Meditationum [Incertus]

BOOK OF MEDITATIONS, ONE BOOK.

CHAPTER ONE. A prayer for cutting off vices and putting on virtues. My Lord God, grant to my heart to desire you, in desiring to seek you, in seeking to find you, in finding to love you, in loving to redeem my evils, and having redeemed them not to repeat them. Grant, my Lord God, to my heart penitence, to my spirit contrition, to my eyes a fountain of tears, to my hands generosity in almsgiving. My King, extinguish in me the desires of the flesh, and kindle the fire of your love. My Redeemer, drive far from me the spirit of pride, and in your mercy grant me the treasure of your humility. My Savior, remove from me the fury of wrath, and in your kindness bestow on me the serenity of patience. My Creator, uproot from me the rancor of the mind, and in your gentleness grant me the sweetness of a meek mind. Grant, most merciful Father, to me a solid faith, a fitting hope, a continual charity. My Ruler, turn away from me vanity, inconstancy of mind, the wandering of the heart, scurrility of speech, haughtiness of the eyes, gluttony of the belly, the reproaches of neighbors, the crimes of detraction, the itch of curiosity, the covetousness of riches, the plundering of powers, the appetite for empty glory, the evil of hypocrisy, the blemish of flattery, contempt for the poor, the oppression of the weak, the ardor of avarice, the blush of envy, the death of blasphemy.

Cut away in me, my Maker, rashness, unjust stubbornness, restlessness, idleness, drowsiness, sloth, dullness of mind, blindness of heart, obstinacy of sense, fierceness of character, disobedience to good, resistance to counsel, unbridledness of tongue, plunder of the poor, violence against the powerless, calumny against the innocent, negligence of those under my care, severity toward my household, impiety toward my familiars, hardness toward my neighbors. My God, my mercy, I pray through your beloved Son, give me works of mercy, zeal for piety, to suffer with the afflicted, to help the needy, to succor the wretched, to counsel the erring, to console the sorrowful, to relieve the oppressed, to refresh the poor, to comfort the weeping, to forgive my debtors, to spare those who sin against me, to love those who hate me. To return good for evil, to despise no one but to honor him; to imitate the good, to beware of the wicked, to embrace virtues, to reject vices, patience in adversity, continence in prosperity, a guard over my mouth, and a door of restraint upon my lips, to trample earthly things, to thirst for heavenly things.

CHAPTER II. The Commendation of God's Mercies. What God Has Done, and What Remains for Us to Live Well. Behold, my Maker, I have asked for many things, though I have deserved but few. I confess, alas I confess: not only are the gifts I demand not owed to me, but many and exquisite punishments are. Yet the publicans, the harlots, and the robbers truly encourage me, who, snatched for a moment from the jaws of the enemy, are received into the bosom of peace. For you, O God, maker of all things, though you are wonderful in all your works, are nevertheless believed to be more wonderful in the bowels of your loving-kindness. Whence you said of yourself through a certain servant, His tender mercies are over all his works (Ps. 144:9). And as though speaking of a single one, we trust that you spoke of your whole people: But my mercy I will not scatter from him (Ps. 88:34). For you spurn no one, you cast off no one, you dread no one, except the one who, being out of his mind, has dreaded you. Therefore you not only do not strike when angry, but you grant gifts, if they be willing, even to those who provoke you. My God, the horn of my salvation and my upholder, I unhappy one—I have provoked you, I have been evil before you, I have stirred up your fury, I have deserved your wrath. I have sinned, and you have endured it; I have transgressed, and you still bear with me. If I repent, you spare; if I return, you receive me; and moreover, while I delay, you wait for me.

You call back the one who wanders, you invite the one who resists, you rouse the sluggish, you embrace the one who returns, you teach the ignorant, you soothe the sorrowful, you raise up the fallen, you restore after the fall, you lavish gifts on the one who asks, you are found by the one who seeks, and you open to the one who knocks.

Behold, Lord God of my salvation, I do not know what to set against you, I do not know what to answer; no refuge, no hiding place lies open to me apart from you. You have shown me the way of living well, you have given me the knowledge of walking in it; you have threatened me with Gehenna, and you have promised me the glory of paradise. Now, Father of mercies and God of all consolation, pierce my flesh with your fear (Ps. 118:120), so that by fearing what you threaten I may escape it; and in your mercy restore to me the joy of your salvation (Ps. 50:14), so that by loving what you promise I may obtain it. My strength, Lord, my firmament, my God, my refuge and my deliverer, suggest to me what I should think of you, teach me with what words I should invoke you, grant me the works by which I may please you. For I know, I know the one thing by which you are pleased, and the other which you do not despise. A contrite spirit is surely a sacrifice to you, and you accept a heart contrite and humbled (Ps. 50:19). Enrich me, my God, my helper, with these gifts; fortify me against the enemy with these protections; grant me cool refreshment from the flames of vices; open this refuge to me, O merciful one, from the passions of desires. Make me, Lord, the strength of my salvation, so that I may not be among those who believe for a time and in the time of temptation draw back (Luke 8:13).

Cover my head in the day of battle (Ps. 139:8); be my hope in the day of affliction, and my salvation in the time of tribulation.

CHAPTER III. That a depraved conscience should restrain the confidence of one who prays. Behold, Lord, my illumination and my salvation: I have asked for what I lack, I have made known what I fear; but conscience bites back, the secrets of my heart reproach me, and what love supplies, fear scatters; zeal stirs me on, dread rebukes me. The record of my life brings dread, but your loving-kindness instills confidence; your goodness encourages me, my wickedness holds me back. And, to confess more truly, the phantoms of my vices rush upon me and unnerve me, and they beat back the boldness of presumptuous minds. For when someone is worthy of hatred, with what face does he seek grace? When punishment is owed, with what recklessness does he demand glory? He provokes the judge who, setting aside satisfaction for his offense, seeks to be honored with rewards. The guilty man, liable to punishment, insults the king when he demands to be given an undeserved prize; and the foolish son embitters the sweet affection of his father when, after inflicting insults, before repentance, he usurps the high place of the inheritance. What, Father, do I recall having done? I have deserved death, and I seek life. I have stirred up my king, whose protection I now shamelessly invoke. I have despised the judge whom I now demand as my helper. Insolent, I refused to hear the father whom I now presume to have as my protector. Woe to me, how late I come! Woe to me, how late I hasten! Woe to me, because I run after my wounds, disdaining, while whole, to guard against the arrows!

I neglected to watch for the weapons, but now I am anxious about approaching death. I have driven wounds into wounds, because I did not fear to add crimes to crimes. I have smeared over old scars with fresh corruption, because I have repaid ancient shameful deeds with modern defilements, and what divine medicine had made firm, my frenzied itch has dissolved. The skin which, drawn over the wounds, had concealed the disease has rotted as the pus burst forth, because repeated iniquity has emptied out the mercy granted. For I know it is written, On whatever day the just man sins, all his righteous deeds shall be forgotten (Ezech. 8). If the righteousness of a falling just man is abolished, how much more the penitence of a sinner returning to the very same things? How often have I returned like a dog to its vomit, and like a sow repeated the wallowing (II Petr. 2:22). It is impossible for me to confess, and even to remember, how many mortals I taught to sin while they were ignorant, persuaded the unwilling to do wrong, compelled the resistant, consented to the willing. How many, indeed, as they walked did I set a snare, for those seeking the way I uncovered a pit, so that I did not shrink from committing it; I did not fear to forget it. But you, just judge, have gathered it as money in a bag: you have watched all my paths, and you have numbered all my steps. You have been silent, always silent, you have been patient; woe to me, at last you will speak like a woman in labor (Isai. 42:14).

CHAPTER IV. The last judgment is feared. The reason for fearing. The reason for trusting. God of gods, Lord, who is excellent above malice, I know that you will come openly, I know that you will always be silent, when fire blazes in your sight and a mighty storm rushes upon your circuit, when you have summoned heaven from above and the earth to judge your people (Ps. 49 and 4). Behold, before so many thousands of peoples all my iniquities will be laid bare; before so many hosts of angels all my crimes will lie open—not only of deeds, but also of thoughts, and of words as well. With so many judges, I stand destitute of labor, as many as have gone before me in good works; with so many accusers I will be put to shame, as many as have offered me examples of living well; by so many witnesses I will be convicted, as many as have admonished me with profitable words and gave themselves to be imitated by just actions. Lord, from this I have no supply of what to say, no thought occurs to me of what to answer. And even if I were not already present in that crisis, conscience torments me, the hidden things of the heart torture me, avarice constrains me, pride accuses me, envy consumes me, lust inflames me, luxury harasses me, gluttony dishonors me, drunkenness confounds me, detraction tears me apart, ambition supplants me, rapacity rebukes me, discord scatters me, anger disturbs me, levity casts me down, sloth oppresses me, hypocrisy deceives me, flattery breaks me, favor lifts me up, calumny pricks me. Behold, my deliverer from the angry nations, behold those with whom I have lived from the day of my birth, for whom I have striven, to whom I have kept faith.

The very pursuits that I had loved condemn me; the things I had praised, they censure. They are the friends in whom I rested, the masters whom I prepared, the lords whom I served, the counselors whom I believed, the citizens with whom I dwelt, the household members with whom I grew old. Woe to me, my King and my God, because my sojourning has been prolonged. Woe to me, my enlightenment, because I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Kedar. And when the saint has said "much," how much more can I, unhappy one, say: "my soul has been a sojourner too long"? God is my firmament; no living person will be justified in your sight. He is my hope; there is no hope in the children of men, whom, if you judge him with mercy set aside, you would find just; and unless you have first come to the impious with pity, there will be no one whom you may glorify as pious. For I believe, my salvation, what I have heard, that your kindness leads me to repentance. O tower of strength, the lips of nectar have sounded: "No one can come to me unless my Father who sent me draws him." For indeed, because you have instructed me and in your mercy formed me by so great a teaching, with all the marrow of my heart, with all the striving of my mind, I invoke you, almighty Father, together with your most beloved Son, and you, sweetest offspring, together with the most serene Paraclete: draw me, so that following after you I may delight to run in the fragrance of your ointments.

CHAPTER V. How efficacious is the invocation of the Father through the Son. I invoke you, my God, I invoke you, because you are near to all who invoke you, but invoke you in truth: for you are truth. Teach me, I beseech you, your clemency, holy Truth, to invoke you in you; for how this ought to be done I do not know, but to be taught by you, blessed Truth, I humbly implore. For to be wise apart from you is to be foolish; but to know you is perfect knowledge. Instruct me, divine Wisdom, and teach me your law. I believe indeed that he whom you have instructed is blessed, and that you have taught him from that law. I desire to invoke you, and I beseech that this be done in truth. What is it to invoke the truth in truth, if not to invoke the Father in the Son? Therefore, holy Father, your Word is truth, the beginning of your words is truth. For this is the beginning of your words, that in the beginning was the Word. In that beginning I adore you, the supreme Beginning. In that Word of truth I invoke you, perfect Truth, that in that same truth you may direct me and teach me. For what is sweeter than to entreat the Begetter in the name of the Only-begotten, to bend the Father to compassion at the remembrance of the Son, to soften the King by the naming of his most beloved offspring?

Thus are men wont to be snatched from prison, thus are slaves freed from their chains, thus are those who have received a sentence of death not only restored to life but further obtain an unwonted favor, provided that, having appeased the angry rulers, they have made known to them the deep love of a beloved child; thus do offending servants escape the punishments of their masters, when the sweetness of their children intercedes for them. So, almighty Father, by the love of your almighty Son, I beseech you, draw my soul out of prison to confess your name (Ps. CXLI, 8): deliver me from the bonds of sins, through your only-begotten Son, coeternal with you; and me, whom my own merits threaten with a deadly sentence, restore to life, being appeased, by the intercession of your most precious child seated at your right hand. For I know not whom else to direct to you as intercessor, save him who is the propitiation for our sins (1 John II, 2), who sits at your right hand, who also intercedes for us (Rom. VIII, 34). Behold my advocate with you, God and Father. Behold the high priest, who has no need to be cleansed by another's blood, because he shines, sprinkled with his own blood. Behold the holy victim, well-pleasing and perfect, offered and accepted as a sweet savor. Behold the lamb without spot, who was dumb before those who sheared him (Isa. LIII, 7), who, struck with blows, defiled with spittle, assailed with reproaches, did not open his mouth. Behold he who committed no sin bore my sins, and by his stripes healed my sicknesses (1 Pet. II, 22, 24).

CHAPTER VI. The Passion of the Son is represented to the Father. Look, loving Father, upon your most loving Son, now suffering most impiously for me, so impious. Consider, most merciful King, who it is that suffers, and in your kindness remember for whom he suffers. Is this not he, my Lord, that innocent one whom you handed over as your Son, that you might redeem the old? Is not the author of life here, who, led as a sheep to the slaughter (Isa. 53:7), and made obedient to you even unto death (Phil. 2:8), did not fear to undergo a kind of most cruel death? Recall, O disposer of all salvation, that this is the very one whom, though you begot him from your own virtue, you willed to become a partaker of my weakness. Truly this is your divinity, which, clothed in my nature, ascended the gibbet of the cross, which in the flesh it assumed bore the sad punishment. Turn back, O Lord my God, the eyes of your majesty upon the work of ineffable piety. Behold your sweet son stretched out over his whole body, see the harmless hands dripping with pious blood; and being appeased, forgive the crimes that my hands have committed. Consider the unarmed side pierced by the cruel spear; and renew me with that most holy fountain, which I believe flowed from there. See the spotless footsteps, which did not stand in the way of sinners (Ps. 1:1), but always walked in your law, fixed with dreadful nails; and direct my steps in your paths, and in your kindness make me to hate every way of iniquity. O merciful one, take away from me the way of iniquity, and in your kindness make me to choose the way of truth.

