Autor: Sertillanges A. D. (Gilbert)

Buch: The Intellectual Life

Titel: The Intellectual Life

Stichwort: Cella continuata dulcescit; Zurückgezogenheit - Dienst am Nächsten (Beispiel: Jesus)

Kurzinhalt: One can only achieve union with anything through interior liberty. To allow oneself to be possessed, to be pulled hither and thither, whether by people or by things, is to promote disunion...

Textausschnitt: 21/3 Delight will be found in it, for "the cell, if you stay in it, grows sweet: cella continuata dulcescit." Now the delight of contemplation is a part of its efficacy. Pleasure, St. Thomas explains, fastens the soul to its object, like a vise [eg: hier Schraubstock]; it rivets attention and liberates the acquisitive faculties, which sadness or boredom would constrain. When truth takes possession of you and slips her downy wing beneath your soul to lift it gently and harmoniously in upward flight, that is the moment to rise with her and to float, as long as she supports you, in the upper air. (51f; Fs)

You will not thereby live in the isolation that we have condemned; you will not be far from your brethren because you have left their noise behind you-the noise which separates you from them spiritually, and therefore prevents true brotherhood. (52; Fs) (notabene)

For you, an intellectual, your neighbor is the person who needs the truth, as the neighbor of the good Samaritan was the wounded man by the wayside. Before giving out truth, acquire it for yourself; and do not waste the seed for your sowing. (52; Fs)

22/3 If the words of the Imitation are true, you will be more a man and more with men when you are far from them. In order to know humanity and to serve it, we must enter into ourselves, where all the objects we pursue are together in contact, and get from us either our strength of truth or our power of love. (52; Fs) (notabene)

One can only achieve union with anything through interior liberty. To allow oneself to be possessed, to be pulled hither and thither, whether by people or by things, is to promote disunion. Out of sight, near the heart. (52; Fs)

23/3 Jesus shows us truly that one can be entirely recollected, and entirely devoted to others-entirely given to men and living entirely in God. He preserved His solitude: He touched the crowd only with a soul of silence, to which His words were like a narrow doorway for the interchanges of divine charity. What sovereign efficacy there was in that contact which reserved everything except the precise point through which God could pass and souls reach Him! (53; Fs) (notabene)

The fact is that there would be no place between God and the multitude, except for the Man-God and for the man of God, the man of truth, who is ready to give. He who thinks himself united with God without being united with his brothers is a liar, says the apostle; he is but a false mystic, and, intellectually, a false thinker; but he who is united to men and to nature without being hiddenly united to God-without being a lover of silence and solitude-is but the subject of a kingdom of death. (53; Fs)