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.

32. Amor et fides vocantur primum ‘luminaria magna’; dein amor ‘luminare magnum’, et fides ‘luminare minus’; et de amore dicitur quod ‘dominabitur in die’, et de fide quod ‘dominabitur in nocte’; haec quia arcana sunt, et abdita imprimis in hoc fine dierum ex Divina Domini Misericordia, licet aperire quomodo se res habet quod abdita imprimis in hoc fine dierum, causa est quia nunc est consummatio ¹ saeculi, et amor paene nullus, proinde nec fides; sicut Ipse Dominus praedixit apud Evangelistas his verbis,

Sol obscurabitur, et luna non dabit lucem, et stellae cadent de caelo, et virtutes caelorum commovebuntur, Matth. 24:29;

per ‘solem’ hic intelligitur amor, qui ‘obscuratus’; per ‘lunam’ fides ‘quae non dat lucem’; per ‘stellas’ cognitiones fidei quae cadunt de caelo, quae sunt ‘virtutes et potestates caelorum’. Antiquissima Ecclesia non aliam fidem agnovit quam ipsum amorem; caelestes quoque angeli non sciunt quid fides, nisi quae amoris; universum caelum est amoris, nam in caelis non datur alia vita quam vita amoris; inde omnis felicitas, quae tanta ut aliquid ejus non describi possit nec usquam aliqua idea humana capi. Qui in amore sunt, Dominum ex corde amant, sed norunt, dicunt, et percipiunt, quod omnis amor, ita omnis vita quae solius amoris est, et sic omnis felicitas, unice ex Domino veniat, et quod ne hilum amoris, vitae et felicitatis ex semetipsis habeant. Quod Dominus sit, ex Quo omnis amor, repraesentatum etiam est per ‘luminare magnum’ seu solem cum transformatus, nam Splenduit facies Ipsius sicut Sol, vestimenta autem facta sunt sicut Lux, Matth. 17:2;

significantur intima per ‘faciem’, et quae ab intimis procedunt per ‘vestes’, ita Divinum Ipsius per ‘solem’ seu amorem, et Humanum Ipsius per ‘lucem’ seu sapientiam ex amore.

脚注:

2937. 'For the full price' means redemption by means of truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'silver' as truth, dealt with in 1551, and from the meaning of 'let him give it to me in - that is, for - silver', as buying, and in the spiritual sense as redeeming. For spiritual people are called 'those bought with silver', see 2048; that is, they are redeemed by means of truth. The reason for this is that they are being regenerated, that is to say, are being initiated into good, by means of the truth of faith. For the spiritual man, unlike the celestial, does not have any perception of good. Instead he knows through truth, and after that acknowledges from truth, that which is good. And when he acknowledges and believes, truth to him becomes good and he experiences it as good whose essential nature is the same as the truth with him. This is why spiritual people are called those redeemed by means of truth. Yet the essential nature of the good is not born and produced from truth, but from the influx of good into truth of that nature.