The Spiral Way has reached its consummation, and we find that consummation to be one with the great work of the Crucible, as it was conceived by the spiritual alchemists in the past. It is the heavenly work of Love Triumphant: energising love, which is the life of God within the heart. That Mercury of the Wise, the vital principle of growth and change, working in secret, has subdued all things to the measure of its glory: has turned the raw stuff of human nature into alchemic gold. The end of that mystic process, said the hermetic masters, is the raising of the Crowned Queen—Luna, perfected human nature, bride and mirror of the Sun—to a sharing in the splendour of her King. "Lo, behold! I will open to thee a mystery, cries the Adept, the Bridegroom crowneth the Bride of the North." The story of the Coronation of Mary, for them as for us, concealed the mystery of all transcendence. It imaged for them the final consummation of the Spiritual Marriage, the fulfilment of our racial destiny, the utter self-mergence of the soul in the Divine. All other stages of the Way had been but a preparation for this. Here life comes to full circle and highest and lowest, in the bonds of love, are seen to be one thing.
We have followed the soul’s life from its first humble act of receptivity, its first simple, eager act of prayer. We have followed the Divine Adventure through the years of natural growth and the years of conscious toil and effort, through weakness and agony, through failure and high triumph-out into the world and back again to the heart of the Living God. Now we see it: the whole cyclic story of the soul accomplished, the crowned Queen of Angels, fellow-partner with the Divine Goodness, enthroned above time and place at the very apex of Reality.
"And the Chanter of Chanters entuned more excellently above all others, saying: Come from Lebanon, my spouse, come from Lebanon, come, thou shalt be crowned. And she said: I come, for in the beginning of the book it is written of me, that I should do Thy will, for my spirit hath joyed in Thee, God of my health."
"For in the beginning of the book it is written of me, that I should do Thy will"—Mary, the humble maiden, perfect thoroughfare of the Divine Idea. Her destiny was fixed in that first willing act of surrender, that opening of her heart to the inflowing Spirit of Life. Fiat voluntas tua; and His Will is a remaking of humanity in His image, a fusion of divine and human, of Creator and Created—the union of the Spirit and the Bride. Therein alone the soul discovers her own being; often glimpsed, yet never apprehended, amongst the shifting illusions of earth. In Thy Light shall we see light: in Thy Reality we shall be real. Not of our own strength and power can we ever do it: but by a total appropriation of the heritage stored up for us in Christ.
Of that heritage we have received the earnest-money, in the dowers of grace which helped us on our way. It is His strength within us that has borne us upwards; the starry stranger nesting in our soul. Not in virtue of any private Divine quality, but as the mother of her God, Mary receives the diadem of Everlasting Life. It is His own triumph—the supreme achievement of the Creative Artist wrought within her—that He crowns.
Within that Artist’s mind was conceived her image: there it lay hid in its immaculate perfection, "from before the foundations of the world." "Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?" cries Peer Gynt—poor, hapless wanderer, distracted by many imaginations—in the last, most crucial moment of his life. "Where was I, with God’s sigil upon my brow?" And Solveig, who has waited and trusted in defiance of all appearance, replies to him, "In my faith—in my hope—in my love!" It is the voice of the Divine Wisdom that seems here to speak by a woman’s lips. There, in His Heart, lies the true being of humanity: defended against all assaults of circumstance by the invulnerable optimism of God.
‘ "Thou hast written me in the book of Thy Godhead,
Thou hast depicted me upon Thy Manhood."
There the image of all that we might be is treasured. Thither we must go, to be conformed to that secret Pattern, if we would find our true selves at last make actual the transcendent personality which every Christian has in Christ. There, in that transfigured humanity, we are gathered up; there, as the beggar maid by Cophetua, we are crowned. We "come to ourselves" indeed: to find in dependence on God the essence of our long-sought liberty and in His eternal service that perfect freedom which belongs only to the prisoners of love. And now we see why it is that His grace can only be upon the humble. Exaltavit humiles: for they alone resist not, nor oppose with their cleverness the mysterious operations of the Will. They claim not to do "anything of themselves" and hence are the instruments of His pleasure, the elect vessels of His inflowing Life. When one of these, says Mechthild of Magdeburg, completes her journey and is caught up to God, she can no longer remember the earth and the sorrows of the past. She cares nothing for her glory, nothing for the battles she has won. But she takes the crown from her head, and lays it amongst the roses at His Feet; and asks only one thing, that she may come a little nearer. Then she is taken into the Arms of God; and He looks into her face and embraces her. In that embrace, she is caught to the Highest Height, above all choirs of angels overpassing in her swift ascent Thrones, Dominations, Powers, her excess of humility transcending in knowledge and in love the very Cherubim and Seraphim who whirl in unending ecstasy about the splendour of the One. The Tree of Life has shot up to the highest heaven, and now at last it bears its flower.
‘ "Quivi e la Rosa in the il
Verbo divino Came si fece."
| "There is the Rose, wherein which the Word Divine Made itself flesh." (Paradiso, xxx. 73.) |
As the Communion of Saints is consummated in Mary, so in the Divine Humanity made perfect, the bodily expression of the Word, there is added up all the aspirations and potentialities of the race. They have a part in her victory; within the final flower of her achievement they find their meaning and their rest. She is the Mystic Rose of many petals: all living things that tend to God are gathered in her heart—
"Nel giallo della Rosa sempiterna,
che si dilata, digrade, e redole
odor di lode al sol the sempre verna."
| "Within the Gold of the Eternal Rose Which doth expand rank on rank and exhaleth Perfume of praise to the Sun of everlasting spring." (Ibid., xxx. 124.) |
Within that Mystic Rose, Dante saw Eve, sitting at the feet of Mary healed and made radiant by the reflection of her transfigured countenance. Natural Life, the Mother of Men, in all her strength and splendour, here finds her appointed place. Do what she will, she cannot of her own power come nearer: cannot with her own hand heal the wound of separation that she made. Yet there shall be born of her, and of all to whom her germinal life has been communicated, a Life Transcendent, umile ed alta più che creatura:
| Ibid. "Lowly and exalted more than any creature." (Ibid., xxxiii. 2.) |
by whose humble receptivity, by whose eager self-donation, her loss may be redeemed. The story of the little girl who ran to God on Carmel, the glad yet timid phrases of self-surrender on her lips, may be read by us as the story of every soul achieving dedication. She is for us the pioneer of creation: the harbinger of an exiled nation going home. She set her feet upon that Spiral Way which links the deeps and heights, the worlds of Becoming and of Being and finds its goal at last in the flaming heart of Reality—Eternal Truth, true Love, and loved Eternity.
