Cornelius a Lapide

But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit . Not one essentially, as Ruisbrochius (de Aita Contempt .) says that Almaric and certain fanatic 44 illuminati ” thought, but one in the way of accidents : one in charity, in the consent of the will, in grace and glory, all which make man like God, so that he is as it were one and the same spirit with God. So Ambrose, Anselm, (Ecumenius. From this passage S. Basil (de Vera Virgin.) shows that the chaste and holy soul is the spouse of God, and is changed into the excellence of the Divine image, so as to become one spirit with God, and from this union with God drinks in all possible purity, virtue, incorruption, peace, and inward calm. u Wherefore ,” he says, “the soul which is joined to Christ is, as it were, the bride of the Wisdom or the Word of God ; is necessarily wise and prudent, so that every mark of the yoke of brutish folly having been removed by meditation on Divine things, she wears the beauteous ornament of the Wisdom to which she has been joined, until she so thoroughly joins to herself the Eternal Wisdom , so becomes one with It, that of corruptible she is made incorruptible, of ignorant most prudent and wise , like the Word, to whose side she has closely kept, and in short, of mortal man is made immortal God ; and so He to whom she has been united is made manifest to all ” S. Bernard ( Serm 7 in Cantic.) beautifully describes this betrothal of God with the soul that clings to Him with pure and holy love, and the communication of all good things that flows from it. He says : 44 The soul which loves God is called His bride ; for the two names, bride and bridegroom, denote the closest affections of the heart ; for to them all things are in common : they have one purse, one home, one table, one bed, one flesh. Therefore shall a man leave father and mother, &*c., and they twain shall be one flesh. . . . She that loves is called a bride ; but one that loves seeks for kisses — not for liberty, or wages, or a settlement of money, but for kisses after the manner of a Digitized by v^,ooQle Il6 FIRST EPISTLE TO THE most chaste bride , whose every breath whispers of her love in all its purity , and who is wholly unable to conceal the fire that is burning her . * Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth] she says. It is as though she were to say , 4 What have I in heaven , and what do I wish for on earth apart from you ? 9 Surely this , her love , is chaste , since she seeks to have Him that she loves , and nothing else besides Him. It is a holy love , because it is not in the lust of the fleshy but in the purity of the spirit. It is a burning love , because she is so drunken with her own love that she thinks not of His majesty. Yet He is One that looks at the earth and it trembles , He toucheth the mountains and they smoke , and she seeks to be kissed by Him. Is she drunk ? Surely so, because she had perchance come forth from the wine-cellar. How great is love’s power l how great is the confidence of the spirit of liberty l Perfect love casteth out fear. She does not say , 4 Let this or that bridegroom , or friend or king, kiss me] but definitely, 4 Let Him kiss me 9 Just so Mary Magdalene, when she found not her Lord in the tomb, and believed Him to have been taken away, said of Him, 4 If thou have borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away . 9 Who is the 4 Him 9 f She does not reveal it, because she supposes that what is never for a moment absent from her heart must be obvious to all. So too the bride says, 4 Let him kiss me] i.e., him who is never absent from my heart ; for being on fire with love she thinks that the name of him she loves is well known to all” More on this betrothal and union to God of the soul that clings to Him will be found in the notes to 2 Cor. xi. 2. Again we find S. Bernard, or the author of the treatise, 44 On the Solitary I ,ife,” saying towards the end : 44 The perfection of the will that is moving towards God is to be found in the unity with God of the spirit of the man whose affections are set on things above . When he now no longer merely wills what God wills, but has so far advanced in love that he cannot will save what God wills, the union is complete. For to will what God wills is to be like God; not to be able to will save what God wills is to be what God is, with whom Will and Being are the same. Hence it is well said that then we Digitized by v^,ooQle SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE II 7 shall see Him as He is , when we shall be so like Him that we shall be what He is. For to those to whom has been given the power of becoming the sons of God there has been also given the power of becoming, not indeed God , but what God is. S. Bernard goes on to point out a triple similitude that men have to God, and then he adds : “ This likeness of man to God is called a unity of spirit, not merely because it is the Holy Spirit that effects it, or because He affects marls spirit towards it, but because it is itself the Holy Spirit — God who is love. Since He is the bond of love between the Father and the Son, He is unity, and sweetness , and good, and kisses , and embraces, and whatever can be common to Both in that supreme unity of Truth and truth of Unity ; and similarly He makes man to become to God after mails capacity all that by substantial unity the Father is through Him to the Son and the Son to the Father. The blessed consciousness of man has found in some way