De visione Dei

How the vision of God is to love, to cause, to read, and to hold all things in itself. My heart rests not, Lord, because thy love has inflamed it with such desire that it can rest in thee alone. I began to pray the Lord's prayer, and thou didst inspire me to attend to how thou art our Father. Thy loving is thy seeing. Thy fatherhood is thy vision, which paternally embraces us all. For we say: our Father. For thou art the universal father and the singular. For each one says, because thou art our Father. Paternal love embraces all and each of the sons. For the father so loves all that he loves each, because he is so the father of all that he is of each. So he loves each one of the sons that each of the sons conceives himself to be preferred to all. If therefore thou art father, and our father, we therefore are thy sons. But paternal love precedes filial. As long as we thy sons behold thee as sons, thou ceasest not to regard us paternally. Thou wilt therefore be our paternal provider, having paternal care of us. Thy vision is providence. But if we thy sons renounce thee the father, we cease to be sons. Nor are we then free sons in our own power, but we go into a far region, separating us from thee. And then we undergo heavy servitude under the prince who is opposed to thee, God. But thou, father, who on account of the freedom granted us because we are thy sons, who art liberty itself, sufferest us not to depart and to consume freedom and the best substance according to the corrupt desires of the senses, yet thou desertest us not wholly, but art continually present soliciting. And thou speakest in us, and recallest us that we return to thee, ever ready to regard us with the former paternal eye, if, having returned, we shall have been turned to thee. O loving God, look upon me, who, smitten with compunction for the miserable service of the slippery filth of swine, where I failed with hunger, now return, that in thy house I may in any way be fed. Feed me with thy gaze, Lord, and teach how thy gaze sees every seeing gaze, and every visible thing, and every act of vision, and every seeing power, and every visible power, and the seeing arising from them all. For thy seeing is causing: thou seest all things who causest all things. Teach me, Lord, how with one look thou discernest at once and severally. When I open a book to read, I see confusedly the whole page. And if I wish to discern the single letters, syllables, and words, I must turn myself severally to each in series, and I cannot but read successively one letter after another, and one word after another, and one passage after another. But thou, Lord, regardest and readest at once the whole page without delay of time. And if two of us read the same thing, one more quickly, the other more slowly, when thou readest them both, thou art seen to read in time, because thou readest with those who read, and above time thou seest and readest all things at once. For thy seeing is thy reading. All books written and that can be written thou hast at once and together above the delay of time from eternity seen and read at once, and with this with all who read thou readest them in series. Nor dost thou read one thing in eternity and another in time with those who read, but the same, holding thyself in the same manner, because thou art not changeable, since thou art fixed eternity. But eternity, because it deserts not time, is seen to be moved with time, although motion in eternity is rest. Lord, thou seest and hast eyes. Thou art therefore an eye, because thy having is being. For this reason in thyself thou seest all things as in a mirror. For if in me gaze were an eye, as in thee my God, then in myself I would see all things. Since the eye is mirror-like, and however small a mirror beholds in itself figuratively a great mountain, and all things that exist on the surface of that mountain, and thus the species of all things are in the mirror-like eye, yet because our gaze sees not through the medium of the mirror-like eye but that particularly to which it turns itself, because its power cannot be determined but particularly by the object, therefore it sees not all things that are grasped in the mirror of the eye. But thy gaze, since it is a living eye or mirror, sees all things in itself. Nay, because it is the cause of all visible things, hence it embraces and sees all things in the cause and reason of all things, that is, in itself. Thine eye, Lord, goes to all things without bending. For that our eye bends itself to the object is from this, that our gaze sees through an angle however much it sees. But the angle of thine eye, God, is not how great, but is infinite, which is a circle, nay also an infinite sphere. Because thy gaze is an eye of infinite sphericity and perfection. All things therefore it sees at once in circuit, and above, and below. O how wonderful is thy gaze, which is theos, God, to all who search it out! How beautiful and lovable to all who love thee! How terrible to all who have forsaken thee, Lord my God! For with thy gaze thou givest life, Lord, to every spirit, and gladdenest every blessed one, and puttest to flight all sorrow. Look therefore upon me mercifully, and my soul is made safe.