THE ACTIVE LIFE
If we would discover and know that Kingdom of God which is hidden in
us, we must lead a life that is virtuous within, well-ordered without,
and fulfilled with true charity. Thus imitating Christ in every way, we
can, through grace, love and virtue, raise ourselves up to that apex of
the soul where God lives and reigns.
The Mirror of Eternal Salvation.
The beginning of man's Active Life, says Ruysbroeck--that uplifting of
the diurnal existence into the Divine Atmosphere, which confers on it
meaning and reality--is a movement of response. Grace, the synthesis of
God's love, energy and will, pours like a great river through the
universe, and perpetually beats in upon the soul. When man consents to
receive it, opens the sluices of the heart to that living water,
surrenders to it; then he opens his heart and will to the impact of
Reality, his eyes to the Divine Light, and in this energetic movement of
acceptance begins for the first time to live indeed. Hence it is that, in
the varied ethical systems which we find in his books, and which describe
the active crescent life of Christian virtue, the laborious adjustment of
character to the Vision of God, Ruysbroeck always puts first the virtue,
or rather the attitude, which he calls _good-will_: the voluntary
orientation of the self in the right direction, the eager acceptance of
grace. As all growth depends upon food, so all spiritual development
depends upon the self's appropriation of its own share of the
transcendent life-force, its own 'rill of grace'; and good-will breaks
down the barrier which prevents that stream from pouring into the soul.
Desire, said William Law, _is_ everything and _does_ everything; it is
the primal motive-power. Ruysbroeck, too, finds in desire turned towards
the best the beginning of human transcendence, and regards willing and
loving as the essence of life. Basing his psychology on the common
mediæval scheme of Memory, Intelligence and Will, he speaks of this last
as the king of the soul; dominating both the other powers, and able to
gather them in its clutch, force them to attend to the invitations and
messages of the eternal world. Thus in his system the demand upon man's
industry and courage is made from the very first. The great mystical
necessity of self-surrender is shown to involve, not a limp acquiescence,
but a deliberate and heroic choice; the difficult approximation of our
own thoughts and desires to the thoughts and desires of Divine Reality.
"When we have but one thought and one will with God, we are on the first
step of the ladder of love and of sanctity; for good-will is the
foundation of all virtue."[26]
In _The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage_, Ruysbroeck has used the
words said to the wise and foolish virgins of the parable--"Behold, the
bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him"--as an epitome of the self's
relations with and reactions to Reality. First, all created spirits are
called to behold God, who is perpetually 'coming' to the world of
conditions, in a ceaseless procession of love; and in this seeing our
happiness consists. But in order really to see a thing, we need not only
light and clear sight, but the _will_ to look at it; every act of
perception demands a self-giving on the seer's part. So here we need not
only the light of grace and the open eyes of the soul, but also the
_will_ turned towards the Infinite: our attention to life, the regnant
fact of our consciousness, must be focussed upon eternal things. Now,
when we see God, we cannot but love Him; and love is motion, activity.
Hence, this first demand on the awakened spirit, 'Behold!' is swiftly
followed by the second demand, 'Go ye out!' for the essence of love is
generous, outflowing, expansive, an "upward and outward tendency towards
the Kingdom of God, which is God Himself." This outgoing, this concrete
act of response, will at once change and condition our correspondences
with and attitude towards God, ourselves and our neighbours; expressing
itself within the world of action in a new ardour for perfection--the
natural result of the 'loving vision of the Bridegroom,' the self's first
glimpse of Perfect Goodness and Truth. We observe the continued
insistence on effort, act, as the very heart of all true self-giving to
transcendent interests.
Whilst in the volitional life drastic readjustments, stern
character-building, and eager work are the expression of goodwill, in the
emotional life it is felt as a profound impulse to self-surrender: a
loving yielding up of the whole personality to the inflow and purging
activities of the Absolute Life. "This good-will is nought else but the
infused Love of God, which causes him to apply himself to Divine things
and all virtues; ... when it turns towards God, it crowns the spirit with
Eternal Love, and when it returns to outward things it rules as a
mistress over his external good deeds."[27]
We have here, then, a disposition of heart and mind which both receives
and responds to the messages of Reality; making it possible for the self
to begin to grow in the right direction, to enter into possession of its
twofold heritage. That completely human life of activity and
contemplation which moves freely up and down the ladder of love between
the temporal and eternal worlds, and reproduces in little the ideal of
Divine Humanity declared in Christ, is the ideal towards which it is set;
and already, even in this lowest phase, the double movement of the
awakened consciousness begins to show itself. Our love and will, firmly
fastened in the Eternal World, are to swing like a pendulum between the
seen and the unseen spheres; in great ascending arcs of balanced
adoration and service, which shall bring all the noblest elements of
human character into play. Therefore the pivoting of life upon Divine
Reality, which is the result of good-will--the setting up of a right
relation with the universe--is inevitably the first condition of virtue,
the 'root of sanctity,' the beginning of spiritual growth, the act which
makes man free; translating him, in Ruysbroeck's image, from the state of
the slave to that of the conscious and willing servant of Eternal Truth.