a means by which it embraces the Father and the Son : in an ineffable and inconceivable manner man merits to become of God, though not God. God, however, is what He is by His own Nature ; man becomes what he does by grace.” Ver. 1 8 . — Flee fornication. Because, as Anselm, Cassian, and the Fathers generally teach, other vices are conquered by resistance, lust alone by flight, viz., by fleeing from women, from the objects and occasions of lust, by turning aside the eyes and the mind to see and think of other things. For if you oppose a temptation to some lewdness, or fight against some impure thought, you only excite the imagination by thinking of such things, and then inflame still more the innate lust of the flesh, that is naturally disposed to such acts as fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body. Does not stain or pollute the body. It may be said that if a man kills or mutilates or castrates himself he sins against his body, and therefore it is not a fact that every sin distinct from fornication is without the body. I reply that every sin, i.e., every kind of sins which men commonly and ordinarily commit is without the body. For there are seven Digitized by v^,ooQle Il8 FIRST EPISTLE TO THE capital sins, which theologians, following S. Paul, divide into spiritual and bodily or camaL Those that are carnal are two — gluttony and lust ; the spiritual are five — pride, covetousness, anger, envy, sloth. Of these anger and envy tend directly of themselves towards murder of one’s neighbour, but not except by accident towards murder of one’s self, and that in few and extraordinary cases. The angry man, therefore, does not ordinarily and necessarily sin against his body, but against that of another, by assaulting him or killing him. The Apostle’s meaning then is, that all the sins in general which men ordinarily and commonly commit are without the body. " Every sin ” therefore does not include mutilation or suicide, which happen rarely, and as it were accidentally; nor does it include gluttony as I will show directly. But he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body . S. Jerome {Ep. ad Amand. tom. iii.) gives two explanations of this passage, of which the first is — the fornicator sins against his wife, who is his own body ; the second is — he plants in his body the seeds of sexual passion, which, even after his sin, remain, when he wishes to repent, to spring up into active life. S. Jerome says that “ other sins are without , and after being committed are repented of and though profit urge to them yet conscience rebukes. Lust alone , even in the hour of repentance , suffers under the whips and stings of the past and under organic irritation , and under incentives to sin , so that material for sin is supplied again by thoughts of the very things which we long to see corrected. n S. Jerome confesses (Ep. 22 ad Eustoch.) that he knew this from his own experience. S. Mary of Egypt found the same true in her own case, who endured under penance these whips and stings for as many years as she had formerly given to sexual passion, viz., seventeen, as Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, relates in her life. (Ecumenius has ten other explanations of this passage, as has also Isidorus Pelusiota {lib. iv. Ep. 129). But the true and genuine sense is : Whoever commits fornication does injury to his own body, 1. because he pollutes and disgraces his body, as Gregory of Nyssa says in his oration on these words. Digitized by v^,ooQle THE EVIL OF FORNICATION 119 2. Because by fornication he weakens and exhausts his body, and often destroys it, by contracting venereal disease. So S. Athanasius, quoted by CEcuraenius. In both these ways the glutton and drunkard sin against their body, because the first disgraces it by subjecting it to unhealthy humours, to vomiting, and other disgusting things, while the latter weakens, injures, and finally ruins its natural heat and strength. Hence under the name of fornication, here gluttony and drunkenness, as being akin to it, or rather its mother, may be understood. It was for this reason that the Apostle, in ver. 13, spoke of gluttony. For these two sins, gluttony and lust, are vices peculiar to the body, and are thence called sins of the flesh : other sins belong to the spirit alone, as I have just said. 3. The fornicator does injury to his own body, inasmuch as he alone brings his body, which was created free, pure, and noble, under the jurisdiction, service, and power of the most degraded harlot, so that he becomes as one thing with her. In the same way that, if any one were to bind his own body, that was noble, healthy, and beautiful, to the body of some loathsome leper, he would be said to do his body a great wrong, so does he who unites to a common, base, and infamous harlot his body, that was created by God pure, noble* and free, and redeemed and washed by the blood of Christ, do to it grievous injury. In all these verses the Apostle lays stress upon this wrong. 4. The fornicator does injury to his body, because he excites in it a foul and shameful lust, which so absorbs the mind that in carrying it out into action the man can think of nothing else. He makes his body, therefore, the slave of his lust, in such a way that he is wholly ruled by it Neither gluttony nor any other sin in the body excites such shameful and vehement lust as this is. Impurity alone then holds sway over the body, and by its lust and outward action stains, subjugates, and destroys it