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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print
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44 Pages
Page 21
Admiration even of the beauty of the heavens, and of the dazzling sunbeams, and, indeed, of any fair phenomenon, will then cease. The beauty noticed there will be but as the hand to lead us to the love of the supernal Beauty whose glory the heavens and the firmament declare, and whose secret the whole creation sings. The climbing soul, leaving all that she has grasped already as too narrow for her needs, will thus grasp the idea of that magnificence which is exalted far above the heavens. But how can any one reach to this, whose ambitions creep below? How can any one fly up into the heavens, who has not the wings of heaven and is not already buoyant and lofty-minded by reason of a heavenly calling? Few can be such strangers to evangelic mysteries as not to know that there is but one vehicle on which man's soul can mount into the heavens, viz. the self-made likeness in himself to the descending Dove, whose wings [1402] David the Prophet also longed for. This is the allegorical name used in Scripture for the power of the Holy Spirit; whether it be because not a drop of gall [1403] is found in that bird, or because it cannot bear any noisome smell, as close observers tell us. He therefore who keeps away from all bitterness and all the noisome effluvia of the flesh, and raises himself on the aforesaid wings above all low earthly ambitions, or, more than that, above the whole universe itself, will be the man to find that which is alone worth loving, and to become himself as beautiful as the Beauty which he has touched and entered, and to be made bright and luminous himself in the communion of the real Light. We are told by those who have studied the subject, that those gleams which follow each other so fast through the air at night and which some call shooting stars [1404] , are nothing but the air itself streaming into the upper regions of the sky under stress of some particular blasts. They say that the fiery track is traced along the sky when those blasts ignite in the ether. In like manner, then, as this air round the earth is forced upwards by some blast and changes into the pure splendour of the ether, so the mind of man leaves this murky miry world, and under the stress of the spirit becomes pure and luminous in contact with the true and supernal Purity; in such an atmosphere it even itself emits light, and is so filled with radiance, that it becomes itself a Light, according to the promise of our Lord that "the righteous should shine forth as the sun [1405] ." We see this even here, in the case of a mirror, or a sheet of water, or any smooth surface that can reflect the light; when they receive the sunbeam they beam themselves; but they would not do this if any stain marred their pure and shining surface. We shall become then as the light, in our nearness to Christ's true light, if we leave this dark atmosphere of the earth and dwell above; and we shall be light, as our Lord says somewhere to His disciples [1406] , if the true Light that shineth in the dark comes down even to us; unless, that is, any foulness of sin spreading over our hearts should dim the brightness of our light.
[1402] Ps. lv. 6.
[1403] Cf. Augustine, Tract. 6 in Joann.: "Columba fel non habet. Simon habebat; ideo separatus est a columbae visceribus." Aristotle asserts the contrary; but even Galen denies that it possesses a bladder (lib. de atr. bil. sub fin.).
[1404] diattontas, corrected by Livineius, the transcriber of the Vatican ms., for diatattontas. Cf. Arist. Meteor. I. iv: kai homoios kata platos kai bathos hoi dokountes asteres diattein ginontai: and, in the same chapter, diatheontes asteres. Cf. Seneca. Nat. Quaest. iii. 14: "Videmus ergo Stellarum longos a tergo albescere tractus.' Haec velut stellae exsiliunt et transvolant." This and much else, in the preceding and following notes to this treatise, is taken from those of Fronto Ducaeus, printed in the Paris Edit. The Paris Editors, Fronto Ducaeus and Claude Morell, used Livineius' edition (1574) of this treatise, which is based on the Vatican Cod. and Bricman's (of Cologne); and they corrected from the Cod. of F. Morell, Regius Professor of Theology; and from the Cod. Regius.
[1405] S. Matt. xiii. 43.
[1406] S. John ix. 5; i. 9.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/nyssa/virginity.asp?pg=21
