Community is commonality;

“They held all things in common.”

If we live in the same house,

We do not have community.

If we are family,

We do not have community.

If we read the same books,

We do not have community.

If we raise our kids alike,

We do not have community.

If we attend the same bible study,

We do not have community.

If we worship in the same sanctuary,

We do not have community.

In all these things externalism reigns,

Thus the outer is shared, the inner excluded,

And all things are not common.

But if I share my heart, and you yours,

And we both share Christ,

We have community.

The only way to have all things in common

Is to share the only all-inclusive things;

Our hearts and the Christ that binds them.

In a recent article I remarked on a particular type of flawed thinking at leads one to conclude that atheism is superior to Christianity because it has neither split nor swayed throughout its history, while Christianity has splintered into fragments until its growth looked like a great tree. The analysis of the actual argument is back in that article, but upon some further reflection I realized that G. K. Chesterton has written some superb things about this issue in the chapter “The Paradoxes of Christianity” of his book Orthodoxy. To get a real feel for what he’s saying you really need to read the chapter (free here), and ideally the entire book. Three times.

The first part of his idea is this:

Christianity anticipated the eccentricities and paradoxes in life and accounted for them, striking a balance between what seemed to be competing ideas, not by diluting them but by allowing them to range free and rage against each other, yet in harmony.

He gives the example of the virtue of charity:

Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things—pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. [...] A sensible pagan would say that there were some people one could forgive, and some one couldn’t: a slave who stole wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his benefactor could be killed, and cursed even after he was killed. In so far as the act was pardonable, the man was pardonable. That again is rational, and even refreshing; but it is a dilution. It leaves no place for a pure horror of injustice, such as that which is a great beauty in the innocent. And it leaves no place for a mere tenderness for men as men, such as is the whole fascination of the charitable. Christianity came in here as before. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly kindness. We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

Do you follow his thinking? No longer is there this Aristotelian idea of virtues where the happy medium of courage is met by straddling a fence between the two extremes of cowardice and brashness. In its place was “conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite.” In the case of courage, “a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”

The second part of the idea then follows:

This holy balance was not only contained in just virtues, or just in the one person, but ranged through Christendom, allowing groups and even nations to balance with each other.

We see this in the next quote:

This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble, upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years. In a Gothic cathedral the columns were all different, but they were all necessary. Every support seemed an accidental and fantastic support; every buttress was a flying buttress. So in Christendom apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold. It is at least better than the manner of the modern millionaire, who has the black and the drab outwardly for others, and the gold next his heart. But the balance was not always in one man’s body as in Becket’s; the balance was often distributed over the whole body of Christendom. Because a man prayed and fasted on the Northern snows, flowers could be flung at his festival in the Southern cities; and because fanatics drank water on the sands of Syria, men could still drink cider in the orchards of England. This is what makes Christendom at once so much more perplexing and so much more interesting than the Pagan empire; just as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more interesting than the Parthenon. If any one wants a modern proof of all this, let him consider the curious fact that, under Christianity, Europe (while remaining a unity) has broken up into individual nations. Patriotism is a perfect example of this deliberate balancing of one emphasis against another emphasis. The instinct of the Pagan empire would have said, “You shall all be Roman citizens, and grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent; the Frenchmen less experimental and swift.” But the instinct of Christian Europe says, “Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman may the more safely be swift and experimental. We will make an equipoise out of these excesses. The absurdity called Germany shall correct the insanity called France.” [em. mine]

Chesterton then moves on to the salient point for us today: the vagaries and variances in Christianity that led to its splintering into movements and groups and subgroups is not because the Church made mountains out of molehills and went to war over the most trifling of ideas, but because a mere trifle can tip the scales when you’re balancing:

Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair’s breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfilment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. The smallest link was let drop by the artificers of the Mediterranean, and the lion of ancestral pessimism burst his chain in the forgotten forests of the north. [...] Here it is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless.

I realize that this article is basically all quotes, but hey, it’s Chesterton. There’s not much else I can really do. The closing paragraph of this chapter is too good to not include, and caps our examination nicely:

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom—that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect. [em. mine]

If you’ve read this post but not the entire chapter we’ve been looking at, take comfort in knowing that you’ve actually just read a decent chunk of it, and it shouldn’t be much more work to read the rest. And then after that chapter is down, there’s only a few more (okay, nine) to read before you finish the book. If you find yourself discouraged with not being able to follow his argument, I encourage you to read this article by Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesterton Society. He same some good words for you.

