place has no meaning. O truth, everywhere you preside over all who ask counsel of you. You respond at one and the same time to all, even though they are consulting you on different subjects. You reply clearly, but not all hear you clearly. All ask your counsel on what they desire, but do not always hear what they would wish. Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants, as to willing what he hears from you.
Late have I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you! For you were within me and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they would have had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud to me and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now I pant after you. I tasted you and now I feel nothing but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and now I burn for your peace.
When I shall be united to you with my whole being, I shall never experience pain and toil again, and my entire life will be full of you. You lift up the person whom you fill. But for the present, because I am not full of you, I am a burden to myself. There is a struggle between my regrets at my evil past and my memories of good joys, and I do not know which side has secured the victory. Alas, Lord, have mercy upon me, wretch that I am. See, I do not hide my wounds. You are the physician, I am the patient. You are merciful, and I need your mercy.
Monday after 4 before Lent
A Reading from An Exposition of the Church Catechism by Thomas Ken
O my God, when in any of thy commands a duty is enjoined, love tells me the contrary evil is forbidden; when any evil is forbidden, love tells me the contrary duty is enjoined; O do thou daily increase my love to good, and my antipathy to evil.
Though thy commands and prohibitions, O Lord, are in general terms, yet let thy love direct my particular practice, and teach me, that in one general are implied all the kinds and degrees and occasions and incitements and approaches and allowances, relating to that good or evil which are also commanded or forbidden, and give me grace to pursue or to fly them.
O my God, keep my love always watchful and on its guard that in thy negative precepts I may continually resist evil; keep my love warm with an habitual zeal that in all thy affirmative precepts I may lay hold on all seasons and opportunities of doing good.
Let thy love, O thou that only art worthy to be beloved, make me careful to persuade and engage others to love thee, and to keep thy commandments as well as myself.
None can love thee, and endeavour to keep thy holy commands, but his daily failings in his duty, his frequent involuntary and unavoidable slips, and surreptitions and wanderings, afflict and humble him; the infirmities of lapsed nature create in him a kind of perpetual martyrdom because he can love thee no more, because he can so little serve thee.
But thou, O most compassionate Father, in thy covenant of grace dost require sincerity, not perfection; and therefore I praise and love thee.
O my God, though I cannot love and obey thee as much as I desire, I will do it as much as I am able: I will to the utmost of my power, keep all thy commandments with my whole heart and to the end. O accept of my imperfect duty, and supply all the defects of it by the merits and love and obedience of Jesus, thy beloved.
Tuesday after 4 before Lent
A Reading from The Cloud of Unknowing
We must pray in the height, depth, length, and breadth of our spirits. Not in many words, but in a little word of one syllable. What shall this word be? Surely such a word as is suited to the nature of prayer itself. And what word is that? First let us see what prayer is in itself, and then we shall know more clearly what word will best suit its nature.
In itself prayer is nothing else than a devout setting of our will in the direction of God in order to get good, and remove evil. Since all evil is summed up in sin, considered casually or essentially, when we pray with intention for the removing of evil, we should neither say, think, nor mean any more than this little word ‘sin’. And if we pray with intention for the acquiring of goodness, let us pray, in word or thought or desire, no other word than ‘God’. For in God is all good, for he is its beginning and its being. Do not be surprised then that I set these words before all others. If I could find any shorter words which would sum up fully the thought of good or evil as these words do, or if I had been led by God to take some other words, then I would have used those and left these. And that is my advice for you too.
But don’t study these words, for you will never achieve your object so, or come to contemplation; it is never attained by study, but only by grace. Take no other words for your prayer than those that God leads you to use. Yet if God does lead you to these, my advice is not to let them go, that is, if you are using words at all in your prayer: not otherwise. They are very short words. But though shortness of prayer is greatly to be recommended here, it does not mean that the frequency of prayer is to be lessened. For as I have said, it is prayed in the length of one’s spirit, so that it never stops until such time as it has fully attained what it longs for. We can turn to a terrified man or woman, suddenly frightened by fire, or death, for an example. They never stop crying their little words, ‘Help!’ or ‘Fire!’ till such time as they have got all the help they need in their trouble.
Wednesday after 4 before Lent
A Reading from The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa
The divine law leads us along a royal highway, and the person who has been purified of all desires and passions, will deviate neither to the left nor to the right. And yet how easy it is for a traveller to turn aside from the way. Imagine two precipices forming a high narrow pass; from its centre the person crossing it is in great danger if he veers in either direction because of the chasm on either side that waits to engulf those that stray. In the same way, the divine law requires those who follow its paths not to stray either to left or right from the way which, as the Lord says, is ‘narrow and hard’.
This teaching declares that virtue is to be discerned in the mean: evil operates in either a deficiency or in an excess. For example, in the case of courage, cowardice is the product of a lack of virtue, and impetuosity the product of its excess. What is pure and to be identified as virtue is to be discovered in the mean between two contrasting evils. Similarly, those things in life which reach after the good also in some strange way follow this middle course between neighbouring evils.
Wisdom clings to the mean between shrewdness and innocence. Neither the wisdom of the serpent nor the innocence of the dove is to be praised if a person opts for one to the neglect of the other. Rather it is the frame of mind that seeks to unite these two attitudes by their mean that constitutes virtue. One person, for example, who lacks moderation becomes self-indulgent; another person whose demands exceed what moderation dictates has his ‘conscience seared’, as the apostle Paul says. For one has abandoned all restraint in the pursuit of pleasure, and the other ridicules marriage as if it were adultery; whereas the frame of mind formed by the mean of these two attitudes is moderation.
Since, as our Lord says, ‘this world is ensnared in wickedness’, and everything that is wicked (and therefore opposed to virtue) is alien to those who obey the divine law, it follows that those in this life who pick their way through this world will only reach the destination of their journey in safety if they faithfully keep to that highway which is hardened and smoothed by virtue, and who under no circumstances, veer aside to explore the byways of evil.
Thursday after
