De visione Dei

The longer, Lord my God, I behold thy face, the more it appears to me that thou directest upon me the keenness of thine eyes. But thy look acts so that I consider how this image of thy face is for this reason thus sensibly painted, because a face could not be painted without color, nor does color exist without quantity. But I see, not with fleshly eyes which behold this icon of thine, but with mental and intellectual eyes, the invisible truth of thy face, which is here contractedly signified in shadow. Which true face of thine is absolved from all contraction. For it is neither how great, nor of what quality, nor temporal, nor local. For it is the absolute form, which is the face of faces. When therefore I attend to how that face is the truth and most adequate measure of all faces, I am led into amazement. For that face which is the truth of all faces is not how great; wherefore neither greater nor less. Nor yet is it equal to each, because it is not how great but absolute and superexalted. It is therefore the truth which is equality, absolved from all quantity. Thus therefore I comprehend that thy countenance, Lord, precedes every formable face, and is the exemplar and truth of all faces, and that all faces are images of thy incontrahible and imparticipable face. Every face therefore which can look into thy face sees nothing other or diverse from itself, because it sees its own truth. But the truth of the exemplar cannot be other or diverse; but those things befall the image from this, that it is not the exemplar itself. As therefore when I behold this painted face eastward, likewise it appears that thus it regards me; and when westward or southward, it likewise. Thus however I change my face, the face is seen turned toward me. So is thy face turned toward all faces beholding thee. Thy gaze, Lord, is thy face. Whoever therefore beholds thee with loving face will find nothing but thy face lovingly beholding him. And the more he strives to behold thee more lovingly, the more lovingly will he likewise find thy face. Who beholds thee indignantly will likewise find thy face such. Who beholds thee gladly will thus find thy glad face, according as is his who sees thee. For as this fleshly eye, beholding through red glass, judges all things it sees to be red, and if through green glass, all green, so every eye of the mind, wrapped in contraction and passion, judges thee, who art the object of the mind, according to the nature of the contraction and passion.

Man cannot judge but humanly. For when man attributes a face to thee, he seeks it not outside the human species, because his judgment is contracted below human nature. And from the passion of this contraction he goes not out in judging. Thus if a lion attributed a face to thee, it would judge none but a leonine one; and an ox, bovine; and an eagle, aquiline.

O Lord, how wonderful is thy face, which if a youth wished to conceive, he would feign a youthful one; and a man, a manly one; and an old man, an old one. Who could conceive this one most true and most adequate exemplar of all faces, thus of all that of each, and thus most perfectly of each as though of no other? He must leap beyond the forms of all formable faces, and all figures. And how would he conceive the face, when he had transcended all faces, and all likenesses and figures of the faces of all, and all concepts that can be made of a face,¹ and all color of the faces of all, and ornament, and beauty? Whoever therefore proceeds to see thy face, as long as he conceives anything, is far from thy face. For every concept of a face is less than thy face, Lord. And every beauty that can be conceived is less than the beauty of thy face. All faces have beauty, and are not beauty itself. But thy face, Lord, has beauty, and this having is being. It is therefore beauty itself absolute, which is the form giving being to every beautiful form. O face too comely, whose beauty all things to whom it is given to behold it suffice not to admire. In all faces the face of faces is seen veiled and in an enigma. But unveiled it is not seen as long as entrance is not made above all faces into a certain secret and hidden silence, where there is nothing of knowledge and concept of a face. For this darkness, cloud, shadows, or ignorance into which one seeking thy face enters, when he passes beyond all knowledge and concept, is that below which thy face cannot be found but veiled. But the darkness itself reveals that the face is there above all veils. As when our eye seeks to see the light of the sun, which is its face: first it beholds it veiled in the stars, and colors, and all things partaking its light. But when it strives to behold it unveiled, it leaps beyond every visible light, because every such is less than that which it seeks. But because it seeks to see the light which it cannot see, this it knows, that as long as it sees anything, it is not that which it seeks. It must therefore leap beyond every visible light. Whoever therefore must leap beyond every light must enter that which lacks visible light. And thus it is to the eye, so to speak, darkness. And when it is in those shadows which are darkness, then if it knows that it is in darkness, it knows that it has drawn near to the face of the sun. For from the excellence of the light of the sun arises that darkness in the eye. The greater darkness therefore it knows, the more truly it attains in darkness the invisible light. I see, Lord, that thus and not otherwise the inaccessible light and beauty and splendor of thy face can be approached unveiled.