I beseech you, King of the saints, through this Holy of Holies, through this my Redeemer, make me run in the way of your commandments, that I may be able to be joined in spirit to him who did not shrink from being clothed in my flesh. Do you not behold, loving Father, the head of your dearest youthful Son, bowed with snowy neck, dissolved into precious death? Look, most gentle Creator, upon the humanity of your beloved offspring, and have mercy upon the weakness of frail clay. His bared breast gleams white, his bloody side glows red, his stretched sinews are parched, his lovely eyes languish, his royal face grows pale, his tall arms grow stiff, his marble limbs hang down, and a stream of blessed blood bathes his pierced feet. Behold, glorious Father, the torn members of your most beloved child, and in your kindness remember that it is my substance. Look upon the punishment of the God-man, and lift up the misery of the man you formed. See the Redeemer's torment, and forgive the redeemed one's offense. This is he, my Lord, whom you struck for the sins of your people, though he himself is the beloved in whom you were well pleased. This is that innocent one in whom no guile was found; and yet he was numbered with the wicked.

CHAPTER VII. God's wondrous ordering in the passion of Christ. Whence man may repay grace. What did you commit, sweetest boy, that you should be judged thus? What did you commit, most loving youth, that you should be handled so? What was your crime, what your offense; what the cause of your death, what the occasion of your condemnation? For I am the wound of your sorrow, the guilt of your slaying. I am the disgrace of your passion, the toil of your torment. I am the merit of your death, the shame of your vengeance. O wondrous condition of judgment, and ineffable ordering of mystery! The guilty one sins, and the just one is punished; the offender transgresses, and the innocent is beaten; the impious one offends, and the pious is condemned: what the wicked deserves, the good suffers; what the servant perpetrates, the lord pays; what man commits, God endures. Whither, Son of God, whither has your humility descended? Whither has your charity blazed? Whither has your piety proceeded? Whither has your kindness grown? Whither has your love reached? Whither has your compassion come?

I acted wickedly, you are punished; I committed the crime, you are struck with vengeance; I produced the offense, you are subjected to torture; I was proud, you are humbled; I was puffed up, you are brought low; I stood forth disobedient, you, obedient, pay the penalty for the crime of disobedience; I obeyed gluttony, you are afflicted with fasting; the concupiscence of the tree dragged me to forbidden things, perfect charity leads you to the cross; I presumed on what was forbidden, you underwent the rack; I delight in food, you labor on the gallows; I enjoy delicacies, you are torn by nails; I taste the sweetness of the apple, you taste bitterness with gall; Eve, laughing, rejoices with me, Mary, weeping, suffers with you. Behold, King of glory, behold my impiety, and your piety shines clear. And my injustice, and your justice is manifest.

What, my King and my God, what shall I repay you for all that you have bestowed on me? For there cannot be found in the heart of man that which may be returned worthily for such rewards. Can human shrewdness devise anything to which divine mercy may be compared? Nor is it within the power of a creature to contrive a service by which it may justly requite the protection of its Creator. But there is, Son of God, in this your wondrous ordering, there is that to which my frailty may in some measure contribute, if my mind, pricked by your visitation, crucifies its flesh with its vices and concupiscences (Galatians 5:24): and if this is granted by you, it begins, as it were, already to suffer with you, since you also deigned to die for sin.

And so, through the inner victory, with you as leader, he will be armed for the outward palm, so that, having conquered spiritual persecution, he may not fear to be subjected to the material sword for love of you. Thus the lowliness of his condition, if it pleases your loving-kindness, will be able to answer the greatness of the Creator according to his strength. And this is the heavenly medicine, good Jesus, this the antidote of your love. I pray you by all your mercies, pour into my wounds that which, having cast out the bile of the serpent's contagion, may restore me to my former soundness; so that, having tasted the nectar of your sweetness, it may make me despise with all my affection the alluring prosperities of the world, and fear none of its adversities for your sake; and, mindful of perpetual nobility, may I always loathe the winds of this transitory swelling. Let nothing, I ask, be sweet to me without you, nothing please me, nothing be precious, nothing seem beautiful to me besides you: let all things, I beseech, become vile to me from you, let all things be foul. What is contrary to you, let it be troublesome to me; and what is well-pleasing to you, let it be my unceasing desire. Let it weary me to rejoice without you, and let it delight me to be sad for you. Let your name be my refreshment, and your memory my consolation; let my tears be my bread (Ps. 41:4), as I search out your justifications day and night; let the law of your mouth be my good above thousands of gold and silver (Ps. 118:72). Let it be lovable to obey you, and execrable to resist you. I ask you, my hope, by all your powers, that you be propitious to my impieties.

Open my ears to your commandments, and do not let my heart decline, I beg by your holy name, into the words of the wicked, to make excuses for sins. I ask also by your wonderful humility, that the foot of pride not come upon me, and that the hand of the sinner not move me.

CHAPTER VIII. How great is the confidence of one who prays, through the merit of Christ's passion. Behold, almighty God, Father of my Lord, kindly arrange how you may have mercy on me; for whatever more precious thing I have found, I have devoutly offered; whatever more dear I have found, I have suppliantly presented. I have left nothing to myself that I have not set before your majesty; nothing now remains that I may add, because I have entrusted my whole hope to you. I have directed to you my advocate, your beloved Son; I have sent the glorious offspring, the mediator between me and you; I have sent, I say, an intercessor, through whom I trust for pardon. I have sent in words what I said was sent in deeds for me: and I have recounted to you the death of your most holy offspring, which I believe was endured for me. I believe that the divinity sent by you took up my humanity: in which it deemed it worthy to endure chains, blows, spitting, and mockeries, and also to receive the cross, nails, and spear.

This one, once destroyed by the wailings of infancy, bound in the swaddling clothes of boyhood, harassed by the sweats of youth, worn down by fastings, afflicted by vigils, wearied by journeys; afterward struck with scourges, torn by torments, reckoned among the dead, but enriched with the glory of the resurrection—he led her into the joys of heaven and placed her at the right hand of your highness. Behold my appeasement, and your propitiation.

Here look kindly, O Father, upon the Son whom you begot, and upon the servant whom you redeemed. Here behold the Maker, and do not despise the thing made. Embrace with serenity the shepherd, and receive with mercy the sheep carried back on his own shoulders. This is that most faithful shepherd who once sought the wandering one through the steep places of the mountains, through the precipices of the valleys, with many efforts and various labors; and who, when she was already dying, already failing through long exile, yet rejoicing that she was found, placed himself beneath her, and by a wondrous striving of love lifted her, leaning upon him, out of the abyss of confusion, and carried back to the ninety-nine the one that had perished, bound in his loving embraces (Luke 15:4-7). Behold, O Lord King, God almighty, behold the good shepherd brings back to you what you entrusted to him. He undertook, at your disposing, to save man, whom he restores to you free from every stain. Behold, your most beloved Son reconciles to you the creature that had wandered far from you. Behold, the shepherd of your flock reforms what the violent robber had carried off.

He gives back to your sight the servant whom his own conscience had made a runaway, so that he who by himself deserved punishment may through such an advocate deserve pardon; and he for whom hell remained as due for his sins may now, with so great a leader, trust that he will be recalled to his homeland.

By myself, holy Father, I was able to offend you, but I was not able by myself to appease you. My God, your beloved Son, has been made my helper, sharing my humanity, so that he might cure my infirmity; so that from the very source whence the guilt of offense had arisen, he might offer to you a sacrifice of praise on my behalf, and through this might render me pleasing to your loving-kindness—he who, seated at your right hand, ever shows himself to be a sharer of my substance. Behold my hope, behold all my confidence. If, as is fitting, you despise me for my iniquity, look upon me at least in mercy for the love of your beloved Son. Look upon the Son, that you may be propitious to the servant; see the mystery of the flesh, and forgive the guilt of the flesh. As often as the wounds of your blessed offspring lie open before you, let my crimes, I beseech you, lie hidden. As often as the precious blood glows from that holy side, let the stain of my pollution, I beseech you, be washed away. And because flesh provoked you to anger, let flesh bend you, I implore, to mercy; so that, if flesh led me astray to guilt, flesh may lead me to pardon. For great indeed is what my wickedness deserves; but far greater is what the loving-kindness of my Redeemer claims by right. For great is my injustice; but the justice of my Redeemer is greater still.

For by as much as God is superior to man, so much is my malice inferior to his goodness, both in quality and even in quantity. For what could man commit that the Son of God made man would not redeem? What pride would swell so greatly that such great humility would not lay it low? What dominion of death would there be that the punishment of the cross of the Son of God would not destroy? Surely, my God, if the sins of the offending man and the grace of the redeeming Author were weighed in the balance, the east would not be separated from the west, nor the lowest hell from the highest hinge of heaven. Now, best creator of light, now forgive my sins, in return for the immense labors of your beloved Son. Now, I beseech you, let my impiety be given to his piety, my perversity to his modesty, and my ferocity to his gentleness. Now let his humility win my pride, his patience my impatience, his kindness my hardness, his obedience my disobedience, his tranquility my restlessness, his sweetness my bitterness, his suavity my anger, his charity my cruelty.

CHAPTER IX. The Invocation of the Holy Spirit. Now, holy communication of the divine love of the Godhead, of the almighty Father and his most blessed Offspring, almighty Paraclete, Spirit, most merciful consoler of the sorrowing, now pour yourself into the inmost recesses of my heart with mighty power, and as a loving dweller illumine with the brightness of your radiant light every dark hiding-place of this neglected dwelling, and by visiting with the abundance of your dew make fruitful the things that wither in the long squalor of dryness. Wound the secret places of the inner man with the dart of your love, and set ablaze the marrow of the lukewarm liver by penetrating with saving flames, and enlighten and feed all the inmost parts of mind and body with the fire of holy fervor. Give me drink from the torrent of your delight, so that it may no longer please me to taste anything of worldly things with their poisoned sweetness. Judge me, O Lord, and distinguish my cause from an unholy nation: teach me to do your will, for you are my God. I believe, therefore, that whomever you inhabit, you make a dwelling-place of the Father and equally of the Son. Blessed is he who shall deserve to have you as guest, since through you the Father and the Son will make their dwelling with him. Come now, come, most kindly consoler of the grieving soul, helper in opportune times and in tribulation. Come, purifier of sins, healer of wounds. Come, strength of the frail, lifter-up of the falling. Come, teacher of the humble, destroyer of the proud. Come, loving father of orphans, sweet judge of widows.

Come, hope of the poor, reviver of the faint. Come, star of those who sail, harbor of the shipwrecked. Come, singular glory of all the living, sole salvation of the dying. Come, most holy of spirits, come, and have mercy on me, fit me to yourself, and graciously condescend to me: that my smallness may please your greatness, and my weakness your strength, according to the multitude of your mercies, through Jesus Christ my Savior, who with the Father lives and reigns in your unity, God through all ages of ages. Amen.

CHAPTER X. The Prayer of One Who Thinks Humbly of Himself. I know, Lord, I know and confess that I am not worthy that you should love me; but surely you are not unworthy that I should love you. I am indeed unworthy to serve you, but you are not unworthy of the service of your creature. Grant me therefore, Lord, that whereby you are worthy; and I shall be worthy of that whereby I am unworthy. Make me, as you will, to cease from sin; that, as I ought, I may be able to serve you. Grant me so to guard, rule, and finish my life, that I may sleep in peace, and rest in you. Grant me at the end that the highest rest may receive me, rest with security, security in eternity. Amen.

CHAPTER XI. Confession of the Trinity. You, God the Father unbegotten, you the only-begotten Son, you the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, the holy and undivided Trinity, we confess with our whole heart and mouth, we praise and bless: to you be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

CHAPTER XII. Contemplation of the perfections of God. Supreme Trinity, one power, and undivided majesty, our God, God almighty, I confess to you, I the least of your servants, and a tiny member of your Church. I confess to you, and I honor you with the sacrifice of praise that is due, according to the knowledge and ability which you have deigned to grant to me, so small a one. And because outward gifts are lacking to me which I might offer, the vows of praise that are within me, out of the bounty of your mercy, behold, I gladly and exultantly offer to you from a faith not feigned and a pure conscience.

