Revelations of Divine Love · 8 of 127 · tr. Grace Warrack
Chapter VI-a
"The Goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down to the lowest part of our need" This Shewing was made to learn our soul wisely to cleave to the Goodness of God.
And in that time the custom of our praying was brought to mind: how we use for lack of understanding and knowing of Love, to take many means [whereby to beseech Him].
Then saw I truly that it is more worship to God, and more very delight, that we faithfully pray to Himself of His Goodness and cleave thereunto by His Grace, with true understanding, and steadfast by love, than if we took all the means that heart can think.
For if we took all these means, it is too little, and not full worship to God: but in His Goodness is all the whole, and there faileth right nought.
For this, as I shall tell, came to my mind in the same time: We pray to God for [the sake of] His holy flesh and His precious blood, His holy Passion, His dearworthy death and wounds: and all the blessed kindness, the endless life that we have of all this, is His Goodness.
And we pray Him for [the sake of] His sweet Mother's love that Him bare; and all the help we have of her is of His Goodness.
And we pray by His holy Cross that he died on, and all the virtue and the help that we have of the Cross, it is of His Goodness.
And on the same wise, all the help that we have of special saints and all the blessed Company of Heaven, the dearworthy love and endless friendship that we have of them, it is of His Goodness.
For God of His Goodness hath ordained means to help us, full fair and many: of which the chief and principal mean is the blessed nature that He took of the Maid, with all the means that go afore and come after which belong to our redemption and to endless salvation.
Wherefore it pleaseth Him that we seek Him and worship through means, understanding that He is the Goodness of all.
For the Goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it cometh down to the lowest part of our need.
It quickeneth our soul and bringeth it on life, and maketh it for to waxen in grace and virtue.
It is nearest in nature; and readiest in grace: for it is the same grace that the soul seeketh, and ever shall seek till we know verily that He hath us all in Himself enclosed.
For He hath no despite of that He hath made, nor hath He any disdain to serve us at the simplest office that to our body belongeth in nature, for love of the soul that He hath made to His own likeness.
For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed.
Yea, and more homely: for all these may waste and wear away, but the Goodness of God is ever whole; and more near to us, without any likeness; for truly our Lover desireth that our soul cleave to Him with all its might, and that we be ever-more cleaving to His Goodness.
For of all things that heart may think, this pleaseth most God, and soonest speedeth [the soul].
For our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it overpasseth the knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may [fully] know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loveth us.
The path of loving devotion and self-surrender to a personal deity as itself sufficient means of liberation — the Gita's 'to those constantly devoted, I come forward as their deliverer,' Kabir's and the Sant poets' love-religion, the devotional stream that parallels Sufi love-mysticism. Distinct from mystical_union (the resulting state), fana_annihilation (the ego's unmaking at the path's end), ladder_of_love (eros staged toward Beauty), and prayer (the practice of address): bhakti names devotion as the soteriological road itself.
The passage emphasizes 'steadfast by love' and 'cleaving to His Goodness' as the primary means of salvation, framing devotion as the soteriological path itself.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The text states that God 'hath ordained means to help us' and actively orders the cosmos and human affairs through His Goodness.
The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.
The text repeatedly urges the soul to 'cleave' to God's Goodness and describes being 'enclosed' in it, signifying a deep merging of the soul with the divine.
Direct address to the divine, whether petitionary, contemplative, or liturgical; speech and silence offered upward.
The passage is fundamentally a meditation on the nature of prayer, contrasting 'many means' with the direct prayer to God's Goodness as the highest form of worship.
The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.
The text describes the soul's journey to 'know verily that He hath us all in Himself enclosed,' indicating a return to the divine origin from which it was not truly separated.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The soul is described as being 'clad in the Goodness of God' and made to 'waxen in grace and virtue,' implying a transformative participation in the divine nature.