"From the hour in which, with God's help, he transcends his self-hood ...
he feels true love, which overcomes doubt and fear and makes man trust
and hope; and so he becomes a true servant, and means and loves God in
all that he does."[28]
So man, emerging from the shell of selfhood, makes--of his own free
choice, by his own effort--his first timid upward beat to God; and,
following swiftly upon it, the compensating outward beat of charity
towards his fellow-men. We observe how tight a hold has this most
transcendental of the mystics on the _wholeness_ of all healthy human
life: the mutual support and interpenetration of the active and
contemplative powers. 'Other-worldliness' is decisively contradicted from
the first. It is the appearance of this eager active charity--this
imitation in little of the energetic Love of God--which assures us that
the first stage of the self's growth is rightly accomplished; completing
its first outward push in that new direction to which its good-will is
turned. "For charity ever presses towards the heights, towards the
Kingdom of God, the which is God Himself."
In the practical counsels given to the young novice to whom _The Mirror
of Salvation_ is addressed, we may see Ruysbroeck's ideal of that active
life of self-discipline and service which the soul has now set in hand;
and which he describes in greater detail in _The Adornment of the
Spiritual Marriage_ and _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_. Total
self-donation, he tells her, is her first need--'choosing God, for love's
sake' without hesitations or reserves; and this dedication to the
interests of Reality must be untainted by any spiritual selfishness, any
hint of that insidious desire for personal beatitude which 'fades the
flower of true love.' This done, self-conquest and self-control become
the novice's primary duties: the gradual subduing and rearrangement of
character about its new centre, the elimination of all tendencies
inimical to the demands of Eternal Life; the firm establishment upon its
throne of that true free-will which desires only God's will. This
self-conquest, the essence of the 'Way of Purgation,' as described and
experienced by so many ascetics and mystics, includes not only the
eradication of sins, but the training of the attention, the adaptation of
consciousness to its new environment; the killing-out of inclinations
which, harmless in themselves, compete with the one transcendent interest
of life.
Like all great mystics, Ruysbroeck had a strong 'sense of sin.' This is
merely a theological way of stating the fact that his intense realisation
of Perfection involved a vivid consciousness of the imperfections,
disharmonies, perversities, implicit in the human creature; the need of
resolving them if the soul was to grow up to the stature of Divine
Humanity. Yet there is in his writings a singular absence of that
profound preoccupation with sin found in so many mediæval ascetics. His
attitude towards character was affirmative and robust; emphasising the
possibilities rather than the disabilities of man. Sin, for him, was
egotism; showing itself in the manifold forms of pride, laziness,
self-indulgence, coldness of heart, or spiritual self-seeking, but always
implying a central wrongness of attitude, resulting in a wrong employment
of power. Self-denials and bodily mortifications he regarded partly as
exercises in self-control--spiritual athletics--useful because educative
of the will; partly as expressions of love. At best they are but the
means of sanctity, and never to be confused with its end; for the man who
deliberately passed the greater part of his life in the bustle of the
town was no advocate of a cloistered virtue or a narrow perfectionism.
Morbid piety is often the product of physical as well as spiritual
stuffiness; and Ruysbroeck wrote his great books out of doors, with light
and air all round him, and the rhythmic life of trees to remind him how
much stronger was the quiet law of growth than any atavism, accident, or
perversion by which it could be checked. Thus, throughout his works, the
accent always falls upon power rather than weakness: upon the spiritual
energy pouring in like sunshine; the incessant growth which love sets
going; the perpetual rebirths to ever higher levels, as the young sapling
stretches upward every spring. What he asks of the novice is contrition
without anxiety, self-discipline without fuss; the steady, all-round
development of her personality, stretching and growing towards God. She
is to be the mistress of her soul, never permitting it to be drawn hither
and thither by the distractions and duties of external life. Keeping
always in the atmosphere of Reality, she shall bring therefrom truth and
frankness to all her words and deeds; and perform her duties with that
right and healthy detachment which springs, not from a contempt of the
Many, but from the secure and loving possession of the One.