I believe therefore in you with my whole heart, King of heaven and earth, Lord, and with my mouth I confess you, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, three in persons and one in substance, true God almighty, of one simple, incorporeal, invisible, and uncircumscribed nature, having nothing in you greater or lesser, but in every way perfect without deformity, great without quantity, good without quality, eternal without time, life without death, strong without weakness, true without falsehood, wholly everywhere without place, present everywhere without situation, filling all things without extension, meeting all things everywhere without contraction, transcending all things without motion, remaining within all things without standing still, creating all things without need, ruling all things without labor, giving being to all things without beginning of yourself, making all mutable things without change of yourself; infinite in greatness, almighty in power, supreme in goodness, inestimable in wisdom, terrible in counsels, just in judgments, most secret in hidden thoughts, truthful in words, holy in works, abundant in mercies; most patient toward those who offend, most loving toward those who repent; always the same, eternal and everlasting, immortal and unchangeable: whom neither spaces enlarge, nor the narrowness of places confines, nor any receptacles constrain, nor does will vary you, nor necessity corrupt you, nor do sorrowful things disturb you, nor joyful things soothe you: from whom neither forgetfulness takes away,

Neither does memory restore them, nor do past things pass away, nor do future things succeed: to whom neither origin gives a beginning, nor times an increase, nor chance an end: but before the ages and in the ages and through the ages you live forever, and there is to you everlasting praise and eternal glory, supreme power and singular honor, perpetual kingdom and dominion without end, through infinite and untiring and immortal ages of ages. Amen.

CHAPTER XIII. On the mystery of the Incarnation. In this mystery our hope is strong. Up to this point, omnipotent Trinity, one God, inspector and searcher of my heart, I have confessed the omnipotence of your majesty, and the majesty of your omnipotence: now, however, how you deigned to come to the aid of the human race at the end of the ages, as I believe in my heart unto righteousness, so I confess with my mouth before you unto salvation. You indeed, God the Father, are nowhere read to have been sent; but of your Son the Apostle writes thus: But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son (Gal. 4:4). When he says "sent," he shows clearly enough that he came into this world as one sent, when, born of blessed Mary ever virgin, he appeared in the flesh as true and perfect man. But what is it that that chief of the Evangelists says of him: He was in the world, and the world was made through him (John 1:10)? There, therefore, he was sent through his humanity, where he always was and is through his divinity. This mission, clearly, I believe with my whole heart and confess with my mouth to be the work of the whole Holy Trinity.

How you loved us, holy and good Father, how greatly you loved us, loving Creator, who did not even spare your own Son, but handed him over for us wicked men. He was subject to you even to death, death on a cross (Phil 2:8), surely taking up the record of our sins and fastening it to the cross (Col 2:14), he crucified sin and put death to death. That one alone, free among the dead (Ps 87:6), having power to lay down his life and to take it up again (Jn 10:18), for us is victor and victim before you, and therefore victor because victim; for us he is priest and sacrifice before you, and therefore priest because sacrifice.

Rightly is my hope strong in him, because you will heal all my sicknesses through him who sits at your right hand and intercedes for us (Rom 8:34). For my sicknesses, Lord, are great and many; many they are and great. For the prince of this world has many things in me, I know and confess it; but I ask you, free me through him who sits at your right hand, our Redeemer, in whom he could find nothing of his own. Through him justify me, who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth (1 Pet 2:22). Through him, our head, in whom there is no stain, free his member, though small and weak. Free, I beseech you, me from my sins, vices, faults, and negligences.

Fill me, then, with your holy virtues, and make me strong in good habits; make me persevere in your holy works, for the sake of your holy name, even to the end, according to your will.

CHAPTER XIV. Thanksgiving for the benefits bestowed from that source. I could indeed have despaired because of my excessive sins and my countless negligences, had your Word, O God, not become flesh and dwelt among us. But now I dare not despair; for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled through the death of your Son, how much more now, having been saved from wrath, shall we be saved through him? For all my hope and the whole certainty of my confidence is in his precious blood, which was shed for us and for our salvation. In him I breathe again, and trusting in him I desire to come to you, having not my own righteousness, but that which is in your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, most merciful and most kind God, lover of men, who through Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord, when we did not exist, powerfully made us, and when we had been lost by our own fault, wondrously recovered us, I give thanks to your goodness, and I return many thanks to you from my whole heart, because for the sake of your ineffable love, with which you deigned to love us, wretched and unworthy as we are, in your wondrous goodness, you sent your only-begotten Son from your bosom into our public view, to save us sinners, then sons of wrath, sons of perdition.

I give thanks to you for his holy incarnation and nativity, and for his glorious Mother, from whom he deigned to take flesh for us and for our salvation: so that just as he is true God from God, so he might be true man from man. I give thanks to you for his passion and cross, for his death and resurrection, for his ascension into heaven, and for the seat of his majesty at your right hand. For he, ascending above all the heavens on the fortieth day after his resurrection in the sight of his disciples (Acts 1:9), and sitting at your right hand, poured out the Holy Spirit according to his promise upon the sons of adoption (Acts 2:4). I give thanks to you for that most sacred outpouring of his precious blood, by which we are redeemed; and likewise for the most holy and life-giving mystery of his body and blood, by which daily in your Church we are fed and given drink, washed and sanctified, and made partakers of the one supreme divinity. I give thanks to you for this wondrous and ineffable glory of yours, by which you so loved and saved us, unworthy as we are, through your only and beloved Son. For you so loved the world that you gave your only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3:16). And this is eternal life, that we may know you, the true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3), through right faith and works worthy of faith.

CHAPTER XV. The immeasurable love of God in the reparation of man. That we are unequal to repaying his grace. How great is the confidence we have because of the man assumed by God. O immeasurable pity, O inestimable love! To set a servant free, you delivered up your Son. God became man, so that lost man might be snatched from the power of demons. How kind a lover of men is your Son, our God, to whose merciful heart it did not seem enough to stoop to become man of the true Virgin Mary, unless he also underwent the punishment of the cross, pouring out his blood for us and for our salvation. The merciful God came, he came for his own mercy and goodness, he came to seek and to save what had perished. He sought the lost sheep; he sought it, and found it, and carried it back on his shoulders to the folds of the flock (Luke 15:4-5), the merciful Lord, and truly a shepherd full of gentleness. O love, O mercy! Who has heard such things? Who would not be astonished at such deep compassion of mercy? Who would not marvel, who would not rejoice? Because of your exceeding love with which you loved us, you sent your Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, so that by sin he might condemn sin; so that we might be made your righteousness in him (Rom. 8:3-4). For he is the true lamb, the spotless lamb, who took away the sins of the world; who by dying destroyed our death, and by rising restored our life.

But what can we repay to you, our God, for the lavish benefits of your mercy? What praises, or what acts of thanksgiving? Even if we had the knowledge and power of those blessed Angels, we could still repay nothing worthy of such great kindness and goodness of yours. Indeed, if every member of our body were turned into tongues, our smallness would by no means suffice to repay you the debt of gratitude. For your inestimable love surpasses all knowledge, which you have shown to us, unworthy as we are, for your goodness and kindness alone. For your Son, our Lord, took hold not of Angels but of the seed of Abraham (Hebr. 2:16), being made like us in all things, without sin.

And so, taking up human, not angelic, nature, and glorifying it with the robe of holy resurrection and immortality, he carried it above all the heavens, above all the choirs of Angels, above the Cherubim and Seraphim, placing it at your right hand. This the angels praise, the Dominations adore, and all the Powers of heaven tremble over the man who is God above them. This truly is my whole hope and all my confidence. For in Jesus Christ our Lord himself there is the portion of each one of us, flesh and blood. Where, then, my portion reigns, there I believe that I reign. Where my flesh is glorified, there I know that I am glorious. Where my blood holds dominion, there I know that I hold dominion. Although I am a sinner, I do not distrust this communion of grace.

And if my sins forbid it, my substance requires it. And if my offenses shut me out, the communion of nature does not repel me. For the Lord is not so harsh as to forget man, and not to remember him whom he himself bears; so that whom he took up for my sake, he should not seek for his own sake. Surely our Lord God is mild and very gracious, and he loves his flesh, his members, his inmost parts, in our God and Lord Jesus Christ himself, most sweet, most gracious and most merciful; in whom we have already risen, already ascended the heavens, already sit in heavenly places. Our flesh loves us; and we have the prerogative of our blood in him. We are truly his members and his flesh. Finally he himself is our head, from whom is the whole body, as it is written, Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; and, They shall be two in one flesh; and, No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. This is a great mystery: I speak, in Christ and in the Church, says the Apostle.

CHAPTER XVI. Thanks are therefore given. That there is a twofold nature in Christ and one person. A petition arising from the contemplation of this mystery. Thanks therefore I give to you with lips and heart and with all the strength I am able, O Lord our God of infinite mercy, for all your mercies, by which you deigned wonderfully to come to our aid when we were lost, through the same your Son, our Savior and Redeemer, who died for our sins and rose again for our justification (Rom. 4:25); and now living without end he sits at your right hand and intercedes for us (Ibid. 8:34), and at the same time is merciful with you, because he is God from you, the Father, coeternal with you and consubstantial through whom he is able to save us forever; but according to what he is as man, in that respect in which he is less than you, all power has been given to him by you in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18), so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus is in your glory (Phil. 2:10-11), God the Father almighty. He indeed has been appointed by you judge of the living and the dead; but you judge no one, but you have given all judgment to your Son (John 5:22), in whose breast are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3). But he himself is witness and judge; judge and witness (Jer.

(29:23), whom no sinful conscience can escape: for all things are naked and open to his eyes (Heb 4:15). He indeed who was judged unjustly will judge the world in equity, and the peoples in justice (Ps 95:13). Therefore I bless your holy name, and I glorify you with my whole heart, almighty and merciful Lord, for that wonderful and ineffable conjunction of divinity and humanity in the unity of person; so that it was not one thing God and another man, but one and the same God and man, man and God. But although by wonderful condescension the Word was made flesh, neither of the two natures was changed into the substance of the other. To the mystery of the Trinity no fourth person has been added. For the substance of the Word of God and of man is united, not confused: so that what had been taken from us might come to God, and that which had never not been might remain the same as it always had been. O admirable mystery! O ineffable exchange! O wondrous and ever to be wondered at goodness of divine propitiation! We were not worthy servants, and behold we have been made sons of God; heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17). From where is this to us, and what are we for these things?

But I ask you, most merciful Father, God, through this inestimable piety, goodness, and love of yours, that you make us worthy of the many and great promises of your same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Command your strength, and confirm this which you have worked in us (Ps 67:29). Perfect what you have begun, that we may deserve to reach the full grace of your piety. Make us, through the Holy Spirit, to understand and to merit, and always with due honor to venerate, this great mystery of piety, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to the angels, was preached to the Gentiles, was believed in the world, was taken up in glory (1 Tim 3:16).

CHAPTER XVII. How much we owe to God. That we serve him from that which is his. From the strength of the gifts conferred, the petition for others. How much we are debtors to you. Lord our God, redeemed at so great a price, saved by so great a gift, and aided by so glorious a benefit! How much by us wretched ones is he to be feared and loved, blessed and praised, honored and glorified, who so loved us, so saved us, so sanctified us, so exalted us! To you indeed we owe all that we can do, all that we know, all that we live. And who has anything that is not yours?

You, Lord our God, from whom all good things proceed, for your own sake and for your holy name give us from your good things, so that from your gifts and what you have given we may serve you, and please you in truth, and daily render back the praises due to you for such great benefits of your mercy; for we cannot serve you or please you from any other source except from your own gift. Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from you, the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of turning (James 1:17).

Lord our God, God of loving-kindness, good God, almighty God, God of ineffable and uncircumscribed nature, establisher of all things, and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who sent your same beloved Son, our Lord most sweet, from your bosom to our public view to take up our life, so that he might give us his own, and might be perfect God from you, the Father, and perfect man from a mother, wholly God and wholly man, one and the same Christ, eternal and temporal, immortal and destined to die, creator and created, strong and weak, victor and vanquished, nourisher and nourished, shepherd and sheep, dying in time and living with you forever: he promised to his lovers the citizenship of life and gave it, and said to us, Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you (John 15:16).

Through him, the supreme priest and true pontiff and good shepherd, who offered himself to you as a sacrifice, laying down his soul for his flock, I ask you: through him who sits at your right hand and intercedes for us, our Redeemer and advocate, I beseech your loving-kindness and goodness, most merciful and most loving and most kind lover of mankind, God, that you grant me, together with your same Son and your Holy Spirit, to bless and glorify you in all things, with much contrition of heart and a fountain of tears, with much reverence and trembling: because those whose substance is one have also one gift. But since the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul (Wis. 9:15), arouse, I pray, my sluggishness with your goads, and make me persevere strenuously in your precepts and praises day and night. Grant that my heart may grow warm within me, and that in my meditation fire may burn (Ps. 38:4). And because your only-begotten himself said, No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and, No one comes to the Father except through me (John.

I beseech and suppliantly ask you: draw me always to him, and may he at last lead me to you, there where he sits at your right hand; where life is everlasting and eternally blessed; where love is perfect and there is no fear; where there is eternal day and one spirit of all; where there is the highest and certain security, and secure tranquility, and tranquil joy, and joyful happiness, and happy eternity, and eternal blessedness, and the blessed vision and praise of you without end; where you with him, and he with you, in the communion of the Holy Spirit, live and reign as God eternally and forever, through all ages of ages. Amen.

CHAPTER XVIII. A prayer to Christ. What he himself is to us. The necessity of cleaving to him through love. The love of Christ, the house of God, is kindled by remembrance.

My hope, Christ God, you sweet lover of men, light, way, life, salvation, peace, and every glory of your people, for all of whose salvation you willed to bear all things—flesh, bonds, cross, wound, death, and tomb—then after three days, rising again with death conquered, seen by your disciples, renewing their wavering hearts, you sought the heights of heaven in the light of four times ten: you live forever, now and reigning through the ages.

