De visione Dei

The vision of God is called providence, grace, and eternal life.¹ Approach now, thou brother contemplator, to the icon of God, and first place thyself to the east, then to the south, and lastly to the west. And because the gaze of the icon regards thee equally from every side and deserts thee not whithersoever thou goest, speculation will be excited in thee, and thou wilt be provoked and wilt say. Lord, now in this image of thine I behold thy providence by a certain sensible experience. For if thou desertest not me, who am most vile, of no account, thou wilt fail no one anywhere. Thus indeed thou art present to all and each, as being is present to all and each of them, without which they cannot be. For thus thou, the absolute being of all things, art present to all, as though thou hadst no care for any other. And this happens because there is no thing which does not prefer its own being to all things, and its own mode of being to all modes of being of others; and thus it guards its own being, so that it would sooner let the being of all others go to perdition than its own. For thus, Lord, thou beholdest whatever is, that it cannot be conceived through all that is that thou hast other care than that it alone be in the best mode in which it can be, and that all other things that are be only for this, that they serve so that that which thou regardest be in the best way. Suffer me not, Lord, by any imagination to conceive that thou, Lord, lovest another more than me, since thy gaze alone deserts me not. And since where the eye is there is love, then I experience that thou lovest me, because upon me, thy little servant, thine eyes are most attentively. Lord, thy seeing is loving. And as thy gaze so attentively beholds me that it never turns itself from me, so too thy love. And since thy love is ever with me, and thy love, Lord, is nothing other than thou thyself who lovest me, hence thou art ever with me, Lord. Thou desertest me not, Lord. Thou guardest me on every side, because thou takest most diligent care of me. Thy being, Lord, abandons not my being. For I am inasmuch as thou art with me. And since thy seeing is thy being, therefore I am because thou regardest me. And if thou shouldst withdraw thy face from me, I should in no way subsist. But I know that thy gaze is that greatest goodness which cannot but communicate itself to every capable one. Thou therefore wilt never be able to leave me, as long as I shall be capable of thee. It belongs to me, therefore, that as much as I can I render myself continually more capable of thee. But I know that the capacity which bestows union is nothing but likeness; incapacity, however, from unlikeness. If therefore I render myself in every possible way like unto thy goodness, according to the degrees of likeness I shall be capable of the truth. Thou hast given me, Lord, being, and that very being such that it can by grace render itself continually more capable of thy goodness. And this power which I have from thee, in which I hold the living image of thy omnipotent virtue, is free will, through which I can either enlarge or restrict the capacity of thy grace: enlarge indeed by conformity, when I strive to be good because thou art good; when I strive to be just because thou art just; when I strive to be merciful because thou art merciful; when every striving of mine is turned only to thee, because every striving of thine is turned to me; when I most attentively regard thee alone and never turn away the eyes of the mind, because thou embracest me with continual vision; when I turn my love to thee alone, because thou who art charity art turned to me alone. And what

MARG: Capacitas Incapacitas

is, Lord, my life, but that embrace by which thy sweetness of love so lovingly embraces me? I love my highest life, because thou art the sweetness of my life. I now contemplate in a mirror, in an icon, in an enigma, eternal life, because it is nothing but the blessed vision by which vision thou never ceasest most lovingly to see me even to the inmost depths of my soul. And thy seeing is nothing but to give life, but continually to send in the sweetest love of thee, to inflame me to love of thee by the sending in of love, and by inflaming to feed, and by feeding to kindle desires, and by kindling to give drink with the dew of joy, and by giving drink to send in the fountain of life, and by sending in to increase and make perpetual, and to communicate thy immortality, to bestow the unfading glory of the heavenly and highest and greatest kingdom, to make partaker of that inheritance which is of the Son alone, and to constitute possessor of eternal felicity. Where is the source of all delights that can be desired, than which nothing better can be thought, not only by every man or angel, but can be in no mode of being. For it is the very absolute greatest of all rational desire, which cannot be greater. The vision of God is called providence, grace, and eternal life.²