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IT FOLLOWS from what has been said that God alone, seen
face to face, can draw our will irresistibly. In the
presence of every finite object the will is free. St.
Thomas writes: "If we have as our object of sight a
thing actually colored, luminous from every viewpoint,
the eye cannot but see this object. But if we propose
to it an object which is colored or luminous only on
one side, whereas it is obscure on the other (as during
the night when we use a lantern), the sight will not
see this object if it is presented to it on the side
where it is not colored or luminous. Now just as the
colored object is presented to the eye, so good is the
object presented through the will. If therefore we
propose to the will an object which is good, good from
every point of view, the will must necessarily desire
that object and cannot wish for its opposite. On the
contrary, if the object presented is not altogether
good from every point of view, the will can refuse to
will it. Now, as the absence of any good can be called
non-good, only the sovereign good, which lacks nothing,
is such that the will must necessarily will it. This
good is beatitude." [10] We cannot but wish happiness,
we cannot but wish to be beatified, but we often forget
that the true and perfect happiness cannot be found in
any object except God loved for Himself alone. And here
below we love freely; because we do not see Him
immediately as He is, we can turn away from Him when we
consider that what He commands is displeasing to our
pride or to our sensuality.
But if God Himself, who is the infinite good, were
immediately and clearly presented to us face to face,
we could not but love Him. He would fill perfectly our
affective capacity, which would be drawn irresistibly
toward Him. It would not keep any energy to withdraw
itself from this attraction. It could not find any
motive to turn away from Him, or even to suspend its
act of love. This is the reason why one who sees God
face to face cannot sin. As St. Thomas says: "The will
of him who sees the essence of God without medium,
necessarily also loves that essence and cannot love
anything else except in its relation to God, just as
here below we wish everything in virtue of our desire
for happiness." [11] God alone seen face to face can
make our will invincibly captive. [12]
By opposition, our will remains free to love or not to
love any object which is good under one aspect and not
good or insufficiently good under another. The very
definition of liberty is that of the dominating
indifference of the will in regard to any object which
is good from one viewpoint and not good from another.
This definition of liberty is to be found, not only in
human liberty, but also in angelic liberty, and,
analogically, in divine liberty. Hence we see that God
was free to create or not to create, to elevate us to
the life of grace or not to elevate us.
Our will, then, has an infinite profundity, in the
sense that God alone, seen face to face, can fill it
and irresistibly draw it. Created goods cannot, for
this reason, exercise on the will an invincible
attraction. They attract it only superficially; the
will remains free to love or not to love. Hence, here
below, our will itself must go to meet this attraction,
which in itself is incapable altogether of overcoming
the will. Here lies the reason why the will must
determine the judgment before it determines itself.
[13] For the same reason the will keeps the
intelligence suspended in consideration as long as it
pleases, suspends the intellectual search, or ceases to
pursue it. This is the reason why it depends in last
analysis on the will, whether such and such a practical
judgment shall or shall not be the last. Hence the free
act is a gratuitous response, proceeding from the depth
of the will, to the weak solicitation of a finite good.
Only God, seen face to face, draws our will infallibly
and makes it captive even to the very source of its
energy. Even an angel seen immediately as he is,
however beautiful he may be, cannot draw our will
irresistibly. The angel is only a finite good, and two
finite goods, however unequal, are equally distant from
the infinite. In this sense the angel and the grain of
sand, in comparison with God's supreme good, are
equally low.
The depth of our will, considered from the viewpoint of
the object which can fill it, is without limit. Why
does it come that a particular truth (not a good), for
example, the existence of Marseilles or Messina,
necessitates our intellect, whereas only God, the
universal good, seen face to face, can necessitate our
will? St. Thomas replies: "Our intelligence is
necessitated by an object which is true from every
point of view, but it is not necessitated by an object
which can be true or false, which is only probable, as,
for example, the existence of a distant town which may
have meanwhile been destroyed by an earthquake. Our
will, similarly, is not necessitated except by an
object which is good from all viewpoints. Such an
object is our own happiness, the source of all our
acts. Such an object is, above all, God seen face to
face. Here below we can cease to think on His goodness,
whereas those who see God face to face cannot cease to
see Him, and can never find the least pretense for
suspending their action of love." [14]
This doctrine explains several problems which are very
difficult, in particular that of the liberty of Christ.