You are my living and true God, my holy Father, my loving Lord, my great King, my good Shepherd, my only Master, my timely Helper, my most beautiful Beloved, my living Bread; my Priest forever, my leader to the homeland, my true Light, my holy Sweetness, my straight Way, my shining Wisdom, my pure Simplicity, my peaceful Concord, my safe Keeping, my good Portion, my everlasting Salvation, my great Mercy, my most robust Patience, my spotless Victim, my holy Redemption, my future Hope, my perfect Charity, my holy Resurrection, my eternal Life, my most blessed and everlasting Joy or Vision. I beseech, implore, and ask you that through you I may walk, that I may come to you, that I may rest in you, who are the Way, the Truth, and the Life, without whom no one comes to the Father; for I desire you, my most sweet and most beautiful Lord.

splendor of the Father's glory, who sit above the Cherubim and look into the abyss, true light, light that enlightens, light that never fails, into which the Angels desire to look (1 Peter 1:12); behold, my heart is a heart before you, scatter its darkness, that it may be more fully flooded with the brightness of your love. Give me yourself, my God, restore yourself to me: behold, I love you, and if it is too little, let me love you more strongly. I cannot measure to know how much of your love is lacking in me for that which is enough, so that my life may run into your embrace and not turn away until it is hidden in the hiding-place of your face. This alone I know, that it is evil for me apart from you, Lord, not only outside me but in myself, and every abundance that is not my God is poverty to me. For the good that can be changed neither for better nor for worse, you alone are; you alone simply are: for whom to live is not one thing and to live blessedly another, because your blessedness is you. But your creature, for whom to live is one thing and to live blessedly another, owes all that it lives, and all that it lives blessedly, to your grace alone. And therefore we need you, not you us: because if we were entirely nothing, nothing would be lacking to you for the good that you are. And so we must always cling to you, our Lord, so that through the continual help of your holy grace we may be able to live purely and devoutly and rightly.

For by the weight of our frailty we are dragged downward; but by your gift we are set aflame and borne upward; we burn and we go; we ascend in our heart by ascents, and we sing a song of degrees. By your fire, by your good fire, we burn and we go. Where now do we go upward, but to the peace of Jerusalem: for I was glad in those things that were said to me, We shall go into the house of the Lord (Ps. 121:1). There a good will has placed us, that we may wish nothing else than to remain there forever.

But because while we are in the body, we are absent from you (2 Cor. 5:6), Lord; we have not here a lasting city, but we seek the one to come (Heb. 13:14), for our citizenship is in heaven: therefore, with your grace as my guide, I enter into the chamber of my heart, and I sing to you songs of love, my king and my God, groaning with unutterable groanings in the place of my pilgrimage (Ps. 118:54), where your justifications have become my songs. And remembering Jerusalem, with my heart stretched upward toward her, Jerusalem, my fatherland, Jerusalem.

my mother, and you who rule over her—illuminator, father, guardian, patron, ruler, shepherd, chaste and strong delights, solid joy, and all ineffable good things, all at once, because you are the one supreme and true good—and I shall not be turned away until, into the peace of my dearest mother, where are the firstfruits of my spirit, you gather all that I am from this scattering and deformity, and conform and confirm me forever, my God, my mercy.

CHAPTER XIX. The house of God created wisdom. Its distinction from uncreated wisdom. How there is no time in it. How it is itself the heaven of heaven. God's eternity. This is your house, O God, not earthly, nor any bodily mass of heavenly bulk, but spiritual and partaking of your eternity, because it remains forever without stain. You have established it for age upon age, you have set a precept, and it shall not pass away (Ps. 148:6). Yet it is not coeternal with you, O God, because it is not without a beginning; for it was made. For wisdom was created before all things (Sir. 1:4)—not, of course, that wisdom which is yours. The wisdom plainly coeternal and equal with God the Father, through whom all things were created, and in which Beginning heaven and earth were made (Gen. 1:1)—but surely the wisdom that was created, namely the spiritual nature, which by contemplating the light is light; for it too, though created, is called wisdom.

But as much as there is a difference between the light that illuminates and the light that is illuminated, so much is there a difference between you, the highest wisdom, who create, and this wisdom which has been created; just as between the justice that justifies—which you, our God, are—and the justice that is made just by justification. For we too are called the justice of God the Father in you, his Son, our Lord (2 Cor 5:21), as the Apostle testifies. Therefore, because a certain created wisdom was created before all things (Sirach 1:4)—the rational and intellectual mind of your chaste city, our mother, which is above and is free (Gal 4:26) and eternal in the heavens (what heavens, if not those who praise you, the heavens of heavens? For this is also the heaven of heaven to the Lord [Ps 113:16])—although we do not find time before it, since it precedes created time, because it was created before all things; nevertheless, before it you are, eternal God, creator of all things, from whom it took the beginning of its making—though not of time, since time did not yet exist, but of its own condition. Hence it is so from you, our God, that it is plainly something other than you. Although we find no time either before it or in it (for it is fit to see your face always, and is nowhere turned away from it; whence it comes about that it is varied by no change), nevertheless there is in it that very mutability by which it would grow dark and fade, unless, clinging to you with a great love, it shone like an everlasting noon and burned with heat from you.

Finally, it clings to you, the true and truly eternal God, with such chaste love that, although it is not coeternal with you, it nevertheless does not dissolve or flow away from you into the changes and vicissitudes of any time, but rests in the truest contemplation of you alone. For you, God, show yourself to the one who loves you as much as you command, and that suffices for it. Hence it does not turn aside from you, nor from itself, but always remains in the same state, seeing you without ceasing, loving you without failing, the true light and chaste love.

Blessed is this sublime creature, the greatest of creatures, blessed in always clinging to your blessedness! Happy, and more than happy, is this one with you as its eternal inhabitant and illuminator. Nor do I find anything I should judge more fittingly to be called the heaven of heaven for the Lord than your house, contemplating your delight without any falling away into something else; a pure mind, most harmoniously one, the firm foundation of the peace of the blessed spirits, in the heavenly places above these heavenly things.

Hence let the soul whose pilgrimage has been made long understand, if it now thirsts for you, if its tears have now become its bread (Ps. 41:4), if it now asks one thing and seeks this, that it may dwell in your house all the days of its life (Ps. 26:4) — and what is its life but you? and what are your days but your eternity, like your years that do not fail (Ps. 101:28)? From this, then, let it understand — the soul that is able — how far you are eternal above all times, since your house, which has not been on pilgrimage, although it is not coeternal with you, nevertheless by clinging to you unceasingly and unfailingly suffers no variation of times; and drawing from you always with most persevering chastity, it nowhere and never puts forth its own mutability, and with you present to it, to whom it holds with its whole affection, having no future that it awaits, nor casting into the past what it remembers, it is varied by no changes and is extended into no times.

CHAPTER XX. Aspiration to the house of God: and that she herself may pray for us. O luminous and beautiful house, I have loved your loveliness, and the place of the dwelling of the glory of my Lord, your maker and possessor. Let my pilgrimage sigh for you, by night and by day let my heart pant for you, let my mind be intent upon you, let my soul desire to come to the fellowship of your blessedness. I say to him who made you, that he may possess me in you, because he himself made me also. Nay, rather do you speak, do you entreat that he may make me worthy of a share in your glory. For your holy fellowship and your wondrous beauty I do not seek through my own merit, but through his blood by which I have been redeemed I do not despair of attaining them: only let your merits help me, let your holy, most loving, and most pure prayers come to the aid of my wickedness, prayers which can in no way be ineffective before God. I have gone astray, I confess, like a lost sheep (Ps. 118:176), and my sojourning has been prolonged (Ps. 119:5): and I have been cast far away from the face of the Lord my God into this blindness of exile.

There, driven out from the joys of paradise, I daily bewail with myself over the miseries of my captivity with a mournful song and vast lamentations, while I remember you, mother Jerusalem, while I set my feet in your courts, holy and beautiful Zion, not yet able in the open to look upon your inner places; but on the shoulders of the shepherd, your builder, I hope to be carried back to you, so that I may exult in you with that ineffable joy with which those who are with you rejoice before God himself and our Savior, who dissolved enmities in his flesh and made peace for all things that are in heaven and that are on earth by his blood. For he himself is our peace, who made both one: who, joining in himself the two coming from opposite directions, promised that he would give us the abiding felicity of your blessedness in like manner and by the same measure, saying, They shall be equal to the angels of God in heaven. O Jerusalem, eternal house of God, after the love of Christ, be you our joy and consolation: may the sweet memory of your blessed name be the relief of our sorrow and weariness.

CHAPTER XXI. The miseries of this life and its loathsomeness. For I am greatly weary, Lord, of this life and of this wretched pilgrimage. This life is a miserable life, a fleeting life, an uncertain life, a toilsome life, an unclean life, a life mistress of evils, queen of the proud, full of miseries and errors, which ought not to be called life but death, in which we die at every moment, through various defects of mutability and diverse kinds of deaths. Can we call that a life which we live in this world? which humors swell, pains waste away, fevers dry up, the air sickens, food inflates, fastings macerate, jesting dissolves, sorrows consume, anxiety constrains, security dulls, riches inflate, poverty casts down, youth exalts, old age bows down, infirmity breaks, grief depresses. And upon all these evils furious death follows, and at once sets so complete an end to all the joys of this most wretched life that when they have ceased to be, they are thought never to have been. This deathly life and living death, although it is sprinkled with these and other bitterness, alas, captures very many by its allurements, and how many it deceives by its false promises! And though it is in itself so false and bitter that it cannot even be hidden from its own blind lovers, yet with the golden shoe that it holds in its hand it drinks and utterly inebriates an infinite multitude of fools.

Happy are those, and they are few, who flee from familiarity with her, spurn her passing joys, cast off her company, lest they be forced at some time to perish with the deceiving woman who herself perishes.

CHAPTER XXII. The happiness of eternal life and the desire for it. O you, the life which God has prepared for those who love him, life that is vital, life that is blessed, life that is secure, life that is tranquil, life that is beautiful, life that is clean, life that is chaste, life that is holy, life that knows not death, that is ignorant of sorrow, life without stain, without corruption, without pain, without anxiety, without disturbance, without variety and change, life most full of all elegance and dignity, where there is no adversary and no attacker, where there is no enticement of sin, where there is perfect love and no fear, where there is eternal day and one spirit of all, where God is seen face to face, and with this food of life the mind is satisfied without failing! It pleases me to direct my attention to your brightness, your good things delight me with an eager heart, insofar as I am able to consider them more fully within myself. For I languish with love of you, I burn vehemently with desire for you, and I am greatly delighted by your sweet remembrance. It pleases me, then, it pleases me to lift up the eyes of my heart to you, to raise up the state of my mind, to conform the affection of my soul.

It is indeed a pleasure to speak of you, to hear of you, to write of you, to converse of you, to read daily of your blessedness and glory, and to turn over what I have read again and again within my heart: so that even thus I may be able, from the ardors, dangers, and sweats of this mortal and perishable life, to pass beneath the sweet refreshment of your life-giving breeze, and passing, to lay down my weary head for a little while to sleep in your bosom. For this reason I enter the pleasant meadows of the holy Scriptures, plucking the greenest herbs of their sentences by writing them out, eating them by reading, chewing them by frequent repetition, and at last gathering them into the lofty seat of memory, that in such a way, having tasted your sweetness, I may feel the bitterness of this most wretched life the less. You, most happy life, O truly blessed kingdom, free from death, void of grief, to which no times succeed throughout the ages; where the continuous day knows not how to have time without night; where the victorious soldier, joined to those hymn-singing choirs of Angels, sings to God without ceasing the song of songs of Sion, his noble head embraced by a perpetual crown.

Would that forgiveness of my sins were granted me, and that, soon having laid aside this burden of the flesh, I might enter into your joys to possess true rest, and might go in through the splendid and spacious walls of your city, to receive the crown of life from the hand of the Lord: that I might be present among those most holy choirs, that I might stand with the most blessed spirits before the Creator of glory, that I might behold the face of Christ present, that I might forever gaze upon that supreme and ineffable and boundless light, and thus be touched by no fear of death, but could rejoice without end in the gift of perpetual incorruption!

CHAPTER XXIII. The happiness of the saints departing from here. Happy is the soul which, released from its earthly prison, free, seeks heaven! It is secure and tranquil, it fears neither the enemy nor death; for it has always present, and beholds without ceasing, the most beautiful Lord whom it served, whom it loved, and to whom at last, joyful and glorious, it has come. But this glory of such great blessedness no day shall diminish, no wicked one shall be able to take away. The daughters saw her, and called her most blessed: the queens and concubines praised her (Cant. 6:8), saying, Who is this that ascends from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved (ibid. 8:5)? Who is this that comes forth like the dawn rising, fair as the moon, choice as the sun, terrible as the array of an army set in order (ibid. 6:9)?

How joyfully she goes forth, how swiftly she runs, when with astonished ears she hears her beloved saying to her: Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers have appeared, the time of pruning has come. The voice of the turtle-dove has been heard in our land, the fig tree has put forth its green figs, the flowering vines have given their fragrance. Arise, make haste, my love, my beautiful one, my dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow of the wall, show me your face, let your voice sound in my ears. For your voice is sweet, and your face is comely. Come, my chosen one, my fair one, my dove, my spotless one, my bride; come, and I will place my throne in you, for I have desired your beauty. Come, that you may rejoice in my sight with my angels, whose fellowship I have promised you. Come, after many dangers and labors, enter into the joy of your Lord, which no one shall take from you.

