Chapter LXXXI
“God seeth all our living a penance: for nature-longing of our love is to Him a lasting penance in us.” “His love maketh Him to long”
OUR Good Lord shewed Himself in diverse manners both in heaven and in earth, but I saw Him take no place save in man’s soul.
He shewed Himself in earth in the sweet Incarnation and in His blessed Passion. And in other manner He shewed Himself in earth [as in the Revelation] where I say: I saw God in a Point.[1] And in another manner He shewed Himself in earth thus as it were in pilgrimage: that is to say, He is here with us, leading us, and shall be till when He hath brought us all to His bliss in heaven. He shewed Himself diverse times reigning, as it is aforesaid; but principally in man’s soul. He hath taken there His resting-place and His worshipful City: out of which worshipful See He shall never rise nor remove without end.
Marvellous and stately[2] is the place where the Lord dwelleth, and therefore He willeth that we readily answer to[3] His gracious touching, more rejoicing in His whole love than sorrowing in our often fallings. For it is the most worship to Him of anything that we may do, that we live gladly and merrily, for His love, in our penance. For He beholdeth us so tenderly that He seeth all our living [here] a penance: for nature’s longing in us is to Him aye-lasting penance in us[4]: which penance He worketh in us and mercifully He helpeth us to bear it. For His love maketh Him to long [for us]; His wisdom and His truth with His rightfulness maketh Him to suffer us [to be] here: and in this same manner [of longing and abiding] He willeth to see it in us. For this is our natural penance,—and the highest, as to my sight. For this penance goeth[5] never from us till what time that we be fulfilled, when we shall have Him to our meed. And therefore He willeth that we set our hearts in the Overpassing[6]: that is to say, from the pain that we feel into the bliss that we trust.
- ch. xi. ↵
- “solemne.” ↵
- “entenden to” = turn our attention, respond to. ↵
- or, as in S. de Cressy, “For kind longing in us to him is a lasting penance in us.” ↵
- “cometh.” ↵
- The exceeding Bliss. “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”—2 Cor. iv. 17. ↵