De visione Dei

How Jesus died, while union with life remained. O Jesus, most savory food of the mind: when I behold you within the wall of paradise, you meet me as wonderful. For you are the word of God made human, and you are man made divine. Yet you are not as though compounded of God and man. Between components

MARG: Augustinus MARG: Sacerdos.

a proportion is necessary, without which there can be no compounding. Between the finite and the infinite there is no proportion. Nor are you a coincidence of creature and creator, in the way in which coincidence makes one thing be the other. For human nature is not divine,, nor the reverse. For the divine nature is not mutable or alterable into another nature,, since it is eternity itself; nor does any nature whatsoever pass into another nature on account of union with the divine. Just as when an image is united to its truth: for it cannot then be said to be altered,, but rather to recede from otherness, because it is united to its own proper truth,, which is unalterability itself. Nor, sweetest Jesus, can you be called a middle nature between the divine and the human, since between them no middle nature sharing in both can be placed. For the divine nature is not participable, because it is wholly and absolutely most simple. Nor then would you, blessed Jesus, be, either God, or man. But I see you, Lord Jesus,, beyond all understanding, one supposit, because you are one Christ,, in the way in which I see your one human soul. In which, as in the soul of any man whatsoever, I see the corruptible sensible nature to have been,, and to subsist in the intellectual incorruptible nature. Nor was that soul compounded of the corruptible and the incorruptible, nor does the sensible coincide with the intellectual. But I see the intellectual soul to be united to the body through the sensible life-giving power that gives the body life. And when the intellectual soul should cease in the giving of life to the body,, without being separated from the body, then that man would be dead,, because life would have ceased. Yet the body would not be separated from life, since the intellect is its life. Just as when a man who has intently sought with the mediation of sight to discern someone coming,, and yet, with him rapt away to other considerations,, attention concerning that inquiry afterwards ceases,, though his eyes are no less cast upon him: then the eye is not separated from the soul,, though it stands separated from the discerning attention of the soul. But if that rapture should cease not only from discerning life-giving, but also from sensitive life-giving, that eye would be dead,, because it would not be given life. Yet for all that it would not be separated from the intellective form,, which is the form giving being, just as a withered hand remains united to the form, which unites the whole body. There are found men who know how to withdraw the life-giving spirit and appear dead and feeling nothing, as blessed Augustine recounts. For in that case, the intellectual nature would remain united to the body, which body indeed would not be under another form than before. Rather it would have the same form, and would remain the same body. Nor would the power of giving life cease to be, but it would remain in union with the intellectual nature,, though in act it did not extend itself into the body. I see that man truly dead,, because he lacks what gives life to life (for death is the lack of what gives life), and yet that dead body would not be, separated from its life, which is its soul. In this way, most merciful Jesus, I behold absolute life, which is God, inseparably united to your human intellect,, and through it to your body. For that union is such that none can be greater. A separable union, therefore, is far inferior to a union than which none can be greater. Never therefore was it true,, nor ever will it be, that the divine nature was separated from your human nature. So too neither from soul nor from body, which are those without which human nature cannot be. Although it be most true that your soul ceased to give life to the body,, and that you truly underwent death, and yet never separated from the truth of life. If that priest of whom Augustine speaks, had whatever power to take life-giving from the body, drawing it back into the soul,, as if a candle illuminating a chamber were alive, and drew back the rays (by which it illuminated the chamber) to the center of its own light,, without being separated from the chamber, and this drawing back is nothing but ceasing to flow in: what wonder if you, Jesus, had power,, since you are the living and most free light,, of laying down and taking up the life-giving soul; and when you willed to take it away you suffered death, and when you willed to resume it, by your own power you rose again. Moreover the intellectual nature is called, a human soul when it gives life or animates the body. And the soul is said to be taken away when the human intellect ceases to give life. For when the intellect ceases from the office of giving life,, and in this respect separates itself from the body, for all that it is not separated simply. Breathe these things, Jesus, that you may show yourself to me, most unworthy,¹, as far as I can grasp, and in you I contemplate mortal nature to have put on immortality,, that all men of the same human nature may in you attain resurrection and divine life. What then is sweeter,, what more joyful than to know this: that in you, Jesus, we find all things in our nature, you who alone can do all things,, and give most liberally and do not reproach!² O piety and mercy beyond expression: you, God, who are goodness itself,, could not satisfy your infinite mercy and largesse, unless you gave yourself to us. Nor could this have come about more fittingly,, for us receiving,, than that you should assume our nature,, we who could not attain to yours. Thus you came to us, and you are named Jesus, Savior forever blessed.