CHAPTER XXIV. The Invocation of the Saints. O all you blessed saints of God, who have already crossed the sea of this mortal life and have deserved to reach the harbor of eternal rest, of security and of peace: you are secure and tranquil, and always joyful and glad.

I beseech you by the motherly love by which you are secure concerning yourselves, be solicitous concerning us: you are secure concerning your own unfading glory, be solicitous concerning our manifold misery. I ask you through him who chose you, who made you such as you are, from whose beauty you are now satisfied, by whose immortality you have been made immortal, in whose most blessed vision you always rejoice: be ever mindful of us; help us wretches, who are still tossed on the swell of this life by the storms that surround us. You most beautiful gates, who have risen to great height, help us, the lowly pavement lying far below. Give us your hand, and raise up those who lie upon their feet, so that, recovering from our infirmity, we may become strong in battle. Intercede and pray steadfastly and without ceasing for us wretched and greatly negligent sinners, that through your prayers we may be joined to your holy fellowship; for otherwise we cannot be saved. For we are very frail and puny men of no virtue: creatures of the belly and slaves of the flesh, in whom scarcely any trace of goodness appears. And yet under the covenant of Christ.

placed in confession, we are carried on the wood of the cross, sailing through this great and spacious sea where there are creeping things without number, where there are small beasts with great ones (Ps. 104:25), where there is the most savage dragon, always ready to devour, where there are the dangerous places Scylla and Charybdis, and other countless perils in which the enchanted and those doubtful in faith are shipwrecked. Pray to God, pray, most loving ones, pray, all the hosts of the saints and the whole assembly of the blessed, that, aided by your prayers and merits, with the ship safe and the cargo intact, we may deserve to reach the harbor of perpetual quiet, of continuous peace, and of security that will never end.

CHAPTER XXV. The Ardent Desire of Heaven. The Glory and Joys of Heaven. Mother Jerusalem, holy city of God, most beloved bride of Christ, my heart loves you, my mind desires your beauty exceedingly. How comely, how glorious, how noble you are! You are all beautiful, and there is no stain in you. Rejoice and be glad, beautiful daughter of the prince, for the king has desired your beauty, and he who is beautiful in form above the sons of men has loved your comeliness. But what kind is your beloved among the beloved, O most beautiful one? Your beloved is white and ruddy, chosen out of thousands (Song 5:10). As the apple tree among the trees of the woods, so is your beloved among the sons. Under his shadow whom I desired, behold, I sit down, and his fruit is sweet to my throat (Song 2:3).

Your beloved sent his hand through the opening, and my inmost being trembled at his touch (Song 5:4). In the night I sought your beloved on my bed, I sought and found him (Song 3:1): I hold him, and I will not let him go, until he brings me into your house and into your chamber (Song 3:4), my glorious mother. For there you will give me your most sweet breasts (Song 7:12) more abundantly and perfectly, and you will satisfy me with wondrous satiety, so that I shall neither hunger nor thirst forever. Happy is my soul, and forever happy through the ages, if I have deserved to behold your glory, your blessedness, your beauty, your gates and walls, your streets, your many mansions, your most noble citizens, and your most mighty king, our Lord, in his beauty.

For your walls are of precious stones, your gates of the finest pearls, your streets of purest gold, in which a joyful alleluia is sung without ceasing. Your many mansions are founded on squared stones, built of sapphires, roofed with golden tiles; into which no unclean person enters, no defiled person dwells. You are beautiful and sweet in your delights, mother Jerusalem. There is nothing in you like what we suffer here, like what we see in this wretched life. There are no darknesses in you, nor night, nor any diversity of shadows.

No lamp's light shines in you, nor the moon's splendor, nor the radiance of stars; but God from God, light from light, the sun of justice forever enlightens you; the white and spotless Lamb, shining and most beautiful, is your light. Your sun, your brightness and all your good, is the contemplation of this most beautiful King, lacking nothing. He himself, the King of kings, is in your midst, and his children round about him. There are the hymn-singing choirs of angels, there the society of the heavenly citizens. There is the sweet solemnity of all who return from this sad pilgrimage to your joys. There is the foreseeing choir of the Prophets, there the glorious number of the Apostles, there the victorious army of countless martyrs, there the sacred assembly of the holy Confessors, there the true and perfect monks, there the holy women who overcame the pleasures of the world and the weakness of their sex; there boys and girls who surpassed their years by their conduct. There are all the sheep and lambs who have already escaped the snares of this pleasure. All exult in their own mansions. The glory of each is different, but the joy of all is shared. Full and perfect charity reigns there; because God is all in all (1 Cor 15:28), whom they see without end, and in seeing him they always burn with love for him. They love and praise, they praise and love. All their work is the praise of God, without ceasing, without labor.

Happy am I, and truly happy forever, if after the dissolution of this poor body I shall deserve to hear those songs of heavenly melody which are sung to the praise of the eternal King by those citizens of the heavenly fatherland and the hosts of blessed spirits. Fortunate and exceedingly blessed am I, if I too shall deserve to sing them and to stand before my King, my God, my leader, and to sing before him in his glory, as he himself deigned to promise, saying: Father, I will that those whom you have given me be with me, that they may see my glory which I had with you before the foundation of the world; and elsewhere: He who serves me follows me, and where I am, there also shall my servant be; and again: He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

CHAPTER XXVI. A Rhyme on the Glory of Paradise.

The thirsty mind has thirsted for the fountain of eternal life; the soul longs to see the prison of the flesh broken open at once; as an exile she yearns, strives, and struggles toward her fatherland, while she groans that she is subject to pressures and miseries; she contemplates the glory which she lost when she sinned; the present evil increases the memory of the good that has been lost.

For who can express how great is the joy of the highest peace, where buildings rise from living pearls, where lofty roofs gleam with gold, where dining halls shine with precious gems of the sun; this structure is woven together with pure gold, and the city's street is paved as if with glass. There is no mud, no filth, no plague is seen there.

Harsh winter and scorching summer never rage there. The purple flower of roses brings forth an eternal spring; the lily gleams white, the crocus blushes red, the balsam exudes its fragrance, the meadows are green, the fields bloom, the streams flow with honey, the scent of spices and the liquid of aromatics breathes forth, the fruits of flowering groves hang forth, never to fall.

The moon does not vary its phases, nor the sun, nor the course of the stars: the Lamb is the never-setting light of the blessed city. Night and time are absent from it; it bears continuous day. For even all the saints, shining like the bright sun, crowned after triumph, rejoice together in turn, and, laid low, now secure, they count the battles of the enemy.

Purged of every stain, they know not the wars of the flesh. The flesh made spiritual and the mind feel as one. Enjoying great peace, they do not endure scandals. Stripped of things mutable, they return to their origin, and contemplate the present form of truth: from here they draw the living sweetness of the living fountain.

Thence they receive the state of always existing as the same: bright, vivid, joyful, exposed to no falls. Diseases are absent from the always healthy, old age from the young. Hence they hold perpetual being; their passing has passed away. Thence they flourish, thrive, and bloom; decay has fallen, and the vigor of immortality has absorbed the law of death.

Those who know all things knowingly, what can they not know? For they penetrate each other's secrets of the heart; they will one thing, they will not another; there is a unity of minds. Though each has a merit differing according to his labor, charity makes this its own, which it loves in the other. Thus what is proper to each becomes common to all.

Where the body is, there the eagles are rightly gathered together. Where with the angels the holy souls are also refreshed, they live by one bread, citizens of both fatherlands. Greedy and always full, they desire what they have. Neither does satiety grow weary, nor does hunger torment; ever hungering they eat, and eating they hunger.

Ever new harmonies the melodious voice rings out, and the organ's notes poured forth into jubilation soothe the ears; let fitting praises resound for him through whom they are victors. Happy the soul that beholds the present King of heaven, and beneath his high throne watches the machinery of the world revolve: the sun, the moon, and the starry globes with the planets.

Christ, palm of warriors, lead me into this city after my military belt is loosed; make me a sharer in the gift of the blessed citizens; give strength to the laborer whose strength is not exhausted, that after the belt is laid aside he may rest as one who has earned it, and that I may deserve to enjoy you, whether with reward or without. Amen.

CHAPTER XXVII. To celebrate the praises of God with the blessed. The glory of the blessed is incomprehensible to us. The soul's stupor and clear-sightedness. To fly away from created things to God. The uncreated light. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his recompenses. Bless the Lord, all his works; in every place of his dominion, bless the Lord, O my soul. Let us praise the Lord, whom the Angels praise, the Dominations adore, the Powers tremble before; to whom the Cherubim and Seraphim with ceaseless voice proclaim, Holy, holy, holy. Let us join our voices to the voices of the holy Angels, and praise our common Lord according to our measure. For they praise the Lord most purely and ceaselessly, because they always cleave to the divine contemplation, not through a glass and in an enigma, but face to face.

But who could suffice to say or even to think what that innumerable multitude of blessed spirits and heavenly Virtues is like in the sight of the omnipotent Lord, what in them is the endless festivity of the vision of God, what the joy without failing, what the ardor of love, not tormenting but delighting, what in them is the desire of the vision of God with satiety, and satiety with desire, in whom neither does desire breed pain nor does satiety give birth to disgust; how by cleaving to the highest blessedness they are blessed; how, joined to the true light, they have been made light; how, always gazing upon the immutable Trinity, they have been changed into immutability.

But when shall we be able to comprehend that loftiness of angelic dignity, when we cannot even investigate the nature of our own soul? What is this nature that can give life to the flesh, yet cannot, as it wishes, restrain itself within holy thoughts? What is this nature, so strong, so weak; so small, so great, which searches out secrets and contemplates heavenly things, and is shown by keen insight to have devised the knowledge of many arts for human advantage? What then is this nature, which knows so many things about other matters, and yet is utterly ignorant of how it itself was made?

For although certain ambiguous things are brought forward by some concerning its origin, nevertheless we find that it is a certain intellectual spirit made through the power of the Creator, living immortally according to its own mode, giving life to the mortal body that it sustains, subject to mutability, given over to forgetfulness, which fear often afflicts and joy lifts up—a thing marvelous and worthy of all astonishment! Concerning God indeed, the Creator of all things, who is incomprehensible and ineffable, we read, speak, and write things lofty and exceedingly wonderful, removed from all ambiguity; but concerning angels and souls, whatever we say we cannot approve so evidently.

But let the mind pass from these things, and transcend all that has been created; let it run and ascend, fly and pass through, and direct the eyes of faith, as much as it can, toward him who created all things. I will make steps of ascent in my heart, and through my very soul I will ascend to my God, who remains above my head. Whatever is seen visibly, whatever is imagined spiritually, let it be removed far from the gaze of the mind by a strong hand; let the pure and simple intellect alone, advancing with swift flight, reach him, the very Creator of angels and souls and of all things. That blessed mind, which forsakes the lowest things, seeks the highest: it places the seat of its dwelling in the heights, and from the highest peaks contemplates the sun of justice with eagle-like gaze.

For nothing is so beautiful and pleasant as to contemplate God himself with the gaze of the mind and the longing of the heart, and in a wondrous way to see the invisible one invisibly; and thus to taste another sweetness, not this one, and to behold another light, not this one. For this light which is enclosed in place, bounded by time, varied by the interruption of nights, and which we share in common with worms and beasts, in comparison with that supreme light ought not to be called light, but night.

CHAPTER XXVIII. How it cannot be seen by anyone, and in what manner it is seen. An exhortation to praise God. But although that supreme and unchangeable essence, the true light, the light that knows no setting, the light of the Angels, cannot be seen by anyone in this life—which reward alone is reserved for the saints in heavenly glory—nevertheless to believe and understand it, to feel it and to long for it with desire, is in some manner to see and to hold it.

Let therefore a voice sound forth above the angels, and let man with intent mind contemplate God, and speak to him his praises in whatever words he can. For it is just that the creature praise the Creator; for he himself made us to praise him, though he does not need our praises. But he is a virtue incomprehensible, needing nothing, himself sufficient for himself. Great is our Lord, and great is his power, and of his wisdom there is no number (Ps. 146:5): great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised (Ps. 95:4). Let therefore the mind love him, the tongue sing of him, the hand write of him, and in these holy studies let the faithful soul exercise itself wholly. Let the man of desires, and the contemplator of heavenly things, be continually refreshed with the most sweet dainties of this heavenly contemplation, so that, fattened by this heavenly food, he may cry out with a great cry, cry out with all the marrow of his heart, cry out in jubilation, and say with the most ardent desire of his mind:

CHAPTER XXIX. A prayer setting forth very many of God's perfections. You are supreme, most almighty, most merciful and most just, most hidden and most present, most beautiful and most strong, stable and incomprehensible, invisible, seeing all things, unchanging, changing all things, immortal, without place, without end, uncircumscribed, nowhere bounded, inestimable, ineffable, unsearchable, unmoved, touching all things, unsearchable, unspeakable, to be feared and dreaded, to be honored and held in awe, to be venerated and revered, never new, never old, renewing all things, and bringing the proud and those who do not know into old age, always acting, always at rest, gathering and needing nothing, bearing all things without burden, filling all things without being enclosed, creating and protecting all things, nourishing and perfecting them, seeking when nothing is lacking to you. You neither repent nor grow hot with anger, you are jealous and yet secure, you repent and do not grieve, you are angry and yet tranquil, you change your works, but you do not change your counsel. You receive what you find, and you have never lost it; never needy, and you rejoice in gains; never greedy, and you exact interest; more is paid to you than is owed, so that you may be a debtor, and who has anything that is not yours? You repay debts while owing nothing to anyone, you forgive debts while losing nothing.

