Prayer to Eternal Wisdom

1. O divine Wisdom, sovereign of heaven and earth, humbly prostrate before you, I beg your pardon for my boldness in speaking of your greatness, ignorant and sinful as I am. Do not look, I pray, upon the darkness of my mind and the stains of my lips, or, if you do look upon them, let it only be to destroy them with a glance of your eyes and a breath of your mouth. You possess so much beauty and sweetness, you have preserved me from so many evils and heaped upon me so many blessings, and yet you are so unknown and despised. How could you wish me to be silent? Not only justice and gratitude, but my own interest obliges me to speak of you, though only in stammering words. Like a child, I do nothing but stammer, it is true, but that is because I am still a child, and, in stammering, I long to learn to speak well when I have reached the fullness of your age.

2. There seems to be no wit or order in what I write, I admit, but it is because I have so great a desire to possess you that, like Solomon, I seek you on every side, turning about without method. If I strive to make you known in this world, it is because you yourself have promised that all who shed light upon you and reveal you will have eternal life. Accept, then, my dear princess, my feeble stammerings as lofty discourses, receive the strokes of my pen as so many steps I take to find you; and from the height of your throne bestow such blessings and such light upon what I wish to do and say of you, that all who hear it may be set aflame with a new desire to love and possess you, in time and in eternity.