32. Love and faith are first called 'the great lights', then love is called 'the greater light' and faith 'the lesser light'. In reference to love it is said that it will have dominion over the day, and in reference to faith that it will have dominion over the night. Because these are arcana and have become hidden, especially at this end of an epoch, in the Lord's Divine mercy let the whole subject be opened up. The reason they have become hidden, especially at this present end of an epoch, is that now is the close of the age, when love is almost non-existent, and consequently faith too, just as the Lord Himself foretold in the Gospels with these words,

The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Matthew 24:29.

Here 'the sun' is used to mean love, which is 'darkened', 'the moon' faith which does not give its light, 'the stars' cognitions of faith which fall from heaven, and which are the various 'powers of the heavens'. The Most Ancient Church acknowledged no other faith than love itself; celestial angels as well do not know what faith is except faith which stems from love. Love pervades the whole of heaven, for in the heavens no other life is found except the life that belongs to love. This is the source of all happiness in heaven, a happiness so great that no aspect of it can be described or in any way captured in human concepts. People in whom this love is present love the Lord wholeheartedly. Yet they realize, say, and perceive that all love, thus all life, which belongs exclusively to love, and so all happiness, come from the Lord and nowhere else, and that they derive not one trace of love, life, and happiness from themselves. The Lord's being the source of all love was again represented by the greater light, that is, the sun, at the Transfiguration, for His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as the light, Matthew 17:2. What is inmost is meant by His face, and what emanates from the inmost by His garments. Thus His Divinity is meant by the sun or love, and His Humanity by the light or wisdom coming from love.

2621. That 'conceived and bore' means received essential being and was given manifestation - that is to say, the Divine Rational received and was given these from the Lord's Divine spiritual united to His Divine celestial - is clear from the meaning of 'conceiving and bearing'. The fact that no other kind of conceptions and bearings or childbirths is meant in the internal sense of the Word but spiritual and celestial ones, see 2584. But here Divine conceivings and bearings are meant because the subject is the Lord's Rational when it had been made Divine; to Him, that is, to the Lord, are Being and Manifestation pre-eminently attributable since He alone has [underived] Being and Manifestation. In addition to this, Being and Manifestation appear to be almost the same as each other, but they are not. Every person or thing receives Being by conception but Manifestation by being born; so that Being is prior to Manifestation as conception is prior to birth.

[2] The soul constitutes a person's essential Being, while the powers of the senses or the body constitute the Manifestation of it; for the former manifests itself in the latter. Celestial and spiritual love is the Being itself of one who is being regenerated, while the rational part and the sensory part of him - when these are endowed with that love - are the Manifestation of it. The same may be said of every single thing in the universe, for nothing ever exists without conception to give it Being and birth to give it Manifestation. This may also be illustrated for learned people from the idea that every effect has its cause, and every cause has its end. The end is the Being of the cause, and the cause is the Manifestation of the end. In the same way the cause is the Being of the effect, and the effect is the Manifestation of the cause.