Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/64

the same time God-man and the Son of God, he is the symbol of all possible diversities and of infinite unity.

As supreme harmony consists in this, that the unity, out of which all diversity arises, and into which all diversity resolves itself, should be identical with itself in all its manifestations, it follows that it is always in virtue of one and the same law that diversity resolves itself into unity. The diversity of the Holy Trinity becomes one through love. Human diversity, composed of the father, the mother, and the son, becomes one through love. The human and divine natures become one, in our Lord Jesus Christ, through the incarnation of the Word in the womb of the Virgin, which is a mystery of love. The Church militant, the Church suffering, and the Church triumphant are one in our Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayers of Christians in heaven, whose petitions descend as a beneficent dew upon those who combat; and, through the prayers of the Church militant, whose efficacy falls like a revivifying shower upon those who suffer, for perfect prayer is the ecstasy of love. "God is charity; and he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him." If God is charity, then charity is the infinite unity, because God is infinite unity. If he who has charity is in God, and God in him, then God may descend even unto man through charity, and man may ascend even unto God through charity; and all this, without confusion, and in such a manner that neither God, made man, loses his divine nature, nor man, made God, loses his human nature, man always remaining man, although he is God, and God always God, although he is man. All this is accomplished by means exclusively supernatural, that is, by means exclusively divine.