My heart is not at rest, Lord, because Thy love hath inflamed it with so great desire that it can only rest in Thee. I began to pray the Lord’s Prayer, and Thou didst inspire me to consider in what manner Thou art our Father. For Thy love is Thy regard, Thy fatherhood is Thy regard, which embraceth us all in fatherly wise: for we say: Our Father. For Thou art the Father of the whole world, and of each individual. Each saith Our Father, and because of it Thy fatherly love comprehendeth each and all of Thy sons. For a father so loveth all his sons as he doth each one, because he is as much the father of all as he is of each one. He so loveth each of his sons that each may imagine himself to be favoured beyond all?
If, then, Thou art a Father, and our Father, we are Thy sons. But paternal love precedeth
filial. As long as we Thy sons look upon Thee as do sons, Thou ceasest not to look upon us as doth a father. Therefore Thou wilt be our fatherly Providence, having fatherly care for us. Thy regard is providence. But if we Thy sons reject Thee our Father, we cease to be Thy sons, nor are we thenceforth free sons nor our own masters; but, separating ourselves from Thee, we go into a far country, and then endure grievous slavery under a prince that is Thine adversary, O God. But Thou our Father, who hast granted us freedom because we are Thy sons and Thou art very Liberty, dost . permit us to depart, and to squander our liberty and. our noblest substance, after the corrupt desires of our senses. Yet for all that Thou dost not leave us utterly, but art ever at our side beseeching us, and Thou speakest within us, calling us back to return unto Thee, ever ready to behold us again with Thy fatherly eye as aforetime, if we return, if we turn again unto Thee. O pitiful God, look on me, who, remorseful, now return from my wretched. slavery, from the slime and filth of the swine, where I perished with hunger, and in Thy house would seek to be fed after any wise. Feed me with Thy gaze, O Lord, and teach
me how Thy gaze regardeth every sight that E
seeth, and all that may be seen, and each act of seeing, and every power of seeing, or of being seen, and all the seeing which thence resulteth. For with Thee to see is to cause; Thou seest all things who causest all things.
Teach me, O Lord, how at one glance Thou discernest both all together and each in particular. When I open a book to read, I see the whole page confusedly, and, if I wish to distinguish separate letters, syllables, and words, I must needs turn my particular attention to each individual thing in succession. I can only read one letter in turn after another, and one word after another, and one passage after another. But Thou, Lord, dost see and read the whole page together, in an instant. If two of us read the same thing, one more quickly, the other more slowly, Thou readest with us both, and dost appear to read in time, since Thou readest with them that read; yet dost Thou see and read it all together, above and beyond time. For with Thee to see is to read. Thou from eternity hast seen and read, together and once and for all, all written books, and those that can be written, regardless of time; and, in addition, Thou dost read those same books one after another with all who read them. Nor dost Thou read one
thing in eternity and another with them that read in time, but the same; Thou behavest Thyself in the same way, since Thou changest not, being a fixed eternity. Yet eternity, because it is bound up with time, seemeth to be moved with time, albeit motion in eternity is rest.
Lord, Thou seest and hast eyes. Thou art an Eye, since with Thee having is being, wherefore in Thyself Thou dost observe all things. If in me my seeing were an eye, as ’tis in Thee, my God, then in myself I should see all things, since the eye is like a mirror. And a mirror, however small it be, beholdeth in itself the image of a great mountain, and of all that existeth on the surface of that mountain, and so the species of all things are contained in the mirror of the eye. Notwithstanding this, our sight, through the mirror of the eye, can only see that particular object toward which it is turned, because its power can only be determined in a particular manner by the object, so that it seeth not all things contained in the mirror of the eye. But Thy sight, being an eye or living mirror, seeth all things in itself. Nay more, because it is the cause of all things visible, it embraceth and seeth all things in the cause and reason of all, that is, in itself.
Thine eye, Lord, reacheth to all things without turning. When our eye turneth itself toward an object ’tis because our sight seeth but through a finite angle. But the angle of Thine eye, O God, is not limited, but is infinite, being the angle of a circle, nay, of an infinite sphere also, since Thy sight is an eye of sphericity and of infinite perfection. Wherefore it seeth at one and the same time all things around and above and below.
O how marvellous is Thy glance, my God, which is Os unto all that examine it! How fair and lovely is it unto all that love Thee! How dread is it unto all them that have abandoned Thee, O Lord my God! For ’tis
with Thy glance, Lord, that Thou quickenest ’
every spirit, and makest glad every saint, and puttest to flight every sorrow. Look then on me in mercy, and my soul is healed!
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