The disciplines to which she must subject herself in the effort towards
attainment of this poise, will, like a wise gymnastic, produce in her a
suppleness of soul; making the constant and inevitable transition from
interior communion to outward work, which charity and good sense demand,
easy and natural, and causing the spirit to be plastic in the hand of
God. Such suppleness--the lightness and lissomeness which comes from
spiritual muscles exercised and controlled--was one of the favourite
qualities of that wise trainer of character, St. François de Sales; and
the many small and irritating mortifications with which he was accustomed
to torment his disciples had no other aim than to produce it.
In the stage of development to which the Active Life belongs, the soul
enjoys communion with Reality, not with that directness proper to the
true contemplative, but obliquely, by 'means,' symbols and images;
especially by the sacramental dispensation of the Church, a subject to
which Ruysbroeck devotes great attention. As always in his system, growth
from within is intimately connected with the reception of food and power
from without. The movement of the self into God, the movement of God into
the self, though separable in thought, are one in fact: will and grace
are two aspects of one truth. Only this paradox can express the relation
between that Divine Love which is 'both avid and generous,' and the self
that is destined both to devour and be devoured by Reality.
In the beautiful chapters on the Eucharist which form the special feature
of _The Mirror of Eternal Salvation_, Ruysbroeck develops this idea. "If
He gives us all that He has and all that He is, in return He takes from
us all that we have and all that we are, and demands of us more than we
are capable of giving.... Even in devouring us, He desires to feed us. If
He absorbs us utterly into Himself, He gives Himself in return. He causes
to be born in us the hunger and thirst of the spirit, which shall make us
savour Him in an eternal fruition; and to this spiritual hunger, as well
as to the love of our heart, He gives His own Body as food.... Thus does
He give us His life full of wisdom, truth and knowledge, in order that we
may imitate Him in all virtues; and then He lives in us and we in Him.
Then do we grow, and raise ourselves up above the reason into a Divine
Love which causes us to take and consume that Food in a spiritual manner,
and stretch out in pure love towards the Divinity. There takes place that
encounter of the spirit, that is to say of measureless love, which
consumes and transforms our spirit with all its works; drawing us with
itself towards the Unity, where we taste beatitude and rest. Herein
therefore is our eternal life: ever to devour and be devoured, to ascend
and descend with love."[29]
The soul, then, turned in the direction of the Infinite, 'having God for
aim,' and with her door opened to the inflowing Divine Life, begins to
grow. Her growth is up and out; from that temporal world to which her
nature is adapted, and where she seems full of power and efficiency, to
that eternal world to which the 'spark' within her belongs, but where she
is as yet no more than a weak and helpless child. Hence the first state
of mind and heart produced in her, if the 'new birth' has indeed taken
place, will be that humility which results from all real self-knowledge;
since "whoso might verily see and feel himself as he _is_, he should
verily be meek." This clear acknowledgment of facts, this finding of
one's own place, Ruysbroeck calls 'the solid foundation of the Kingdom of
the Soul.' In thus discerning love and humility as the governing
characteristics of the soul's reaction to Reality, he is of course
keeping close to the great tradition of Christian mysticism; especially
to the teaching of Richard of St. Victor, which we find constantly
repeated in the ascetic literature of the Middle Ages.
From these two virtues, then, of humble self-knowledge and God-centred
love, are gradually developed all those graces of character which 'adorn
the soul for the spiritual marriage,' mark her ascent of the first
degrees of the 'ladder of love,' and make possible the perfecting of her
correspondences with the 'Kingdom.' This development follows an orderly
course, as subject to law as the unfolding of the leaves and flowers upon
the growing plant; and though Ruysbroeck in his various works uses
different diagrams wherewith to explain it, the psychological changes
which these diagrams demonstrate are substantially the same. In each case
we watch the opening of man's many-petalled heart under the rays of the
Divine Light, till it blossoms at last into the rose of Perfect Charity.
