Full Circle

Leave the Many,

Find the One. . .

Having Found the One,

Embrace the Many as the One.

~ Plotinus

We think it somehow humble, to desire the merest particle, the dimmest inkling, of God's majesty. But there are no particles in God. There is nothing mere. Nothing dim. No inklings whatsoever. God is infinity, through and through. Light without end.

It is only through paradox, by virtue of the mystery expressed in the man-god, Jesus Christ, that the infinite may be rendered, in some small part, and in some shadowy sense, graspable by finite minds. And while it is only fitting, and indeed an incomparable honor, that we should estimate the inestimable Father in the form of the incarnate Son, we are enjoined by that very emissary not to be content with the part, but to seek unflaggingly for the whole.

Too often, complacency is marked humility. But the part, who is Christ, cannot be properly understood and fully appreciated without carrying us, full-force, into the obliterating experience of the whole. To know him utterly is really to know the Father who sent him. To embrace him, marvelously, is to go beyond him.

And, still, the chain is not broken; the circle is complete. . .

For to be consumed in the infinite fire of the Godhead is also to be reconstituted, and resurrected into a new life with Christ on earth. Truly, there is no greater glory in heaven than to serve sinners in the world below, and, in order to do that, we must come down; not coming down from heaven, as though we were leaving our rightful abode; but carrying with us, in our heart, the homeland of which we are an indivisible part, just as it is an indivisible part of us.

There can be no doubt that the Holy Spirit of love, which ascends to God the Father, is no less a descending principle, which returns, through the miracle of God the Son, to embrace the littlest children of God, and the whole of His Creation. And all this is accomplished by grace.

May He be forever and forever praised, world without end.

Amen