"O eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity"
Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your
guidance into the inmost depth of my soul. I was able to do so because you were
my helper. On entering into myself I saw, as it were with the eye of the soul,
what was beyond the eye of the soul, beyond my spirit: your immutable light. It
was not the ordinary light perceptible to all flesh, nor was it merely
something of greater magnitude but still essentially akin, shining more clearly
and diffusing itself everywhere by its intensity. No, it was something entirely
distinct, something altogether different from all these things; and it did not
rest above my mind as oil on the surface of water, nor was it above me as
heaven is above the earth. This light was above me because it had made me; I
was below it because I was created by it. He who has come to know the truth
knows this light.
O Eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity. You are
my God. To you do I sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you drew
me to yourself so that I might see that there were things for me to see, but
that I myself was not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you overcame the
weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams of your light, and
I trembled at once with love and dread. I learned that I was in a region unlike
yours and far distant from you, and I thought I heard your voice from on high:
“I am the food of grown men; grow then, and you will feed on me. Nor will you
change me into yourself like bodily food, but you will be changed into me.”
I sought a way to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy
you.
But I did not find
it until I embraced the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who
is above all, God blessed for ever. He was calling me and saying: I am the way
of truth, I am the life. He was offering the food which I lacked the strength
to take, the food he had mingled with our flesh. For the Word became flesh,
that your wisdom, by which you created all things, might provide milk for us
children.
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new,
late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there
that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things
which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things
kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at
all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed,
you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I
drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and
thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.
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