g.

In man there is either too much matter or too much spirit, or to put it
better, either he feels a hunger for spirit--that is, for eternity--or
he feels a hunger for matter--that is, submission to annihilation. When
spirit is in excess and he feels a hunger for yet more of it, he pours
it forth and scatters it abroad, and in scattering it abroad he
amplifies it with that of others; and on the contrary, when a man is
avaricious of himself and thinks that he will preserve himself better by
withdrawing within himself, he ends by losing all--he is like the man
who received the single talent: he buried it in order that he might not
lose it, and in the end he was bereft of it. For to him that hath shall
be given, but from him that hath but a little shall be taken away even
the little that he hath.

Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect, we are bidden,
and this terrible precept--terrible because for us the infinite
perfection of the Father is unattainable--must be our supreme rule of
conduct. Unless a man aspires to the impossible, the possible that he
achieves will be scarcely worth the trouble of achieving. It behoves us
to aspire to the impossible, to the absolute and infinite perfection,
and to say to the Father, "Father, I cannot--help Thou my impotence."
And He acting in us will achieve it for us.

And to be perfect is to be all, it is to be myself and to be all else,
it is to be humanity, it is to be the Universe. And there is no other
way of being all but to give oneself to all, and when all shall be in
all, all will be in each one of us. The apocatastasis is more than a
mystical dream: it is a rule of action, it is a beacon beckoning us to
high exploits.

And from it springs the ethic of invasion, of domination, of aggression,
of inquisition if you like. For true charity is a kind of invasion--it
consists in putting my spirit into other spirits, in giving them my
suffering as the food and consolation for their sufferings, in awakening
their unrest with my unrest, in sharpening their hunger for God with my
hunger for God. It is not charity to rock and lull our brothers to sleep
in the inertia and drowsiness of matter, but rather to awaken them to
the uneasiness and torment of spirit.

To the fourteen works of mercy which we learnt in the Catechism of
Christian Doctrine there should sometimes be added yet another, that of
awakening the sleeper. Sometimes, at any rate, and surely when the
sleepe