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Then he strikes Pilate himself with loftier words, saying that his kingdom is not of this world, and that he was born a king and had come into this world for this, that he might bear witness to the truth. Mary too, after the resurrection, he visits with mystic loftiness: 'Do not touch me,' he says, 'for I have not yet ascended to the Father.' Also, by breathing upon the disciples, he gave the Holy Spirit, lest that Spirit, who is consubstantial and coeternal with the Trinity, should be thought to be only the Spirit of the Father and not also of the Son. Finally, entrusting his sheep to Peter, who loved him and thrice confessed that love, he says that he wishes the same John so to remain until he comes.
Here too it seems to me that by a deep mystery he taught that this very evangelical dispensation of John — by which it is loftily borne into the most limpid light of the Word, where the equality and unchangeableness of the Trinity may be seen, and by which peculiar property man most differs from the rest, the man by whose assumption the Word was made flesh — cannot be clearly discerned and known except when the Lord himself shall come. Therefore he shall so remain until he comes. But he shall remain now in the faith of believers, but then it shall be beheld face to face, when our life shall appear and we shall appear with him in glory.
But whoever supposes that it can befall a man still leading this mortal life that, with every cloud of bodily and carnal fantasies removed and dispersed, he should possess the most serene light of unchangeable truth, and with a mind wholly estranged from the habit of this life should cling to it constantly and without deviation — he understands neither what he seeks nor who seeks it. Let him therefore rather believe the sublime and least deceitful authority: that as long as we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord and walk by faith, not yet by sight;
and thus, perseveringly retaining and guarding faith, let him direct hope and love toward the vision, from the pledge which we have received of the Holy Spirit, who shall teach us all truth — when God, who raised Christ from the dead, shall also quicken our mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in us. But before this which is dead on account of sin is quickened, it is without doubt corruptible and weighs down the soul; and if ever, being aided, it passes beyond this mist by which all the earth is covered — that is, this carnal darkness by which all earthly life is covered — it is, as it were, dazzled by a swift flash and returns into its own weakness, with a living desire by which it may again be raised up, but without a sufficient purity by which it may be fixed there.
And the more each one is able to do this, the greater he is; but the less, the lesser. But if the mind of man, in which nevertheless Christ dwells through faith, has as yet experienced nothing of this kind, it ought to press on in diminishing and ending the desires of this world, by the action of moral virtue, walking, as it were, in the company of those three evangelists together with Christ the Mediator — holding faithfully, with the joy of great hope, him who, being always the Son of God, was for our sake made the Son of man, that his everlasting power and divinity, tempered to our weakness and mortality, might make from what is ours a way for us in himself and unto himself. That he may not sin, let him be governed by Christ the King;
and if perchance he sins, let him be expiated by the same Christ the Priest; and thus, in the action of good conversation and life, with the wings of the twin love nourished, borne up from the earth as by two strong wings by that same Christ the Word, let him be enlightened — by the Word which was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God — though through a glass and in a riddle, yet far more sublimely than by any bodily likeness. Wherefore, although in those three the gifts of the active virtue shine forth, but in John's Gospel the gifts of the contemplative virtue, to those who are fit to discern these things — yet this also of John, since it is in part, shall so remain until that which is perfect shall come.
And indeed to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; one esteems a day unto the Lord, another drinks more limpidly something from the breast of the Lord, another, caught up even to the third heaven, hears unspeakable words — yet all, as long as they are in the body, are absent from the Lord; and for all the faithful of good hope written in the book of life, that is kept which was said: 'And I will love him and will show myself to him.' Yet nevertheless in this pilgrimage, however much each one has advanced in the understanding or knowledge of this matter, so much the more let him beware of the diabolical vices, pride and envy. Let him here remember this very Gospel of John, how much more highly it raises up
to the contemplation of truth, yet so much the more it enjoins concerning the sweetness of charity. And because that precept is most true and most salutary: 'The greater you are, the more humble yourself in all things' — the evangelist who commends Christ far more loftily than the rest, in his own account washes the disciples' feet.