6

If you should ask how these things come about, question grace, not

instruction; desire, not intellect; the cry of prayer, not pursuit of

study; the spouse, not the teacher; God, not man; darkness, not clarity;

not light, but the wholly flaming fire which will bear you aloft to God

with fullest unction and burning affection. This fire is God, and the

furnace of this fire leadeth to Jerusalem; and Christ the man kindles it in

the fervor of His burning Passion, which he alone truly perceives who says,

"My soul rather chooseth hanging and my bones death" [Job, 7, 15]. He who

chooses this death can see God because this is indubitably true: "Man shall

not see me and live" [Exod., 33, 20]. Let us then die and pass over into

darkness; let us impose silence on cares, concupiscence, and phantasms; let

us pass over with the crucified Christ from this world to the Father [John,

13, 1], so that when the Father

is shown to us we may say with Philip, "It is enough for us" [John, 14, 8];

let us hear with Paul, "My grace is sufficient for thee" [II Cor., 12, 9];

let us exult with David, saying, "For Thee my flesh and my heart hath

fainted away; Thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion

forever [Ps. 72, 26]. . . . Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from

everlasting to everlasting; and let all the people say: So be it, so be it"

[Ps., 105, 48]. AMEN.