You alone give life to all things, you who created all things, who are everywhere whole, and everywhere entire, who can be felt but cannot be seen; who are nowhere absent, and yet are far from the thoughts of the wicked; who are not absent even there where you are far off: because where you are not present by grace, you are present by vengeance. You who touch all things, and yet do not touch all things equally. For some things you touch that they may exist, but not that they may live and feel; some things truly you touch that they may exist and live, but not that they may feel and discern; some things truly you touch that they may exist, live, and feel, but not that they may discern; some things truly you touch that they may exist, live, feel, and discern. And since you are never unlike yourself, yet you touch dissimilar things dissimilarly. You who are present everywhere, and yet are scarcely able to be found; whom we follow as we stand, and are unable to apprehend; who fill all things, encompass all things, transcend all things, sustain all things. For it is not that you sustain from one side and transcend from another, nor that you fill from one side and encompass from another: but by encompassing you fill, and by filling you encompass; by sustaining you transcend, and by transcending you sustain. You who teach the hearts of the faithful without the noise of words. You who reach from end to end mightily, and order all things sweetly. You who are not stretched out by places, nor varied by times.

You have no comings and goings, but you dwell in inaccessible light, which no man has seen, nor can see (1 Tim. 6:16). Remaining at rest in yourself, you encompass the whole everywhere. For you cannot be cut or divided, because you are truly one; nor are you made into parts, because being whole you fill the whole, illuminate the whole, and possess the whole. The immense depth of this mystery, surely, the human mind cannot conceive, nor can an orator's tongue recount, nor can the volumes of libraries in expansive speech explain. If the whole world were filled with books, your ineffable knowledge could not be told. For since you are truly unspeakable, you can in no way be written down or contained, you who are the fount of divine light and of eternal brightness. For you are great without quantity, and therefore immense; you are good without quality, and therefore truly and supremely good; and none is good but you alone, whose will is your work, for whom to will is to be able; who by will alone made all things that you created from nothing; who possess every creature of yours without any need, and govern without labor, and rule without weariness, and there is nothing that disturbs the order of your command, whether in the highest or in the lowest; who are held to be in all places without place, and contain all things without encompassing, and are present everywhere without position or motion; who are not the maker of evil, which you cannot do, you who can do all things.

Nor have you ever repented of anything you have done, nor are you disturbed by the tempest of any commotion of mind, nor is a particle of earth a safer kingdom for you. You approve or command no shameful acts or crimes. You never lie, because you are eternal truth. By whose goodness alone we were made, and by whose justice we pay the penalties, and by whose mercy we are freed. For nothing heavenly, nothing fiery, nothing earthly, and nothing that the senses of the body touch is to be worshiped in place of you. You who truly are what you are, and are not changed. To whom most greatly and especially applies that which the Greeks call and the Latins "Est" [“Is”]: because you are always the same yourself, and your years shall not fail (Ps. 101:28).

These things and many others the holy mother Church taught me, whose member I have been made through your grace. She taught indeed that you alone, the living and true God, are not corporeal or passible or palpable: and that nothing of your substance or nature is in any way violable or changeable, or composite or fashioned. And therefore it is certain that you cannot be perceived by bodily eyes: but neither could you ever be seen by any mortal in your own essence. Hence indeed it is plainly given to be understood that from the same source by which the angels behold you, we too after this life shall see you. But neither can they themselves see perfectly as you are: in short, to no other is the whole known, except to you alone, almighty Trinity.

CHAPTER XXX. A continuation of the properties of God. Concerning the unity and plurality of persons in God. But you, the unity of the Godhead, manifold in the plurality of persons, are numberably innumerable; and therefore immeasurably immeasurable, and imponderably imponderable. For we do not profess the origin of the supreme goodness, which you yourself are—from which all things, through which all things, in which all things—but by participation in it we call all things good. For then the divine substance has always lacked and lacks matter, though it does not lack form—namely, informed form, the form of forms, the most beautiful form; while you first imprint it as a seal upon individual things, you without doubt cause them to be borne far from you, without mutability of your increase or your decrease. But whatever is in the nature of creatures is your creature, O one Trinity and one unity, God: by whose omnipotence all things which he has created are possessed, ruled, and filled. Nor do we say that you fill all things so that they may contain you, but rather that they may be contained by you. Nor do you fill all things piecemeal, nor is it in any way to be thought that each creature, according to the magnitude of its portion, receives you—that is, the greatest more, and the least less—since you are rather yourself in all things, or all things in you. By whose omnipotence he encloses all things, nor will anyone be able to find an entrance to escape your power.

For whoever does not have you propitious will by no means escape you when you are angry, as it is written: Neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the desert mountains, because God is judge; and elsewhere, Where shall I go from your spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? This is the immensity of your divine greatness, that we may understand you to be within all things, yet not enclosed; outside all things, yet not excluded. And therefore you are interior, that you may contain all things; and therefore you are exterior, that by the immensity of your uncircumscribed greatness you may enclose all things. By that, then, whereby you are exterior, you are shown to be creator; but by that whereby you are interior, you are demonstrated to govern all things. And lest those things which have been created should exist without you, you are within all things; but truly, lest they should exist without you, you are exterior: so that all things may be enclosed by you, not by local magnitude, but by potential presence, you who are present everywhere, and all things are present to you: although some understand this, and some do not understand it.

Therefore the unity of your nature is inseparable and cannot have separable persons, because just as you are a Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity, so you cannot have separation of persons. Indeed those persons are sometimes named individually, but you willed, O God Trinity, to show yourself inseparable in persons, so that there is no name in any person there that is not referred to another according to the rule of relation: as the Father is most truly referred to the Son, and the Son to the Father, or the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son. But those names which signify your substance, or power, or essence, or whatever is properly said of God, apply equally to all persons: as God, great, almighty, eternal, and all things that are said naturally of you, God. There is therefore no name of nature that can so apply to you, God the Father, that it cannot also apply to your Son or the Holy Spirit. We say that you, the Father, are naturally God, but the Son is naturally God, and the Holy Spirit is naturally God: yet not three gods, but one naturally God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Therefore you are inseparable, holy Trinity, God, in persons to be understood by the mind, although in speech you have names that can be separated, because you in no way admit a plural number in the names of your nature; for in this it is shown that the persons cannot be divided in the holy Trinity, which is one true God, because the name of any person always looks to another person. If I say Father, I show the Son; if I name the Son, I proclaim the Father; if I call upon the Holy Spirit, it must be understood that he is the Spirit of someone, that is, of the Father and the Son. For this is the true faith coming from sound doctrine; this certainly is the catholic and orthodox faith, which your grace, God, taught me in the bosom of mother Church.

CHAPTER XXXI. Invocation to the holy Trinity. And so the faith of the idea, which you gave me because of your goodness for my salvation, invokes you, Lord. But the faithful soul lives by faith, and holds in hope what it will see in reality. My God, my faith invokes you with a chaste conscience and the sweet love of my faith, which you led to the understanding of truth after the darkness had been dispelled, and which, after the bitterness of the world had been trampled down and the love of your sweetness applied, you made pleasant and honey-sweet to me. Blessed Trinity, the clear voice and sincere love of my faith invoke you; you, nurturing it for me from my very cradle, have always enlightened it through the illumination of your grace, and, increasing it, you have confirmed it in me through the teachings of mother Church.

I invoke you, O blessed and blessed and glorious one Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, God, Lord, Paraclete; love, grace, fellowship; begetter, begotten, regenerator; true light, true light from light, true illumination; fountain, river, irrigation; one all things, through one all things, in one all things; from whom all things, through whom all things, in whom all things; living life, life from the living one, vivifier of the living; one from himself, one from one, one from both; from himself, from another, from both; truthful Father, truth Son, truth Holy Spirit. Therefore one Father, O, Paraclete in essence, one power, one goodness.

CHAPTER XXXII. Invocation of God with praise. That it is fitting to praise God. God, the highest and true blessedness, from whom, through whom, and in whom all things are blessed, whatever things are blessed. God, the true and highest life, from whom, through whom, and in whom all things live, whatever things truly and blessedly live; God, good and beautiful, from whom, through whom, and in whom all things are good and beautiful, whatever things are good and beautiful; God, whose faith stirs us, whose hope raises us, whose love joins us; God, who command that you be sought, and make yourself found, and open to those who knock; God, from whom to turn away is to fall, to whom to turn back is to rise, in whom to remain is to stand firm; God, whom no one loses unless deceived.

No one seeks unless he is prompted, no one finds unless he is purified; God, to know whom is to live, to serve whom is to reign, to praise whom is salvation and the joy of the soul: you I praise with lips and heart and with all the strength I have, I bless and adore, and to your clemency and goodness I give thanks for all your benefits, and I sing a hymn of your glory, Holy, holy, holy. I invoke you, O blessed Trinity, that you may come into me and make me a temple worthy of your glory. I ask the Father through the Son, I ask the Son through the Father, I ask the Holy Spirit through the Father and the Son, that all vices may be driven far from me and all holy virtues planted in me. O immense God, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things made, visible and invisible; who surround your works from without and fill them from within, cover things above and guard things below: keep me, the work of your hands, hoping in you. Keep me, I beseech you, who trust only in your mercy, here and everywhere, now and always, within and without, before and behind, above and below, and all around, so that no place in me may lie open to the snares of enemies. You are God almighty, the guardian and protector of all who hope in you, without whom no one is safe, no one is delivered from dangers. You are God, and there is no other besides you, neither in heaven above nor on earth below, who do great and wonderful and inscrutable things, of which there is no number.

CHAPTER XXXIII. Desiring to praise, he asks for that by which he may praise worthily. He flies to God. What a cloud the angels provide in praising God. An ardent prayer for the continual praise of God. Praise befits you, a hymn befits you; to you all the angels, to you the heavens and all the powers speak hymns, and they sing praises without ceasing, as creatures to their Creator, servants to their Lord, soldiers to their King: you, the holy and undivided Trinity, every creature magnifies, every spirit praises. To you the saints and the humble of heart, to you the spirits and souls of the just, to you all the heavenly citizens and all the orders of the blessed spirits, adoring suppliantly, sing glory and honor without end. They praise you, Lord, those heavenly citizens magnificently and wondrously; let man also praise you, the great portion of your creation.

But I also, a sinful little man, desire with great longing to praise you, and I wish to love you with a singular love. My God, my life, my strength and my praise, deign to let me praise you. Give me light in my heart, a word in my mouth, so that my heart may meditate on your glory, and my tongue may sing your praises all day long. But because praise is not beautiful in the mouth of a sinner (Sirach 15:9), and because I am a man of polluted lips (Isaiah 6:5), cleanse, I beseech you, my mouth from all defilement. Sanctify me, almighty Sanctifier, within and without, and make me worthy of your praises.

I receive benignly and acceptably from the hand of my heart, from the love of my mind receive the sacrifice of my lips; let it be acceptable in your sight, and let it ascend to you as a sweet odor. May your holy memory and your most blessed sweetness possess my whole soul, and snatch it away into the love of things invisible. May it pass from things visible to things invisible, from earthly things to heavenly, from temporal things to eternal: may it pass over, and see the wondrous vision.

Eternal truth, and true charity, and dear eternity, you are my God: for you I sigh night and day, for you I long, toward you I strain, to come to you I desire. He who knows you knows the truth, knows eternity. You, truth, preside over all things: whom we shall see as he is, when this blind and mortal life has passed away, in which it is said to us, Where is your God? And I say, My God, where are you? I breathe again in you a little, when I pour out my soul upon myself in the voice of exultation and confession, of one celebrating a festal sound: and still it is sad, because it slips back and becomes an abyss, or rather it feels that it is still an abyss. My faith says to it, which you have kindled in the night before my feet, Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me?

Hope in the Lord, who sets his word as a lamp for my feet; hope and persevere until the night passes away, the mother of the wicked, until the anger of the Lord passes away, whose sons we once were; for we were once darkness; until those things pass away utterly, whose remnants we still drag along in the body, dead because of sin, until the day dawns and the shadows are removed, hope in the Lord. In the morning I will stand before you and be looked upon, and I will always confess to him. In the morning I will stand before you and see the salvation of my countenance, my God, who will give life to our mortal bodies because of the Spirit who dwells in us: so that we may now be light, while we are still saved by hope, and sons of light, and sons of the day, not of the night nor of darkness. For we were once darkness, but now we are light in you, our God: and yet still through faith, not yet through sight. For what a man sees, he does not hope for.

