Sixteenth Day

" As the hart panteth after the fountains of water : so my soul panteth after thee, O God. My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God ; when shall I come and appear before the face of God ?"¹

*7

" Yet, as the sparrow hath found herself a house, and the turtle a nest for herself where she may lay her young";² so, while waiting to be taken to the holy city of Jerusalem, " Beata pads visio^'i Laudem Gloria has found her retreat, her beatitude, heaven beforehand, where she already begins her life of eternity.

" In God my soul is silent, it is from Him I expect my deliverance. Surely He is the rock where I find salvation, my citadel, and I shall be moved no more I"J

This is the mystery to which my lyre is tuned to-day. My divine Master has said to me, as to Zaccheus : " Make haste, and come down, for this day I must abide in thy house. "³ Make haste and descend, but where ? Into the innermost depths of my being, after having left self, separated from self, stripped myself of self — in a word, without self.

" I must abide in thy house." It is my Master Who utters this ; my Master Who desires to abide in me with the Father and His Spirit of Love so that I may " have fellowship " with Them. " Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners . . . but you are the domestics of God," || as St. Paul says.

I think that to be a domestic of God is to abide in the bosom of the tranquil Trinity, in my innermost depths, in the invincible fortress of holy recollection described by St. John of the Cross.

" My soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord."T

Footnotes

1. Ps. xli. 1, 2. ↩

2. Ps. Ixxxiii. 4. f Vespers, Hymn of the Dedication. ↩

3. St. Luke xix. 5. || Eph. ii. 19. 11 Ps. Ixxxiii. I. ↩