The Internet was never a bastion of sound reasoning, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that stuff like this comes out of it. However I thought this particular product of fallacious thinking was rather fun:

So what are they saying here? It’s a rather simple point. Christianity has varied wildly over the centuries while atheism has remained simple and unchanged. Then they (incorrectly) apply Occam’s Razor to shave off Christianity and leave Atheism, thus invalidating Christianity as a viable theory; voila!

Well what’s the problem? Again, it’s a simple point. Considering the branches and divisions in Atheism and Christianity as a point of contrast creates a false comparison. In this sense they are treating atheism as a philosophical proposition and Christianity as a religion or worldview. A proper comparison of propositions would be between atheism and theism. Here’s a fixed edit of the image:

What’s more, Atheism can be treated as worldview as Christianity was in the first image, and then we can see that it, too, shares the same fate of schism and division as Christianity has. The atheism of some ancient Greek sects is very different from the atheism of Bolshevism, or the atheism of Bertrand Russell. To say that their atheism is the same is to treat it like a proposition. To do the same for Christian groups would be to say that their theism is the same, which is true.

A question was brought up recently on a forum I frequent about whether or not Muslims and Christians worship the same God. It’s hardly a unique or uncommon question, and has been (adequately, I think) dealt with several times over in published works. There were a couple interesting questions brought up, though, that I think deserved to be covered here. The original statement is as follows:

1) Christians and Muslims worship the same god.

My rebuttal was based on the identity of indiscernibles, which states:

For every property P, if P is true of X and P is true of Y, then X is identical to Y.

Or less formally,  “two or more objects or entities are identical (are one and the same entity), if they have all their properties in common” [wikipedia]. What this means for us is that in order for two deities to be identical they have to have the same properties.  I used the example of triunity, the property of being three persons in one god:

1) The Christian god and the Muslim god are identical.

2) The Christian god is triune, while the god of Islam (Allah) is singular. Indeed, it is heresy in Islam to suggest that Allah is anything but purely singular.

3) For the Christian god and Allah to be identical,  for every property that is true of the Christian god it must also be true of Allah, and vice versa.

4) Therefore, 1) is false.

Further objections (what, you expected an internet debate to be resolved?) took two routes: a) the Christian god and Allah are the same because they stem from the same source, and b) the Christian god is not triune, in facty the trinity was a later formulation of the post-apostolic ecumenical councils. We are not here concerned with b), but a) is interesting, and it’s where we get to the title of this post.  Ignoring the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (since all my detractors did) are they the same because they are both offshots of the same Abrahamic root?

My retort would be an analogy. Consider that there are two baseball teams in one town. There was once one team years and years ago but the demand for baseball became so great that the team was forced to split in two.  Two stadiums replaced the one (or one was built and the other left as is, still resulting in two),  two staffs replaced what was once one staff, etc. Does it then follow that because both teams stem from the same original team, they both share the same coach? Of course not, such a statement is a non sequitir. The detractor might reply, “Ah, but they ONCE both had the same coach!” However that is also a non-starter, as either one of the original teams or both of them did not exist prior to the split, therefore there was no team to have that original coach. And even if the one team did have that coach, it does not follow that both teams must. The might but they also might not.

Consider an actual example from the history of Christianity. In the 2nd century AD, a heterodox Christian group arose called the Marcionites. Among other things they held that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were not same. They deemed the OT God to be a tyrranical demiurge who, after creating the world and tormenting its denizens for a while, wandered off and left the Earth to be inherited by the God of the New Testament, whom the Marcionites identified with Jesus. Now Marcionism and Christianity at the time of Marcionism shared the same root religion: Christianity. Or if you preferred to go further back: Judaism. But it does not follow that because Marcionism and Christianity stemmed from the same religion, they necessarily worshipped the same deity. Indeed, it was essential to orthodox Christianity that the God of the NT was identical with the God of the OT, whereas in Marcionism the exact opposite was true. The two groups were in perfect conflict on this matter. So we see that sharing a common background or source does not necessitate the sharing of other properties in common. Some sharing would be expected, certainly, but not necessarily so.

