7 Sep Thu
O Eternal Truth, my Lord, true love and beloved eternity; urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance the innermost places of my being; but only because you had become my helper was I able to do so. I entered, then, and with the vision of my spirit, such as it was, I saw the unchangeable light, far above, transcending my mind: not this common light which every carnal eye can see; but greater, shining much more brightly, as to fill the universe.
The light I saw was not the common light at all, but something different, utterly different, from all things. Anyone who knows truth, knows this light.
O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. When I began to know you, you lifted me up, you showed me that, I was not yet capable of seeing everything. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you, and I seemed to hear your voice: “I am the food of the grown-ups: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like ordinary food; but you will be changed into me”.
I looked for a way to enjoy you, but I did not find it, until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, supreme over all things and blessed for ever. He called me, proclaiming "I am the Way and Truth and the Life".
Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
Lo, you were within me,
but I outside, seeking there for you,
and upon the shapely things you have made
I rushed headlong – I, misshapen.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
They held me back far from you,
those things which would have no being,
were they not in you.
You called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness;
you flared, you blazed, you banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;
I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;
you touched me, and I burned for your peace.
From the Confessions of St Augustine
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