of all in the eyes, since it is the messenger of the heart. for in all these signs you reached the inward things of the soul far more truly: than any created spirit. for from some one sign, though very small, you saw the whole concept of the man: as intelligent men from few words grasp, foreseeing as they are, the whole long premeditated speech to be unfolded.¹ and the well learned, when in a short time they cast their eyes into a book: recite the whole intent of the writer as if they had read it.

You excelled, Jesus, in this kind of vision all the perfections, swiftnesses, and sharpnesses of all men past, present, and future: and this human vision was, which was not perfected without the fleshly eye. it was nevertheless stupendous and admirable: for if men are found who by long and subtle discussion read the mind of a writer, under characters then newly invented and unwonted signs: you, Jesus, saw all things under every sign and figure. If at any time a man is recorded as found, who saw the thought of one questioning him, from whatever signs of the eyes, even if he was singing some measure in his mind: better than all did you, Jesus, discern every concept from every nod of the eyes.

I have seen a deaf woman, who from the movement of the lips of her daughter whom she saw: understood all things as if she had heard. If from long habit, this is so possible in the deaf and mute, and in religious, who speak to each other by signs: more perfectly did you, Jesus, who actually knew everything knowable as master of masters, in the smallest nods and signs invisible to us, make true judgment concerning the heart and its concept.

But to this your human most perfect, though finite, vision contracted to an organ, the absolute and infinite vision was united: by which vision you saw as God all things together and singly, as absent as present, as past as future.

You saw therefore, Jesus, with the human eye the visible accidents: but with the absolute divine gaze the substance of things. no one ever established in flesh besides you, Jesus, saw substance, or the quiddity of things.

You alone saw the soul and spirit, and whatever was in man: most truly. For as the intellective power in man is united to the animal seeing power, so that man not only sees as an animal, but also discerns and judges as a man: so the absolute gaze is united in you, Jesus, to the human intellectual power which is discretion in the animal gaze. the animal seeing power in man: subsists not in itself, but in the rational soul as in the form of the whole. so the intellectual seeing power: subsists not in itself, in you, Jesus, but in the absolute seeing power. O admirable your gaze, sweetest Jesus. we experience at times how we catch a passerby with the eye: but because we were not intent on discerning who he was, we cannot when asked name the known passerby, though we know someone passed by. We saw him therefore animally: but we did not see humanly, because we did not apply the discerning power. From this we learn the natures of the powers, that even if they are united in the one form of man: they nevertheless remain distinct, and have distinct operations. So in you, one Jesus, I see in a similar way the human intellectual nature united to the divine nature: and that likewise as man you did many things, and as God many wonders above man. I see, most loving Jesus, the intellectual nature to be absolute in respect of the sensible, and in no way as the sensible is finite, and bound to an organ, as the sensible seeing power is bound to the eye: but disproportionately more absolute is the divine power above the intellectual. for the human intellect, to be put in act, has need of phantasms: and phantasms cannot be had without senses. and senses do not subsist without body: hence the power of the human intellect is contracted and small, needing what was foretold. The divine intellect indeed is necessity itself: not dependent, nor needing anything, but all things need it, without which they cannot be. I consider more attentively how one is the discursive power which by reasoning runs about and seeks: another which judges and understands. For we see a dog run about and seek its master and discern him, and hear his call. This running about indeed: is in the nature of animality in the degree of the perfection of the canine species. Further other animals are found of brighter running about according to the perfection of the species, and this running about in man approaches nearest to the intellectual power: so that it is the summit of sensible perfection, containing under the intellectual many degrees of perfection and innumerable, as the species of animals disclose to us. For there is no species: which does not obtain its own degree of perfection. Each of the degrees also has latitude: within which we see individuals of the species, variously participate the species. The intellectual nature indeed: likewise has innumerable degrees under the divine. Whence as in the intellectual are enfolded all degrees of sensible perfection: so in the divine all degrees of intellectual perfection, and of sensible, and of all. So in you, my Jesus: I see all perfection. for since you are the most perfect man: in you I see the intellect united to the rational or discursive power, which is the summit of the sensitive. and so I see the intellect in reason as in its own place, as the placed in its place, as a candle in a chamber which illuminates the chamber and all the walls and the whole building, yet according to degrees of distance more and less. I see then, the divine word united to the intellect in its summit, and the intellect itself to be the place where the word is received: as in us we experience the intellect to be the place, where the word of the master is received, as the light of the sun were joined to the fore-touched candle. For the word of God illuminates, the intellect: as the light of the sun this world. In you therefore, my Jesus: I see the sensible life illuminated by intellectual light, the intellectual life the light illuminating and illuminated, and the divine life only illuminating. For I see also the fount of light in that intellectual light: namely the word of God which is the truth illuminating every intellect. You therefore alone the highest of all creatures: because so a creature that also the blessed creator.