But then what about Christianity and Judiasm? Certainly (most) Christians hold that the God of Judaism and the God of Christianity are identical. As a matter of fact I think it is a necessary requirement for the Christian religion to work. However there are, some say, properties of the two gods that differ: the God of the Old Testament was vindictive, and genocidal, and jealous, and so on, whereas the God of the New Testament is presented as being loving and all-accepting. Furthermore certain realities about God are said to be revealed in the New Testament, triunity being one of them. If the God of the Old Testament is not triune and the God of the New Testament is, then they cannot both be the same God.

I would respond by pointing out that many scholars point towards the OT containing teachings which coincide with the doctrine of the trinity. Furthermore they point out that the NT contains new revelations about God’s nature, that is, teachings that are new that concern details about God, but not teachings that concern new details about God. The God of the OT had always had these qualities, but they were not revealed until the NT covenant. Consider for example the salvation of the Gentiles. Prior to the NT and specifically the gospel teachings of Paul, it was not held that the God of Judaism would allow for gentiles to attain salvation (at least in the same sense as a Jew would). With the new revelation, however, it was held that God did not desire that anyone should be lost, and salvation was open to both Jew and Gentile.

If we go back to the example of the baseball teams., we might say that it was widely held that the original team had one coach and one of the new teams had another, different coach. Then one day the coach of the new team takes off a mask to reveal that he is indeed the old coach. Neither coach was distinct but only appeared to be because of a “misunderstanding” (if we want to call it that): “his face looks like X,” when in fact it is the mask that looks like X and his face looks like Y, and the old coach’s face also looks like Y. This could be loosely said to be the case with Christianity and Judaism. The same cannot be said of Christianity and Islam. There is no “revelation” in Islam that says while it was once held that God was triune he is now revealed to be purely singular. No they hold that he was always thus.

I’m not sure that anyone will find this convincing, or even useful. I know that there is quite a lot dealing with the nature of identities and properties that I did not cover nor do I fully understand them. But I thought it was an interesting thought experiment anyway, and hope you did as well.

We’ve all had those friends who looked beautiful no matter what they were wearing. A certain girl could don a ratty hat and overly large sweatshirt and take your breath away. Or a certain guy could toss on shorts and a tank top he inherited from a long-dead relative and look like a million bucks. Some people just look beautiful, and not necessarily in their physical appearance only, but in the way they move: graceful and confident, or the expressions that come naturally to their face.

In a certain way I think the beauty of God is similar. It’s ineffable and ubiquitous, and proceeds naturally from his character to permeate his every action. Whether manifested in the unutterable power of the almighty Creator or in the utterly human weakness of the incarnate Son, the beauty of the divine is absolutely inescapable. I don’t think God could not be beautiful and produce beauty if he wanted to. It is simply a product of the way he is; beauty itself.

So why do we find it surprising when catch glimpses of that beauty? If God is indeed all around us and invariably radiates beauty shouldn’t we be accustomed to this? Paul says in Romans 1: “…since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made…” We humans clearly see God’s divine nature, which includes beauty, in his creation. So if it’s right there in front of our eyes why don’t we notice it?

There are two reasons why, I think. Firstly, we are fallen creatures. Our ability to even minutely comprehend the higher nature of God is absolutely wretched. Paul continues in the same passage, speaking of “men who supress the truth in unrighteousness: “[f]or even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” I once heard that the supression of truth carries the idea of working to press down a spring. We sinners worked to deny the basic and known fact of God’s existence and his readily discernable attributes through the unrighteous acts we engaged in.

How can this be? I suppose it’s somewhat like chasing the bottle to dull the pain of something you want to escape. Who wants to be reminded that they are a sinner and under condemnation? Does anyone like to be faced with their own ugliness? Wouldn’t they do things that will ultimately make them more ugly to escape that encounter? Allow me to answer: Yes; I did. Can anyone truly realize the existence of God, catching a glimpse of his nature, and not also realize his depravity and how infinitely far he is from the smallest part of that perfect One? And by “truly” I specifically do not mean a pseudo-spiritual new agey confession of the divine. I mean the invasive, overwhelming, wholly alien otherness of the One True God coming upon you.

Secondly, I think that even when we live with God in our glorified bodies his beauty will stop us short, in the same way that we would be caught off guard if we were to take a stroll down a familiar hallway and find it blocked by a brick wall. God’s beauty is not like the beauty of the world, not like the things that we think of as beautiful and can become deadened to. Not deadened because repeated exposure leads to familiarization, but because our sin-wracked senses are “not satisfied with seeing, nor .. filled with hearing.” (Ecc. 1:8).

