PRIMA VISIO, cap. XI
The Wings of Love
The figure's wings from shoulder to knee signify how Christ in love gathers and carries both the righteous and sinners to heavenly companionship.
But from each shoulder of this figure the wing extends all the way down to its knees, because in the strength of love the Son of God gathered the righteous and sinners to himself, and he carried them on both shoulders — on the shoulders because they had lived rightly, and on the knees because he had called them back from the path of injustice — and made them companions of the citizens of heaven, just as a person supports with knees as much as with shoulders whatever he carries.✦
Love's Knowledge and the Spirit's Gifts
Through love a person is brought to wholeness, and the Holy Spirit's gifts teach heavenly truths while also revealing human frailty amid earthly necessity.
For it is through the knowledge of love that a person is brought, in soul and body, to the fullness of wholeness, even though he is often shaken from a state of firm stability. When the gifts of the Holy Spirit pour down from above in pure and holy generosity, they teach him abundantly in heavenly and spiritual matters. In earthly matters too they instruct him, in a different way, for the benefit of bodily necessity; yet in these very things he perceives himself to be weak and frail and mortal, even though he is fortified by many such gifts.
Christ's Sinless Humanity and Justifying Call
The Son of God assumed sinless human nature, called sinners to repentance, and justified them by his own faith.
That the Son of God, taking on human nature without the stain of sin and appearing in the flesh, called tax collectors and sinners to repentance, and justified them by faith—his own faith.
Read the original Latin
Sed et ab utroque humero imaginis hujus ala usque ad genua ipsius extenditur, quoniam in fortitudine charitatis Filius Dei justos et peccatores ad se collegit, ac eos, et humeris, quia juste vixerant, et genibus quoniam eos a via injustitiae revocaverat, sustentavit, consortesque supernorum civium fecit, velut etiam homo tam genibus quam humeris illa quae portat sustentat. Nam in scientia charitatis homo est anima et corpore ad plenitudinem integritatis perductus, quamvis a statu rectae stabilitatis multoties moveatur. Quem cum dona sancti Spiritus desuper in pura et sancta largitate perfundunt in coelestibus et in spiritalibus abundanter eum docent. In terrenis quoque ad utilitatem corporalis necessitatis alio modo eum erudiunt, in quibus tamen se debilem et infirmum et mortalem intelligit, quamvis multiplicibus donis istis munitus sit.
Quod Filius Dei naturam humanitatis absque peccati labe suscipiens, et in carne apparens, publicanos et peccatores ad poenitentiam vocaverit, et eos ex fide sua justificaverit.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Luke.15.5 — And when he finds it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
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