A Capacity For The Unlimited

“...In the beginning our vision of the supernatural is almost totally, though not quite, obscured by the presence of the natural. Our soul is enveloped in a mist. The process of self-renouncement is the gradual removal of this curtain of darkness, and as this process proceeds our intuition of the things of God becomes clearer. These are revealed to us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. True self-revelation has always as it counterpart a growth in knowledge of God. For it is only in the light of God that we see ourselves for what we are. ... Accordingly as the soul ceases to be ‘self-regarding’ in its activities, it becomes ‘God-regarding.’ As the soul is being emptied of what is material, transient and perishable, it is being filled with what is spiritual, enduring and incorruptible. The soul in itself is, as it were, a void—but an infinite one. It is a capacity for the unlimited. Its characteristic actuality is a yearning and a longing for satisfaction that nothing finite can gratify. Having no resources of its own on which to draw, it cannot find in itself what will supply its native nothingness. It is, therefore, obliged to reach out, to seize something external to itself, in order to satisfy its needs. It is an infinite potentiality.

...The capacity of the soul cannot be filled up except by what can be received into it; and, by sensible satisfaction, we can reach only the surface of any created thing.

...Nothing can fill up the infinite capacity in the human soul except what can physically enter into it and take possession of it—and this privilege belongs to the Creator alone, and to that participation of His life which is given in grace and in glory.

...‘But he that shall drink of the water that I will give him,’ says Our Lord, ‘shall not thirst for ever.’ It is true that the soul shall always feel a longing to enter more and more into the possession of God—or rather to be more and more possessed by God—and this longing is a kind of thirst. But still it is thirst that is being ever satisfied, and as such, is a pleasure rather than a pain.”

~Edward Leen