Currently, those of us living as justified beings undergoing sanctification get surprised by God’s beauty. In small things and in large things we find it where we don’t expect it. I don’t expect that this nature of experiencing God’s beauty will cease to be when we enter our glorified state. If anything the pace will speed up. When joined in communion with God, Paul says “then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12) But as we are finite beings can never fully grasp an infinite God’s character (“who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Rom. 11:34)), momentary glimpses will occasionally fill our vision, as an impressive showers of sparks come out of a slow, steadily burning fire.

Saint Anselm said this in his Proslogium: “[f]or when heart, and mind, and soul, and all the man, are full of that joy, joy beyond measure will still remain. Hence, not all of that joy shall enter into those who rejoice; but they who rejoice shall wholly enter into that joy.” We can then, in that state, be utterly filled with an experience of the beauty of God, as we cannot now, but we can never fully experience God’s beauty, and beauty immeasurable will be left behind.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this. The beauty of God is an incredibly special thing. And do not think that being surprised by God’s beauty is going to end, ever. Get used to it.

Some more quick thoughts from Chesterton, this one about “The Riddle of the Nativity.” In the Everlasting Man, Chesterton devotes two chapters (The God in the Cave; The Riddle of the Gospel) to the alien (that is, otherworldly) nature of the good news.

Have you ever stopped to think about the idiosyncrasies in the nativity/incarnation story? Thought about what exactly it meant for the Most High God of Heaven to be born below the earth? That is, if the traditional view of the stable in a cave is correct? There’s something topsy-turvy in that, in the whole of the Nativity story. Chesterton says that nothing else had happened except the whole world had turned inside out. All the eyes that were faced outward at the huge expanse of the universe were now turned inward at the smallest thing, a child in a feed trough.

Such a strange story. Everything about it is backwards. The omnipotent creator was born as an impotent babe. The eternal, everlasting Alpha and Omega lay in a manger, just minutes old. The Holy One of God emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and born in flesh came into a world not worthy of his pinkie toe. And not only did those toes walk the earth among us, their owner washed the toes of his disciples. Out in the open you have the angels of heaven meeting with the shepherds on the hills, but the ruler of heaven was beneath the hills.

In Hebrews it says that we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our plight. How many are there that can sympathize with his? If anyone in the entirety of human existence ever deserved a high birth, it was he, but he was born in a dank cave. Sure, there are persons who can (unfortunately) say they were born in a back-alley, or a brothel. There are even some kings who could say they were “born low”. But there is only one King of Kings who can say as much. There is only One was can say “I, God, was born in a cave.”

Note that that cave was most likely crowded with animals, since it was during the census; not exactly the most pristine conditions for birthing a child. And while the people in the inn rolicked about, their king was sleeping under their very noses. Have you ever thought about what it would have been like to be that inn keeper? You have the ponderously pregnant Mary, and the watchful, nervous Joseph, and you turn them out into the cold. Or hot. I honestly don’t know what time of year the census was at. I think I read that it actually might have taken place over a period of a couple years. Anyways, not only could this inn-keeper not find room for a very pregnant woman and her husband, not only did he turn this young couple aside, he turned aside his messiah. Now I know that probably this inn keeper never knew exactly who he had shut the door on. News of Jesus’ heritage might not have spread out to Bethlehem before this guy was gone. But what if it had? What if this person found out that the Promised One was born out among the animals because he didn’t have room. The thought sends chills down my spine. And, of course, perhaps I’m reading too much into it. Perhaps it was convention to not elevate expectant mothers, like we do (parking spaces and all). Perhaps there literally wasn’t any room, and the inn keeper had people sleeping on every surface, stoop to cellar, and he couldn’t admit more without turning out others. I guess we’ll find out in the millennial kingdom.

I’d like to end this post with a poem by Chesterton entitled Gloria In Profundis:

There has fallen on earth for a token

A god too great for the sky.

He has burst out of all things and broken

The bounds of eternity:

Into time and the terminal land

He has strayed like a thief or a lover,

For the wine of the world brims over,

Its splendour is split on the sand.