Let those immortal peoples of your angels praise you, Lord, and let the supercelestial Virtues glorify your name—those who have no need to read this our scripture and to know you as the holy and indivisible Trinity. For they always see your face, and there they read without the syllables of time what your eternal will wills. They read, they choose, and they love. They always read, and what they read never passes away. By choosing and loving they read the very unchangeableness of your counsel. Their codex is not closed, nor shall their book be folded up; because you yourself are this for them, and will be forever. O how exceedingly blessed are those Virtues of the heavens, who are able to praise you holily and most purely with exceeding sweetness and ineffable exultation! From that source they praise, from which they rejoice, because they always see that from which they are able to rejoice and to praise. But we, pressed down by the mass of the flesh, and placed far from your face in this pilgrimage, and distended through worldly varieties, cannot worthily praise: for we walk by faith, not yet by sight; but those angelic spirits walk by sight, not by faith. For this is the cause that makes us praise in a far different way than they. But although we speak of you in diverse ways, yet you are the one God, creator of all things, to whom the sacrifice of praise is offered in heaven and on earth. Yet by your mercy we shall come to the fellowship of those with whom we shall always see you and praise you without end.

Grant, Lord, that while I am placed in this fragile body, my heart may praise you, my tongue may praise you, and all my bones may say, Lord, who is like you? You are God almighty, whom we worship and adore as three in persons and one in the substance of divinity: the Father unbegotten, the Son uniquely begotten of the Father, the Spirit proceeding from both and remaining in both, holy and indivisible Trinity, one God almighty. When we were not, you powerfully made us; and when we had been lost by our own fault, you wondrously recovered us by your loving-kindness and goodness. Do not permit us, I beseech you, to be ungrateful for such great benefits and unworthy of so many mercies. I entreat you, implore you, and ask you: increase faith, increase hope, increase love. Make us through your grace always steadfast in faith and effective in works, so that through right faith and works worthy of faith we may come, by your mercy, to eternal life; so that there, seeing your glory as it is, we may adore your majesty and say together—those whom you have made worthy to see your immeasurable beauty—Glory to the Father who made us, glory to the Son who redeemed us, glory to the Holy Spirit who sanctified us, glory to the highest and indivisible Trinity, whose works are inseparable, whose dominion remains without end. Praise is due to you, a hymn is due to you, all glory is owed to you.

To you be blessing and brightness, to you thanksgiving, to you honor, virtue and strength, to God, the light, throughout the ages of ages. Amen.

CHAPTER XXXIV. The humble confession of a sinner and unworthy praiser. Forgive, Lord, forgive in your mercy, forgive and have pity: spare my ignorance, and my unavenged imperfection. Do not reject as a rash thing what I, your servant—would that I were even good, and not also useless and evil, and therefore evil and greatly evil—dare to do, because I praise, bless, and adore you, our almighty God, terrible and greatly to be feared, whether by contrition of heart and a fountain of tears, without the reverence and trembling that is due. For if the Angels, adoring and praising you, filled with wondrous exultation, tremble, why do I, a sinner, while I stand before you, speak praises, offer sacrifice, and not grow pale in heart, pale in countenance, tremble in lips, shudder in my whole body, and so, with tears bursting forth, mourn unceasingly before you? I wish to, but I am not able: and because I cannot do what I desire, I marvel greatly within myself, while I behold you, exceedingly terrible, with the eyes of faith. But who can weep without the help of your grace? For all our salvation is your great mercy. Wretched man that I am! How has my soul become so senseless that it is not terrified with exceeding terror, while it stands before God and sings his praises to him? Wretched man that I am!

How has my heart become so hardened that my eyes do not ceaselessly bring forth streams of tears—the servant speaking before his Lord, man with God, creature with Creator, he who was made from clay (Gen. 2:7) with him who made all things from nothing? Behold, Lord, I place myself before you, and what I feel concerning myself in secret I do not conceal from a father's ears. You who are rich in mercy and generous in rewards, give me from your good things, that from them I may serve you; for we cannot serve you or please you from any other source except from your gift. Pierce my flesh, I beseech you, with your fear; let my heart rejoice, that it may fear your name. Would that my sinful soul feared you as that holy man did, who said: For I have always feared God as waves swelling over me (Job 31:25). Giver of all good things, God, grant me amid your praises a fountain of tears together with purity of heart and jubilation of mind: so that, loving you perfectly and praising you worthily, with the very palate of my heart I may perceive, taste, and savor how sweet you are, Lord, as it is written: Taste and see that the Lord is sweet; blessed is the man who hopes in him (Ps. 33:9). Blessed is the people that knows jubilation (Ps. 88:16). Blessed is the man whose help is from you; in his heart he has disposed ascents in the valley of tears, in the place which he has set (Ps. 83:6-7). Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God (Matt. 5:8).

Blessed are they who dwell in your house, O Lord; they will praise you for ever and ever (Ps. 83:5).

CHAPTER XXXV. Prayers fervent with the love of Jesus. The nature of two loves. Jesus our redemption, love and desire, God of God, be present to me your servant. I invoke you, I cry to you with a great cry, with my whole heart. I invoke you into my soul; enter into it, and fit it to yourself, that you may possess it without spot and without wrinkle. For a dwelling is owed to the most pure Lord that is pure. Sanctify me therefore, your vessel which you have made; empty me of malice, fill me with grace, and keep me full; so that I may be made a most worthy temple of your dwelling here and forever. Most sweet, most kind, most loving, most dear, most precious, most desired, most lovable, most beautiful: you are sweeter than honey, whiter than milk and snow, more pleasant than nectar, more precious than gems and gold, and dearer to me than all the riches and honors of the earth. What do I say, my God, my only hope, my exceedingly great mercy? What do I say, my sweetness that does not deceive, sweetness happy and secure? What do I say while I say such things? I say what I am able, but I do not say what I ought. Would that I could say such things as those hymn-singing choirs of angels—how willingly would I pour myself out wholly in your praises! How most devoutly would I, tireless, proclaim those songs of heavenly melody to the praise and glory of your name in the midst of the Church! But because I cannot do such things, shall I therefore be silent?

Woe to those who are silent about you, you who loosen the mouths of the mute and make the tongues of infants eloquent! Woe to those who are silent about you, for they themselves, though talkative, are mute when they speak your praises!

Who can praise you worthily, ineffable power and wisdom of the Father? And since I find no words by which I can sufficiently explain you, almighty and all-knowing Word, I will say for now what I can, until you bring me to come to you, where I may say what is fitting for you and proper for me. And therefore I humbly ask that you not look so much at what I now say as at what I long to say. For with great desire I long to utter concerning you what is proper and fitting, because praise and hymn are fitting for you, and all honor is owed to you. You know, then, O God, knower of hidden things, that not only the earth and all things that are in it are dearer to me than you—no, but even heaven itself and all things that are in it: you are more acceptable to me, you are more lovable to me; for I love you above heaven and earth and all other things that are in them—indeed, except for love of your name, the things that are transitory are undoubtedly not to be loved. I love you, my God, with a great love, and I desire to love you more.

Grant me to love you always as much as I wish, as much as I ought: that you alone may be my whole intent and all my meditation; that I may meditate on you through the days without ceasing, feel you through slumber in the night, that my spirit may speak to you, my mind converse with you, my heart be illumined by the light of your holy vision; that with you as ruler, you as guide, I may walk from virtue to virtue, and at last see you, the God of gods, in Zion, now indeed through a glass and in an enigma, but then face to face, where I shall know you even as I am known. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, O Lord; they will praise you for ever and ever.

I ask you therefore, O Lord, by all your mercies, by which we have been freed from eternal death, soften my heart—hard and stony, rocky and iron—by your most sacred and powerful anointing: and make me, through the fire of compunction, become a living sacrifice before you at every hour. Make me always to hold in your sight a contrite and humbled heart, with an abundance of tears. Make me, out of desire for you, be utterly extinguished to this world, and to forget passing things before the greatness of fear and love of you; to such an extent that I neither grieve nor rejoice over temporal things; nor fear anything temporal, nor love it; nor be corrupted by pleasant things, nor shaken by adverse things.

And because your love is strong and full as death, let it, I beseech you, absorb my mind from all things that are under heaven—the fiery and honey-flowing power of your love: that I may cling to you alone, and be fed solely by the memory of your sweetness. Let descend, Lord, let descend, I pray, let descend into my heart your most sweet fragrance: let your honey-flowing love enter in. Let come to me the wondrous and ineffable fragrance of your savor, which may stir up in me everlasting desires, and produce from my heart veins of water springing up unto eternal life. You are immeasurable, Lord; and without measure you ought to be loved and praised by those whom you have redeemed with your precious blood, most kindly lover of men.

Most clement Lord and most just judge, to whom the Father has given all judgment, you decree by the most wise empire of your equity that this is right and just: that the children of this world—of night, that is, and of darkness—with a more excellent desire, virtue, and zeal should love and seek perishable riches and fleeting honors, than we, your servants, should love you, our God, through whom we were made and redeemed.

For if a man loves a man with such great love that one can scarcely bear to be absent from the other; if a bride is so joined to her bridegroom with such ardor of mind that, from the greatness of her love, she can enjoy no rest, bearing the absence of her beloved not without great sorrow: with what love, then, with what zeal, with what fervor ought the soul whom you have espoused to yourself in righteousness and faith, in mercy and compassion, to love you, the true God and most beautiful bridegroom, who so loved and saved us, who for us did such great and such mighty things?

Yet although these lowest things have their own delights and their own loves, they do not delight in such a way as you, our God. For in you the righteous man delights, because your love is sweet and quiet; for the hearts it possesses it fills with sweetness and suavity and tranquility. On the contrary, the love of the world and of the flesh is anxious and troubled, and it certainly does not allow the souls it enters to be at rest; for it always disturbs them with suspicions and disturbances and various fears. You, therefore, are the delight of the upright, and rightly so; for with you there is strong rest and an unperturbable life. He who enters into you, good Lord, enters into the joy of his Lord: and he will fear no more, but will have himself best in the Best, saying: This is my rest for ever and ever; here will I dwell, for I have chosen it (Ps. 131:14): and that, The Lord rules me, and nothing shall be lacking to me; in a place of pasture there he has placed me (Ps. 22:1, 2).

Sweet Christ, good Jesus, I beseech you, fill my heart always with your unquenchable love and with continual remembrance of you, so that, like a burning flame, I may be wholly aflame with the sweetness of your love, which many waters can never extinguish in me. Make me, sweetest Lord, to love you, and in desire for you to lay aside the weight of all carnal desires and the most grievous burden of earthly lusts, which assail and weigh down my wretched soul; so that, running swiftly after you in the fragrance of your ointments, and to be effectually satisfied even to the vision of your beauty, I may deserve to reach you as quickly as possible, with you also as my guide. For two loves, the one good, the other evil, the one sweet, the other bitter, do not take hold together in one breast. And therefore if anyone loves anything besides you, your charity, O God, is not in him.

Love of sweetness, and sweetness of love; love that does not torment but delights, author of sincere and chaste love, enduring forever and ever; love that always burns and is never extinguished, sweet Christ, good Jesus, love, my God, kindle me wholly with your fire, with your love, with your sweetness and delight, with your joy and exultation, with your pleasure and desire, which is holy and good, chaste and pure, tranquil and secure: so that, wholly filled with the sweetness of your love, wholly inflamed with the flame of your charity, I may love you, my Lord, with my whole heart, with all the marrow of my inmost being; holding you in my heart and in my mouth, and always and everywhere before my eyes, so that no place in me may lie open to adulterous loves. Hear, my God, hear, light of my eyes, hear what I ask, and grant what I ask so that you may hear. Kind and merciful Lord, do not become inexorable to me because of my sins; but for the sake of your goodness receive the prayers of your servant, and grant me the fulfillment of my petition and desire, with your glorious mother, my lady, interceding, praying, and obtaining, together with all the saints. Amen.

CHAPTER XXXVI. Prayers to Christ out of longing for love and tears. Tears are the judges of love. The soul seeking God is stirred to tears by the example of Anna, and stirred also by the example of the Magdalene. The grace of continual tears is entreated. Christ, Lord, Word of the Father, who came into this world to save sinners, I beseech you by the most tender bowels of your mercy: amend my life, make better my deeds, order my conduct, take from me whatever harms me and displeases you; give what you know to please me and to profit me. Who can make clean one conceived from an unclean seed, except you alone? You are God almighty of infinite loving-kindness, who justifies the ungodly and gives life to the dead, who changes sinners and they are not. Take from me, therefore, whatever displeases you in me; for my many imperfections are seen by your eyes. Send forth, I pray, the hand of your loving-kindness, and take from me whatever offends the eyes of your goodness in me. Before you, Lord, is my health and my sickness; the one, I pray, preserve, the other heal. Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: you who heal the weak and preserve the healed, who by your word alone restore what is ruined and raise up what is cast down. For if you deign to sow good seed in your field, it is necessary that with the hand of your loving-kindness you first pluck out the thorns of my vices.

Most sweet, most kind, most loving, most dear, most precious, most desired, most lovable, most beautiful, pour into my breast, I beseech you, the abundance of your sweetness and love, so that I may desire or think nothing earthly, nothing carnal, but may love you alone, may hold you alone in my heart and on my lips. Write with your finger upon my breast the sweet remembrance of your name, which is as honey flowing, never to be erased by any forgetfulness. Write upon the tablets of my heart your will and your justifications, so that as the Lord of immeasurable sweetness I may always and everywhere keep your precepts before my eyes. Kindle my mind with that fire of yours which you sent upon the earth and willed to be vehemently enkindled (Luke 12:49), so that with tears welling up I may daily offer you the sacrifice of a troubled spirit and a contrite heart. Sweet Christ, good Jesus, as I desire, as I beseech with my whole mind, give me your holy and chaste love, which may fill me, hold me, and possess me wholly. And give me a clear sign of your love: a plentiful fountain of tears flowing continually, so that these very tears may also testify to me of your love, may themselves betray, themselves declare how much my soul loves you, when through the great sweetness of your love it cannot refrain from tears.