For three reasons Christ here on earth was impeccable:
His divine personality, the beatific vision, His
plenitude of grace. Consequently He could not disobey.
But, if so, how could He obey freely? Free obedience is
a condition of merit. In particular, how could He
freely obey the precept of dying for us on the cross,
the precept which He Himself [15] spoke of when He
said, "I lay (My life) down of Myself.... This
commandment have I received of My Father."
The reply of St. Thomas runs thus: Christ, although He
was incapable of disobedience, since He was absolutely
impeccable, could still feel that attractiveness of
non-obedience. To illustrate: a good religious who
receives an order that is very severe does not even
have the thought of disobeying. But he does have the
consciousness that he is accomplishing freely this act,
difficult as it may be, and that even while he does the
act he has the power of not doing it. Disobedience is a
privation, non-obedience is a negation.
How then did freedom remain in the presence of death on
the cross? This death was an object, good under one
aspect, namely, for our salvation, and frightful under
the other. Hence this object could not attract the
human will of Christ irresistibly, as would the view of
the divine essence seen immediately. On the other hand
the precept, since it demands free and meritorious
obedience, could not destroy the liberty of the will,
since it would thus destroy itself.
Certainly we are here in the presence of a great
mystery, a chiaroscuro of the most amazing kind. The
solution lies in the universal amplitude of the will,
created in such fashion that God alone seen face to
face can fill its capacity, and consequently free in
the presence of any good mingled with non-good.
What we have now said of the free will shows that each
soul is a universe, unum versus alia omnia because each
soul is opened by reason of its intelligence to
universal truth, and by its will to universal good.
Each soul therefore is a spiritual universe which
gravitates toward God, the sovereign good.
But each of these spiritual universes, since each has
free will, can deviate from its orb, can leave the
straight road, can take the road to perdition. Further,
each of our deliberate acts must be performed for an
end, hence each must be directed, either toward moral
good or toward evil. In illustration, take a watershed,
where each drop falls either to the right or to the
left. In Switzerland, for example, on St. Gotthard, one
drop goes to the Rhine and on to the foggy seas of the
north, the other goes to the Rhone and on to the
shining shores of the Mediterranean.
Similarly, in the spiritual order, each of our
deliberate acts should be done for a good end and thus
be directed virtually to God. If not, it is wicked and
takes the opposite direction. Even the act of walking.
in itself an indifferent thing, if it is done for a
good end, say for proper recreation, is a good act,
whereas, by a bad intention, it becomes a bad act. [16]
This is a serious consideration, but it is also very
consoling, because in the just man each deliberate act
is good and meritorious. It goes toward God and brings
us near Him.
We see from this point of view that it is never by
chance that two immortal souls meet, be it that they
are each in the state of grace or that one only has the
divine life and can by its prayers, its attitude, its
example, bring back the other to the right road which
leads to eternity. It was not by chance that Joseph was
sold by his brethren to the Ismaelite merchants. God
had determined from all eternity that these merchants
would pass at such and such an hour, not earlier, not
later. It was not by chance that Jesus met Magdalen or
Zacheus, or that the centurion found himself on
Calvary.
This depth of the human will illumines, as we shall
see, the teaching of divine revelation on the subject
of heaven, purgatory, and hell. The just man, were he
to live on the earth fifty thousand years, could still,
before dying, say to God: "Father, Thy kingdom come.
Let Thy will be found ever more profoundly in the depth
of my will. Let Thy infused charity be rooted in my
will ever more deeply." May it please God to grant us
experience of the profound depths of our soul which He
alone can fill.
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