Who is proud when the heavens are humble,

Who mounts if the mountains fall,

If the fixed stars topple and tumble

And a deluge of love drowns all-

Who rears up his head for a crown,

Who holds up his will for a warrant,

Who strives with the starry torrent,

When all that is good goes down?

For in dread of such falling and failing

The fallen angels fell

Inverted in insolence, scaling

The hanging mountain of hell:

But unmeasured of plummet and rod

Too deep for their sight to scan,

Outrushing the fall of man

Is the height of the fall of God.

Glory to God in the Lowest

The spout of the stars in spate-

Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest

And the lightning fears to be late:

As men dive for sunken gem

Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,

The fallen star has found it

In the cavern of Bethlehem.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

If you’ve been following the news lately you know how Muslims around the world have responded negatively towards remarks in Pope Benedict XVI’s speech at the university of Regensburg. For the sake of a coherent post, I’ll summarize. In the first part of the speech, Benedict quoted the medieval emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, who, in a dialogue with a “learned Persian” said the following:

“Show me just what Mohammad brought that was new and there you will find things only bad and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Now making the assumption that Benedict intended to claim the thoughts and intentions of Palaiologos as his own, Muslims around the world have made death threats, burned the current pope in effigy, and so on (in fairness many of these actions may have been made by extremist groups). The problem is that the quote is taken entirely out of context. The full text of the pope’s speech has hardly anything to do with Islam or Muhammed at all. In fact, it’s a discourse on the proper interworkings of faith and reason. And I must say, it’s quite good. Benedict expounds upon the Greek philosophical roots of reason in Christianity, and the trend towards subjective reinterpreting of the gospel (a stunning indictment of the Emergent movement).

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A while back I stumbled my way through St. Anselm’s Proslogium. That’s the one where he lays out the ontological argument for the existence of God. It’s a very beautiful writing, even if you don’t lend credence to the points of his case. You can find it free online here.

The following quote is Anselm’s prayer at the end of the discourse, and I just found it thrilling. Anselm goes through his work outlining how the fullness of God compares to the limitedness of man, and how the absolute greatness of God necessitates his exisence. Because we can conceive of a being whom greater than which cannot be conceived, and since it is greater to exist in reality than the mind only, that being must exist truly, or else that being is not truly greater than any other that can be conceived. Here he takes that understanding of the overwhelming fullness of God, the incapacity of our understanding to grasp it, and the fact that, in the words of a song, “He is more than enough for me,” and turns it into a prayer.

“My God and my Lord, my hope and the joy of my heart, speak unto my soul and tell me whether this is the joy of which you tell us through your Son: Ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full (John xvi. 24). For I have found a joy that is full, and more than full. For when heart, and mind, and soul, and all the man, are full of that joy, joy beyond measure will still remain. Hence, not all of that joy shall enter into those who rejoice; but they who rejoice shall wholly enter into that joy.

Show me, O Lord, show your servant in his heart whether this is the joy into which your servants shall enter, who shall enter into the joy of their Lord. But that joy, surely, with which your chosen ones shall rejoice, eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man (Isaiah lxiv. 4; i Corinthians ii. 9). Not yet, then, have I told or conceived, O Lord, how greatly those blessed ones of yours shall rejoice. Doubtless they shall rejoice according as they shall love; and they shall love according as they shall know. How far they will know you, Lord, then! and how much they will love you! Truly, eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man in this life, how far they shall know you, and how much they shall love you in that life.

I pray, 0 God, to know you, to love you, that I may rejoice in you. And if I cannot attain to full joy in this life may I at least advance from day to day, until that joy shall come to the full. Let the knowledge of you advance in me here, and there be made full. Let the love of you increase, and there let it be full, that here my joy may be great in hope, and there full in truth. Lord, through your Son you do command, nay, you do counsel us to ask; and you do promise that we shall receive, that our joy may be full. I ask, O Lord, as you do counsel through our wonderful Counsellor. I will receive what you do promise by virtue of your truth, that my joy may be full. Faithful God, I ask. I will receive, that my joy may be full. Meanwhile, let my mind meditate upon it; let my tongue speak of it. Let my heart love it; let my mouth talk of it. Let my soul hunger for it; let my flesh thirst for it; let my whole being desire it, until I enter into your joy, O Lord, who are the Three and the One God, blessed for ever and ever. Amen.” (em. mine)

The part in bold says it all.

Amen.