Wisdom discerns the union of mercy and peace in the light of wisdom and glory. The mercy of ineffable openness and the peace of spontaneous presence both bear witness to indivisible oneness. The full spectrum of divine names and qualities is manifest in the revelation of glory, which is the revelation of the completeness of peace in the temporal mercy of incompleteness. Completeness is timeless, revealing the glory of everything ‘all at once,’ whereas time mercifully gives time for the mysteries of glory to unfold, ‘one at a time.’ Christ’s divine-humanity embraces both time and the timeless, merciful incompleteness and peaceful completeness, both of which reveal the glory of union, though in distinctly different ways. The spontaneous presence of glory is timeless, but its indivisible oneness is unveiled in time, ineffably opening confusion to communion and division to differentiated union. Time is mercy, whilst the timeless is peace. Both reveal grace, which is both mercy and peace.
The mercy of ‘one at a time’ is the blessing of incompleteness, whereas the blessing of completeness is peace, ‘all at once.’ Time gives us time to assimilate what transcends us, to repent of what hinders us, whilst timeless glory gives us peace all at once, which is how glory is, just as it is, transcending us. Awareness of awareness unveils wisdom whilst the presence of presence unveils glory, but the mercy of wisdom is time and the peace of presence is timeless. The grace of Christ’s divine-humanity gives us both mercy and peace, obliging us, paradoxically, to embrace both time and the timeless. The paradox of time and the timeless was always hidden at the heart of illumined glorification, which transcends every rational, binary solution, communicating timeless wisdom of glory in time. Peace does not contradict mercy because completeness does not cancel incompleteness, but transfigures it. Integral paradox holds wisdom steadfast, because time does not suppress the timeless nor the timeless repress time, extinguishing the temporal. The uncreated creativity of wisdom regenerates the imagination in ways that generate many mysteries of glory, each mystery resonating with the unrestricted rainbow radiance of many divine names. The mercy of time ineffably opens to the completeness of timeless peace, revealing the spontaneous presence of oneness.
Mercy and peace draw very near when the conjugal union of wisdom and glory is revealed. From the heart of ecstatic union, joy enfolds time and the timeless as communion of mercy and peace. Mysteries of glorification are mercifully, ‘one at a time,’ but the glory of peace is generously ‘all at once.’ Ecstatic union of wisdom and glory opens to the hidden heart of the Song of Songs, mercy and peace restoring prophecy in pure prayer, through glorious union. The mystical poetics of prophecy transfigures saints through Christ’s union with his Beloved, whose mutual, reciprocal love restores the Church to her first love, unfolding timeless love in time. Mercy and peace conjoin as time embraces the timeless, uniting male and female in paradise, where an earthly heaven unites with a heavenly earth. Christ and his Beloved are each, in turn, wisdom and glory, mercy and peace, transfiguring every perception both as awareness and presence, perceiver and perceived. Wisdom’s Ineffable openness cuts through obstacles so that when glory’s presence leaps over into oneness, love’s ecstatic union is unveiled as the union of mercy and peace.