Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [109]
The ways, then, in which our habitual being can be influenced by our volitive acts are in a wide measure different according to the single virtues. Let us examine now more closely those methods of a conscious striving for perfection which are the only ones to be applied in regard to such virtues like charity or kindness, which are, in a particular sense, gifts of grace, and therefore least subject to the command of our will.
Virtues develop when we devote ourselves to good things for their own sake
In this matter, there is one basic fact we must consider before all else. It is not from what we undertake with a view to our transformation, but from the things to which we devote ourselves for their own sake, that will issue the deepest formative effect upon our habitual being. The transformation of our character under these influences is essentially, on our part, the reception of a gift rather than a purpose attained by our will. All true values to which we attend in a contemplative attitude, with which our souls become imbued, unfold such a transforming effect in the depths of our being. The vision of the beautiful, as Plato says (Phaedrus 249d), causes the soul “to grow wings.”
Whenever a true value affects us, whenever a ray of beauty, goodness or holiness wounds our heart, whenever we abandon ourselves in contemplative relaxation to a true value that comes within our presence—so that the full process of frui, of the creative ripening of its experience within us becomes possible, so that that value may penetrate us wholly and elevate us above ourselves—a certain actual change (which is, in itself, transitory) is produced in our being, which, however, according to the height of the value that affects us and the depth of our actual response to it, will leave permanent traces far outlasting our actual experience. By this spiritual nourishment our very essence will be changed and, as it were, leavened.
God transforms us directly with His grace
An entirely new element is present, however, in the case of a similar value-experience as referred to God. The eternal beauty and absolute holiness of God, as manifested in Christ in a way particularly appropriate to evoke our love, still determine, formally speaking, a natural effect as do other high values; an effect which is certainly in accordance with the will of God and has its place in our spiritual progress.
Yet, over and above it there appears the aspect of our supernatural transformation by Him who has created us and from whom we have received the new divine life as a pure gift. Of course, God’s action of grace is by no means confined to the salient moments of our contemplative experience.
But we know by Revelation that God wills us to deliver ourselves to His action of grace expressly, to empty and to open ourselves so as to undergo it; and that, in these moments of a specific personal contact with God, particularly favorable conditions are given for the influx of grace.
That process of being received, embraced, and assumed as it were, which in reference to value as such is present in an analogical sense only, happens actually and literally when we give ourselves to the almighty God who has the power to elevate our being to Himself and to transform it in its very roots.
Our natural transformation under the action of the values we experience, a primary potentiality of our intellectual constitution, prefigures and prepares in a way—and continues to assist—the supernatural one, which it is essentially destined to subserve.
Thus, the deepest effect on our being emanates from our contemplative surrender to God. Whenever we grow empty of all created things including our own self; whenever we offer ourselves to God in thematical awareness not of our transformation but of Christ alone; whenever we lose ourselves in the vision of His face and dispose ourselves to be permeated by His light, He stamps