The First and the Last (Apoc: i, 17)

Extract

This title of Christ is obviously true in that God is infinite and since Christ is God, therefore Christ is our all. But there is a sense in which it is difficult to reach a happy mean; and it is this sense that we shall now consider.

No one would deny that we love things other than God: creatures, friends, goods, art, power, our own selves. None of these are God, yet there is not wrong-doing in loving them. We need not go into the ordinary theology of the due measure of love to creatures. All our loves are conditioned by circumstance; none are absolute. God alone has absolute dominion over us.

The problem becomes more subtle when we are seeking perfection. Should God be all, and all else nothing? Are we being traitors to our bond by loving God and creatures? Have we not given up all to follow Christ; and to return to creatures, is that not apostasy? The doctrine of the “Nada,” St John of the Cross's word for utter self-abnegation, is very logical from one point of view: the less we give to creatures, the more we give to God; but is this what God asks?