I remember, loving Lord, that good woman who went up to the tabernacle to weep for her son, of whom the Scripture relates that her face after tears and prayers was no longer changed in different directions (1 Kings 1:18). But mindful of such great virtue and such great constancy, I am tormented with grief and confounded with shame, because I see myself, wretched beyond measure, lying too far down. For if that woman who sought her son thus wept and persevered in weeping, how ought the soul that seeks and loves God, and desires to come to him, to lament and persist in lamentation? How ought such a soul, which wishes to love nothing besides Christ, to groan and weep night and day? For it is a wonder if her tears have not already become her bread day and night. Look upon me therefore and have mercy on me, for the sorrows of my heart are multiplied. Give me your heavenly consolation, and grant me to despise the sinful soul for which you even died. Give me, I beseech you, inward tears from your own affection which can loose the bonds of my sins and always fill my soul with heavenly delight; so that, if not with the true and perfect monks, whose footsteps I cannot imitate, at least with devout women I may deserve to obtain some small portion in your kingdom.

There also came to my mind the wondrous devotion of another woman, who with loving piety sought you lying in the tomb, who did not withdraw from the tomb when the disciples withdrew, who sat sad and mourning, and wept long and much; and rising with many tears, again and again she explored the hidden places of the tomb with watchful eyes, in case she might somewhere be able to see you, whom she sought with burning desire. Already she had certainly entered the tomb once and again and had seen it, but for one who loved too much it was not enough: for the strength of a good work is perseverance. And because she loved you above others, and by loving wept, and by weeping sought, and by seeking persevered, therefore she deserved to be the first of all to find you, to see you, to speak with you (John 20:11-17). And not only these things, but she also became the herald of your glorious resurrection to the disciples themselves, with you commanding and mercifully admonishing her, Go, tell my brethren, that they go into Galilee; there they shall see me (Matthew 28:10). If, therefore, the woman who sought the living among the dead, who did not touch you with the hand of faith, wept thus and persevered in weeping, how ought the soul to lament and persist in lamentation, which believes in her heart and confesses with her mouth that you, her redeemer, now preside in heaven and reign everywhere? How, then, ought such a soul to groan and mourn, which loves you with her whole heart and longs with her whole desire to see you?

Only refuge and sole hope of the wretched, to whom no one ever supplicates without hope of mercy, grant me this grace for your sake and for your holy name: that as often as I think of you, speak of you, know of you, read of you, discourse of you, as often as I remember you, stand in your presence, offer praises, prayers, and sacrifice, so often may I weep abundantly and sweetly with tears welling up in your sight, so that my tears may become my bread day and night. You indeed, King of glory and master of all virtues, taught us by word and example to groan and to weep, saying, Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. You wept for a dead friend, and shed tears over a city about to perish. I ask you, good Jesus, by those most blessed tears of yours, and by all your mercies, by which you deigned wonderfully to come to our aid when we were lost, give me the grace of tears, which my soul greatly desires and seeks from you, because without your gift I cannot have it. Through your Holy Spirit, who softens the hard hearts of sinners and pricks them to weeping, give me the grace of tears, as you gave it to my fathers, whose footsteps I ought to imitate, that I may lament myself in all my ways, as they lamented themselves night and day. By the merits and prayers of those who pleased you and served you most devoutly, have mercy on me, your most wretched and unworthy servant, and give me the grace of tears.

Give me the lower spring and the upper spring, that my tears may be my bread day and night. May I be made in your sight, my God, through the fire of compunction a rich and marrow-filled burnt offering: may I be slain wholly on the altar of my heart, and be consumed as a most rich burnt offering to you for a sweet savor. Give me a spring of water, a clear spring, in which this defiled burnt offering may be continually washed. For although I have offered myself to you washed, with your grace helping me, yet in many things I offend daily because of my excessive frailty. Give me therefore the grace of tears, blessed and lovable God, especially out of the great sweetness of your love and the remembrance of your mercies. Prepare this table for your servant in the sight of your servant, and give it into my power, that as often as I wish I may be satisfied from it. Grant out of your piety and goodness that your cup, inebriating and glorious, may satisfy my thirst: that my spirit may thirst for you, and my mind burn with love of you, despising vanity and misery. Hear, my God, hear, light of my eyes, hear what I ask, and grant what I ask that you may hear. Gracious and lovable Lord, do not become inexorable to me because of my sins, but for your goodness receive the prayers of your servant, and grant me compunction and my desire, through the prayers and merits of the glorious virgin Mary my lady and of all the saints. Amen.

CHAPTER XXXVII. A prayer to Christ, burning with desire for God. Man needs a twofold food. The groaning of the soul thirsting for God. Meanwhile he seeks the wings of contemplation, and that all created things be silent to him. He prays for the wound of charity. Here he rejects every consolation. Jesus, Lord, Jesus merciful, Jesus good, who deigned to die for our sins and rose again for our justification, I ask you by your glorious resurrection, raise me from the tomb of vices and of all my sins, and give me daily a part in the first resurrection, that in your resurrection I may deserve truly to receive my portion. Most sweet, most kind, most loving, most dear, most precious, most desired, most lovable, most beautiful, you ascended into heaven with the triumph of glory, you sit at the right hand of the Father. Most powerful King, draw me upward to you; I will run after you in the fragrance of your ointments, I will run and not grow faint, you drawing me, you leading me, me running. Draw the mouth of the soul that thirsts for you into the streams above of eternal satiety; rather, draw me to you, the living fountain, that from there I may drink according to my capacity, from there I may always live. My God, my life. For you have said with your holy and blessed mouth, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Fountain of life, grant the thirsty soul always to drink from you, that according to your holy and true promise, rivers of living water may flow from my belly.

Fountain of life, fill my mind with the torrent of your pleasure, and inebriate my heart with the sober drunkenness of your love: so that I may forget the vain and earthly things, and may have you alone continually in my memory, as it is written: I remembered God, and was delighted (Ps. 76:4). Grant me your Holy Spirit, whom those waters signified which you promised to give to the thirsty: grant, I beseech you, that I may strive with whole desire and all zeal toward that place whither we believe you ascended on the fortieth day after the resurrection: so that in the present misery I may indeed be held only by the body, but be with you always in thought and longing; so that my heart may be there where you are, my desirable and incomparable treasure, greatly to be loved. For in this great flood of this life, where we are tossed by the winds of storms all around, no faithful anchorage is found, and no place more lofty, where the foot of the dove may in some measure be able to rest. Nowhere is there safe peace, nowhere secure quiet; everywhere wars and strifes, everywhere enemies, without battles, within fears.

And because one part of us is of heaven, the other of earth, the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul. Therefore my mind, my companion and friend, growing weary as it comes from the journey, languishes and lies prostrate, and, torn and mangled by the very vanities it has passed through, hungers and thirsts exceedingly; I have nothing to set before it, for I am poor and a beggar: do you, Lord my God, rich in all good things and most abundant giver of the feasts of heavenly satiety, give food to the weary, gather the scattered, restore the torn. Behold, he stands at the door and knocks; I beseech you by the tender mercies with which the Dayspring from on high has visited us, open to the wretched one who knocks with the hand of your pity, and by your gracious and propitious command let him enter in to you, rest in you, be refreshed from you, the living and heavenly bread, by which, when satisfied and his strength recovered, he may ascend to the things above, and, caught up from this valley of tears on the wing of holy desire, fly to heavenly joys. Let my spirit, Lord, let it take, I pray, the wings of an eagle, let it fly and not faint, let it fly and reach even to the beauty of your house and the grove of the breath of your glory: so that there, at the table of refreshment of the heavenly citizens, it may be fed from your hidden things in the place of your pasture, beside the fullest streams. Let my heart rest in you, my God, my heart, a great sea swelling with waves. You who commanded the winds and the sea, and there came a great calm (Matt.

come and walk upon the waves of my heart, that all things in me may become calm and serene; so that I may embrace you, my one good, and contemplate you, the sweet light of my eyes, without the blind darkness of tumultuous thoughts. Let my mind, O Lord, flee beneath the shadow of your wings from the heats of the thoughts of this world, so that, hidden in the tempering of your refreshment, it may sing joyfully and say: In peace in the very same I shall sleep and rest (Ps. 4:9). Let it sleep, I beseech you, my God, let my memory sleep from all things that are under heaven, watching in you, as it is written, I sleep, and my heart watches. Let my soul be safe, let it be always secure beneath the wings of your protection, my God. Let it remain in you, and be always cherished by you. Let it contemplate you in the ecstasy of the mind, and sing your praises in jubilation. And let these sweet gifts of yours be my consolation in the meantime amid these storms, until I come to you, true peace, where there is no bow, no shield, no sword, and no war; but there is the highest and certain security, and secure tranquility, and tranquil security, and joyful felicity, and happy eternity, and eternal blessedness, and the blessed vision and praise of you forever and ever. Amen.

Christ my Lord, power and wisdom of the Father, who make the clouds your ascent, who walk upon the wings of the winds, who make your angels spirits and your ministers a burning fire, I beseech and humbly ask you: give me the swift wings of faith, give me the speedy pinions of the virtues, borne up by which I may be able to contemplate things eternal and heavenly. Let my soul, I pray, cling to you, and let your right hand receive me. Lift me up above the height of the earth, and feed me with that heavenly inheritance for which my pilgrimage sighs day and night. And because my dying limbs dull the vigor of the soul, cast off earthly things, the clouds and weights of this mass. Restrain my mind as it rushes through many a wandering path, and grant my mind to ascend to the heavenly seat; so that, irradiated by the light from on high, it may despise the earth, look toward heaven, hate sins, and love righteousness. For what is more beautiful, or what sweeter, than amid the darkness of this life and its many bitterness to thirst for divine sweetness and to sigh for eternal blessedness, and to hold the mind there where it is most certain that true joys are possessed?

Sweetest, kindest, most loving, dearest, most precious, most desired, most lovable, most beautiful, when shall I see you? When shall I appear before your face? When shall I leap forth from your beauty? When will you lead me out of this dark prison, that I may confess to your name, so that from then on I may not be pricked with remorse? When shall I pass into that wonderful and most beautiful house of yours, where the voice of gladness and exultation resounds in the tabernacles of the just? Blessed are they who dwell in your house; for ever and ever they shall praise you. Blessed and truly blessed are those whom you have already chosen and taken up into that heavenly inheritance. Behold, your saints, Lord, flourish before you like a lily. For they are filled from the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the torrent of your delight: for you are the fountain of life, and in your light they see light, to such a degree that they themselves—namely, the light enlightened by you, God the light enlightening—shine like the sun in your sight. How wonderful, how beautiful, how pleasing are the dwelling places of your house! Lord of hosts, my sinful soul longs to enter into them. Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house and the place where your glory dwells. One thing I have asked of you, this I will seek: that I may dwell in your house all the days of my life. As the deer longs for the fountains of waters, so my soul longs for you, O God.

When shall I come, when shall I appear, when shall I see my God, whom my soul thirsts for? When shall I see him in the land of the living? For in this land of the dying he cannot be seen by mortal eyes. What shall I do, wretched man that I am, weighed down by the shackle of my mortality—what shall I do? While we are in the body, we are away from the Lord. We have no lasting city here, but we seek the one to come; our citizenship is in heaven. Woe is me, that my sojourning has been prolonged; I have dwelt with the inhabitants of Cedar; my soul has been a sojourner for a long time. Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest? Nothing is now so sweet to me as to be with my Lord. But for me, to cling to God is good.

Grant me, Lord, while I still stand in these fragile members, to cling to you: as it is written, He who clings to the Lord is one spirit. Give me, I pray, the wings of contemplation, clothed with which I may fly up to you. And since everything on the left lies low, hold my mind, lest it fall down to the depths of the dark valley; lest, with the shadow of the earth coming between, it be separated from you, the true Sun of righteousness, and, covered over by the darkness of cloud, be kept from looking on high. Therefore I strain upward toward the delightful and most serene state of peace, joy, and light. Hold my heart with your hand; for without you it is not carried up to higher things.

I hasten thither, where the highest peace reigns and continual tranquility shines forth. Hold and govern my spirit, and take it up according to your will, so that with you as guide it may ascend into that region of abundance, where you feed Israel forever with the food of truth; so that there, even with swift thought, it may gaze upon you, the highest wisdom, abiding above all things, knowing all things and governing all things.

But for the soul flying toward you there are many things that clamor against it: by your command, Lord, let all things be silent for me; let the soul itself be silent to me; let it pass beyond all things that have been created; let it pass beyond itself also, and come to you, and in you alone, the Creator of all things, fix the eyes of faith: let it thirst for you, attend to you, meditate on you, contemplate you, set you before its eyes, revolve you within its heart, the highest and true good, and the joy that will endure without end.

In short, there are many contemplations by which the soul devoted to you is wonderfully fed, but in none of them does my soul so rest and delight as when it thinks and contemplates you alone. How great is the multitude of your sweetness, Lord, how wonderfully you inspire it in the hearts of those who love you! How wondrous is the sweetness of your love, which those enjoy who love nothing besides you, seek nothing, and do not even desire to think of anything else! Blessed are those for whom you alone are their hope, and all their work is prayer.