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Companionship With God in Divine Solitude

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Ambrose Farrell O.P.
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Extract

God not only loves his creatures as a craftsman does his work, but also by a kind of social friendship, as a friend does a friend, inasmuch as he attracts them into the society of his own enjoyment. This he does that their glory and blessedness may be that which is his.

Saint Thomas is here speaking of the amicable society. between God, Three in One, and the soul endowed with grace, which finds its full enjoyment in the communion of saints to which God’s love attracts. This companionship in holiness is entirely suited to man’s social nature, though it transcends the powers of nature, and every human hope and aspiration. According to St John, those who see God have eternal life.—This is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God. (Jn. 17, 3.)

In spite of this, Christians frequently do not live up to the ideals of their Master. The antidote for such human weakness cannot be to water down those very ideals so as to make them more acceptable to unbelieving critics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 1 , Issue 8 , February 1947 , pp. 233 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © 1964 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 St Thomas in 2 Sent. d. 26, p. 1, a. 1, ad 2.

2 cfr. St Thomas, Summa, Ia, 10, iii.

3 P. Garrigou-Lagrange, Perfection Chfetienne, vol. I, pp. 138, 139.

4 Clerissac, The Mystery of the Church, p. 23.

5 Op. cit., p. 18.

6 Masson, The Christian Life and the Spiritual Life, p. 29; cf. Summa, II-II, 1 & 7.

7 Catechism of the Council of Trent, Proem to the Lord’s Prayer.

8 Christopher Dawson, Medieval Religion, p. 39.

9 St Thomas, De regimine principum, lib. 1. c. 9.

10 II-II, 1, ad 3; la, 45, 7; cfr. 33, 3.

11 Jacques Maritain. The Person and the Common Good, in The Review of Politics, October, 1946, pp. 422, 423.

12 I. 12, 1; cfr. I. 93, 7 and 8.

13 Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. II, ch. v, nn. 3, 4.

14 A Spiritual Canticle, Stanza XXXIX, trans. Lewis, nn. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. pp. 394-397.

15 Mystici Corporis Christi, June 29, 1943.

16 Ibid. on page 239.