Manning and the Passive Perfection
All I can say of this section is “wow”! Read on…
Manning tells us that the Beatitudes are a foretaste of the
happiness of heaven.
“Therefore such acts are called Beatitudes because they
beatify the soul even here in this life of warfare. They constitute also the
highest perfection of the saints—the closest conformity to the Sacred Heart of
Jesus.”
So, if we want to be one with Christ, if we desire to love
Him and be possessed entirely in this love, we must move from the active
perfection of the fruits of the Holy Spirit to the life of the Beatitudes.
Christ did not have to be perfected, but He showed us the way.
Here is Manning again: “They describe the eight kinds of
perfection by which the soul tastes of its eternal sweetness. They are poverty
of spirit, meekness, holy sorrow, hunger and thirst for God, mercifulness,
cleanness of heart, peacemaking among men, patience under persecution. We have
here the image of Jesus Christ from Bethlehem to
Calvary . Perfection begins in the stable, and
is finished upon the Cross; and all along the way of perfection the children of
the Beatitudes are known, not only for their active charity, which is the sap
and strength of the twelve fruits of the Spirit, but by a gentle and passive charity,
which unites them, I may say, visibly with God; got no man could do they thing
they do except God were with him.”
So, the saints live in the Beatitudes, showing forth
character, the life of the virtues, perfected while on earth.
Manning continues, and this leaves me so excited, that I can
hardly type this out: “And, I may say that they are the last finishing touches
by which the Holy Spirit of God completes His perfect will in us—that is, our
perfection.”
Our perfection is this, then, in so many words-the complete
of God’s Perfect Will in each of our lives.
To be continued…