The old almost-but-not-quite Semipelagian idea of God and a human being as two separate horses whose contribution to human work could seem to be calculated as a percentage is worthless. For, of course, all good comes from God in the first place and there is no univocity between the idea of “God as cause” and “human being as cause”. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to describe the process of divine union according to how it feels or seems our participation and God’s can be measured. Sometimes it feels like we do little, sometimes it feels like we do more. We can talk about it. In his Treatise on the Love of God, Saint Francis de Sales does just that!

Sometimes the union is made without our cooperation, save only by the simple following (suite) permitting ourselves to be united to the divine goodness without resistance, as a little child, in love with its mother’s breasts, and yet so feeble that it cannot move itself towards them, nor cleave to them when there; only it is – Ah! so happy, to be taken and drawn within its mother’s arms, and to be pressed by her to her bosom.

Sometimes we cooperate, when, being drawn, we “willingly run” (Sgs 1:3), to second the force of God’s goodness which draws us and clasps us to him by love.

Sometimes we seem to begin to join and fasten ourselves to God before he joins himself to us… however, there is no doubt, [he] always acts first on us, though we do not always perceive his action.

Three different “sometimes”: sometimes our participation seems like nothing; other times it seems almost, from our poorly adapted human point of view, to have run the greater part (but not so in reality!); and other times are in between.

And perhaps individual saints, based on their own experiences, have opinions on which of these experiences is more common: the child, the runner, the joiner-fastener. It would depend a lot on time period and on personal strength and weakness. For my own part, I know that we are weak. God asks a lot, but we are weak. And when that is so, God does come to us like a mother to a child. And, to that end, although Saint Francis gives saintly examples of the child, the runner, and the joiner-fastener, I’ll quote the example of the weak, little child:

Look at Saint Martial (for he was, they say, the blessed child mentioned in Saint Mark [9:36]): Our Saviour took him, lifted him up, and held him for a good while in his arms. O lovely little Martial, how happy thou art to be laid hold of, taken up and carried, to be united, joined and clasped to the heavenly bosom of our Saviour, and kissed with his sacred mouth, without any cooperation of thine, save that thou didst not resist the receiving of those divine caresses!

This is, after all, something that expresses an attitude our Saviour seems to have shown many times. When it comes to the child, the runner, and the joiner-fastener, we have a right to think especially on the type of the child. ^^