Thus in _The Seven Degrees of Love_, since he is there addressing a
cloistered nun, he accommodates his system to that threefold monastic vow
of voluntary poverty or perfect renunciation, chastity or singleness of
heart, and obedience or true humility in action, by which she is bound.
When the reality which these vows express is actualised in the soul, and
dominates all her reactions to the world, she wears the 'crown of
virtue'; and lives that 'noble life' ruled by the purified and enhanced
will, purged of all selfish desires and distractions, which--seeking in
all things the interests of the spiritual world--is 'full of love and
charity, and industrious in good works.'
In _The Spiritual Marriage_ a more elaborate analysis is possible; based
upon that division of man's moral perversities into the 'seven mortal
sins' or seven fundamental forms of selfishness, which governed, and
governs yet, the Catholic view of human character. After a preliminary
passage in which the triple attitude of love as towards God, humility as
towards self, justice as towards other men, is extolled as the only
secure basis of the spiritual life, Ruysbroeck proceeds to exhibit the
seven real and positive qualities which oppose the seven great abuses of
human freedom. As Pride is first and worst of mortal sins and follies, so
its antithesis Humility is again put forward as the first condition of
communion with God. This produces in the emotional life an attitude of
loving adoration; in the volitional life, obedience. By _obedience_,
Ruysbroeck means that self-submission, that wise suppleness of spirit,
which is swayed and guided not by its own tastes and interests but by the
Will of God; as expressed in the commands and prohibitions of moral and
spiritual law, the interior push of conscience. This attitude, at first
deliberately assumed, gradually controls all the self's reactions, and
ends by subduing it entirely to the Divine purpose. "Of this obedience
there grows the abdication of one's own will and one's own opinion; ...
by this abdication of the will in all that one does, or does not do, or
endures, the substance and occasion of pride are wholly driven out, and
the highest humility is perfected."[30]
This movement of renunciation brings--next phase in the unselfing of the
self--a compensating outward swing of love; expressed under the beautiful
forms of _patience_, 'the tranquil tolerance of all that can happen,' and
hence the antithesis of Anger; _gentleness_, which "with peace and calm
bears vexatious words and deeds"; _kindness_, which deals with the
quarrelsome and irritable by means of "a friendly countenance,
affectionate persuasion and compassionate acts"; and _sympathy_, "that
inward movement of the heart which compassionates the bodily and
spiritual griefs of all men," and kills the evil spirit of Envy and hate.
This fourfold increase in disinterested love is summed up in the
condition which Ruysbroeck calls _supernatural generosity_; that
largeness of heart which flows out towards the generosity of God, which
is swayed by pity and love, which embraces all men in its sweep. By this
energetic love which seeks not its own, "all virtues are increased, and
all the powers of the spirit are adorned"; and Avarice, the fourth great
mortal sin, is opposed.
Generosity is no mere mood; it is a motive-force, demanding expression in
action. From the emotions, it invades the will, and produces _diligence_
and _zeal_: an 'inward and impatient eagerness' for every kind of work,
and for the hard practice of every kind of virtue, which makes impossible
that slackness and dulness of soul which is characteristic of the sin of
Sloth. It is dynamic love; and the spirit which is fired by its ardours,
has reached a degree of self-conquest in which the two remaining evil
tendencies--that to every kind of immoderate enjoyment, spiritual,
intellectual or physical, which is the essence of Gluttony, and that to
the impure desire of created things which is Lust--can be met and
vanquished. The purged and strengthened will, crowned by unselfish love,
is now established on its throne; man has become captain of his soul, and
rules all the elements of his character and that character's expression
in life--not as an absolute monarch, but in the name of Divine Love.[31]
He has done all he can do of himself towards the conforming of his life
to Supreme Perfection; has opposed, one after another, each of those
exhibitions of the self's tendency to curl inwards, to fence itself in
and demand, absorb, enjoy as a separate entity, which lie at the root of
sin. The constructive side of the Purgative Way has consisted in the
replacement of this egoistic, indrawing energy by these outflowing
energies of self-surrender, kindness, diligence and the rest; summed up
in that perfection of humility and love, which "in all its works, and
always, stretches out towards God."
