Gratiam et gloriam dabit Dominus

26 April 2009 – 3rd Sunday of Easter

“We give thee thanks for thy great glory”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Gloria since we started singing it again after the long, long break of Lent. and I paused at this particular phrase. How exactly are we to give God thanks for his great glory? Praise, yes, but thanks? How can we thank God for something which he has in any case, which he has without any reference to us, which is one of his attributes from all eternity? Can I thank a person for their beauty which, although it gives me pleasure, is not there for the purpose of giving me pleasure? I think I can do even that. If I say to that person: Thank you for being such a beautiful creature to look at, they should reply: “Don’t thank me, it is not due to me; thank God. But I am happy that my appearance gives pleasure”. Two points arise from that reply. Firstly, the person is directing the thanks to where it is really due; and secondly, by taking pleasure in giving pleasure, they do acquire a certain responsibility for the giving of that pleasure: they join their will s to the will of God, who made them so beautiful precisely to add to the sum total of beauty and so of joy and pleasure in the world; and so they genuinely share in his desire and his act. They also, one might add, have a responsibility thenceforth for using their beauty for good and not for evil.

If we are talking about the beauty of God – which, it can be argued, is the same as his gory, not least because his attributes, being part of his essence, his being, are not separable – his power, for example, is not something other than his mercy or his justice – then it is clear that our thanks are indeed due to him: he, and none other, is responsible for his essential glory, and when he created us he did so in order that we should see and rejoice in his beauty, through a veil in this life and with unveiled face in the next. So, if you like, thanking him for his glory is really thanking him for creating us to behold that glory. Which is what we are referring to when we say in today’s Collect: “we who now rejoice that the glory of adoptive sonship has been restored to us”. The glory of adoptive sonship in which we rejoice means God’s promise that we will behold his glory in the intimate way proper only to true children.

St Peter – who is much more bold and revolutionary than one tends to think – makes a statement in the first chapter of his first epistle which would seem almost blasphemous if the church had not set her seal on it: it seems to suggest that we are the centre of the universe from God’s viewpoint as well as from our own. The ransom paid to free us was paid in the blood of Christ “who, though known since before the world was made, has been revealed only in our time, the end of the ages, for your sake. Through him you now have faith in God, who raised him from the dead AND GAVE HIM GLORY FOR THIS VERY REASON: SO THAT YOU WOULD HAVE FAITH AND HOPE IN GOD”. God gave Christ glory in order that we should benefit? clearly this has to be taken in context, but all the same, we can certainly thank God for Christ’s glory, since it seems it was for our sake that he was given it. And doesn’t the Bible say somewhere (I forget where) “The glory of God is a living human being”?

St Thomas Aquinas is saying something of the sort when he defines glory as “clara notitia cum laude”. The simple meaning is that glory consists of a clear knowledge o vision accompanied by praise; but “clarus” in Latin has a double meaning. It does mean “clear”, but it also means “eminent, renowned”. So clara notitia cum laude means seeing something or someone clearly, perceiving them to be worthy of renown, and praising them for it. Now if that is the definition of glory (and who am I to contradict Thomas Aquinas?) it would appear that glory in a subject, to be complete, requires not only the glorious subject but also someone to perceive the glory. The reason why God has no need of us, even as regards the completeness of his glory, is that he is not alone: he is the Blessed Trinity, in which each of the Persons perceives and praises the glory of the others. Obviously we cannot add anything to the essential glory of God. But there is no doubt that we can add to his accidental glory, in that we too can have the clara notitia cum laude. That is to say that we can give him glory, can glorify him. That is enough to take your breath away: we, who have nothing, can give to God, who needs nothing; and if strictly speaking we cannot add to his glory, he has chosen to make it possible for us to do so. The greatness of his glory is not increased when we give him glory, and yet…it is his glory that enables us to give him glory; and this clara notitia cum laude will be our eternal occupation in heaven as it is our joy here in a feeble form. If that is not a reason to give him thanks for his great glory, I don’t know what is.

That is the sort of glory the Gloria in Excelsis is referring to: the sort of glory which, when clearly perceived and recognised as worthy by us, gves us the gift of giving glory. It is the glory which God got over Pharaoh and his chariots and horsemen, and it is what Jesus was thinking of when he asked his father to grant his disciples to see the glory which he had with the Father before the world was made: he desires for them the gift of glorifying him for his glory and thanking him for that gift.

God’s glory is intrinsic to him; but it is also something he gives to us; and even when giving his glory, he does not give by measure. When he gives his glory, he gives himself, and the response to a gift should always be thanksgiving. When his glory filled the tabernacle it evoked awe and praise; but it should also have evoked thanksgiving. Perhaps it is easier for us to thank God for his presence than it was for the people of the Old Testament; we have been shown God’s gentleness and humility in a way they were not. Maybe we are still instinctively afraid of his presence (by the way, that’s why prayer is so difficult – we’re scared) but we know that he does not come to destroy but to heal and bless. When his glory passes we need not hide in the cleft of a rock, we can simply bow down in gratitude. The whole earth is full of his glory, and the heavens sing of it’ and while the mere fact of living in this world may not be as heartstopping a gift as being present at the transfiguration, the fact remains that both are gifts of glory, as was the Incarnation: a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel.

We have all sinned, and have fallen short of the glory of God, and we all need the glory of God to have the power to rise again. We have received the glory of adopted children, but we have rejected it. Time after time God offers us his glory again; we can only thank him in the lowliness of our fallen nature which cannot rise to him without it. God’s glory is our life; we live by it as plants live by the sun, and we need a constant supply of it to preserve us in being, a constant supply which he has undertaken to provide unto all eternity. If we thank God for our lives, for our creation, we are thanking him for his glory, the glory of the Sun o Justice, manifested and living in different ways in all his different creatures. “There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies: but the glory of the celestial bodies is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory.”

Bernanos’ Cure de Campagne said “Tout est grace”. I would add: “Tout est gloire”. And always a reflection and gift of the one glory, the great glory of God for which we are to praise, bless, adore, glorify and thank him our whole lives long. Thank him for the beauty of his essential glory, thank him for the gift of his glory in its earthly form of grace, thank him for the heavenly glory which we shall gaze upon, reflect, and share.

“For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee”