Page 25 - Fr.Emil3

Second Reading Office of Readings from the Feast, the
Confessions of St Augustine

O Eternal Truth, 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 incommutable
light far above my spiritual ken and transcending my mind: not
this common light which every carnal eye can see, nor any light
of the same order; but greater, as though this common light

were shining much more powerfully, far more brightly, and so
extensively as to fill the universe. The light I saw was not the
common light at all, but something different, utterly different,

from all those things. Nor was it higher than my mind in the
sense that oil floats on water or the sky is above the earth; it
was exalted because this very light made me, and I was below
it because by it I was made. 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. As I first began to know
you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I
might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. 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 in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear

your voice from on high: “I am the food of the mature: grow,
then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into
yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me”.

Accordingly I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed 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 out,
proclaiming I am the Way and Truth and the Life, nor had I

known him as the food which, though I was not yet strong
enough to eat it, he had mingled with our flesh, for the Word

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