The first three gifts of the Holy Spirit are possessed by the soul which
has reached this point, says Ruysbroeck in _The Kingdom of God's Lovers_:
that loving Fear, which includes true humility with all its ancillary
characteristics; that general attitude of charity which makes man gentle,
patient and docile, ready to serve and pity every one, and is called
Godliness, because there first emerges in it his potential likeness to
God; and finally that Knowledge or discernment of right and prudent
conduct which checks the disastrous tendency to moral fussiness, helps
man to conform his life to supreme Perfection, and gives the calmness and
balance which are essential to a sane and manly spirituality. Thus the
new life-force has invaded and affected will, feeling and intellect;
raised the whole man to fresh levels of existence, and made possible
fresh correspondences with Reality. "Hereby are the three lower powers of
the soul adorned with Divine virtues. The Irascible [_i.e._ volitional
and dynamic] is adorned with loving and filial fear, humility, obedience
and renunciation. The Desirous is adorned with kindness, pity, compassion
and generosity. Finally, the Reasonable with knowledge and discernment,
and that prudence which regulates all things."[32] The ideal of character
held out and described under varying metaphors in Ruysbroeck's different
works, is thus seen to be a perfectly consistent one.
Now when the growing self has actualised this ideal, and lives the Active
Life of the faithful servant of Reality, it begins to feel an ardent
desire for some more direct encounter with That which it loves. Since it
has now acquired the 'ornaments of the virtues'--cleansed its mirror,
ordered its disordered loves--this encounter may and does in a certain
sense take place; for every Godward movement of the human is met by a
compensating movement of the Divine. Man now begins to find God in all
things: in nature, in the soul, in works of charity. But in the turmoil
and bustle of the Active Life such an encounter is at best indirect; a
sidelong glimpse of the 'first and only Fair.' That vision can only be
apprehended in its wholeness by a concentration of all the powers of the
self. If we would look the Absolute in the eyes, we must look at nothing
else; the complete opening of the eye of Eternity entails the closing of
the eye of Time. Man, then, must abstract himself from multiplicity, if
only for a moment, if he would catch sight of the unspeakable Simplicity
of the Real. Longing to 'know the nature of the Beloved,' he must act as
Zacchæus did when he wished to see Christ:
"He must run before the crowd, that is to say the multiplicity of created
things; for these make us so little and low that we cannot perceive God.
And he must climb up on the Tree of Faith, which grows from above
downwards, for its root is in the Godhead. This tree has twelve branches,
which are the twelve articles of the Creed. The lower branches speak of
the Humanity of God; ... the upper branches, however, speak of the
Godhead: of the Trinity of Persons and the Unity of the Divine Nature.
Man must cling to the Unity which is at the top of the tree, for it is
here that Jesus will pass by with all His gifts. And now Jesus comes, and
He sees man, and shows him in the light of faith that He is, according to
His Divinity, unmeasured and incomprehensible, inaccessible and
fathomless, and that He overpasses all created light and all finite
comprehension. This is the highest knowledge of God which man can acquire
in the Active Life: thus to recognise by the light of faith that God is
inconceivable and unknowable. In this light God says to the desire of
man: "Come down quickly, for I would dwell in your house to-day." And
this quick descent, to which God invites him, is nought else but a
descent, by love and desire, into the Abyss of the Godhead, to which no
intellect can attain by its created light. But here, where intellect must
rest without, love and desire may enter in. When the soul thus leans upon
God by intention and love, above all that she understands, then she rests
and dwells in God, and God in her. When the soul mounts up by desire,
above the multiplicity of things, above the activities of the senses and
above the light of external nature, then she encounters Christ by the
light of faith, and is illuminated; and she recognises that God is
unknowable and inconceivable. Finally, stretching by desire towards this
incomprehensible God, she meets Christ and is fulfilled with His gifts.
And loving and resting above all gifts, above herself and above all
things, she dwells in God and God in her. According to this manner Christ
may be encountered upon the summit of the Active Life."[33]
This, then, is the completion of the first stage in the mystic way; this
showing to the purified consciousness of the helplessness of the analytic
intellect, the dynamic power of self-surrendered love. "Where intellect
must rest without, love and desire may enter in." The human creature,
turning towards Reality, has pressed up to the very edge of the 'Cloud of
Unknowing' in which the goal of transcendence is hid. If it is to go
further it must bring to the adventure not knowledge but divine
ignorance, not riches but poverty; above all, an eager and industrious
love.
"A fiery flame of devotion leaping and ascending into the very goodness
of God Himself,
A loving longing of the soul to be with God in His Eternity,
A turning from all things of self into the freedom of the Will of God;
With all the forces of the soul gathered into the unity of the
spirit."[34]