Wednesday, March 8,
2017
Sacred poetry, continued. Once
again I quote from The Enlightened Heart: an anthology of Sacred Poetry
(Stephen Mitchell, ed.)
Today’s excerpts come from
Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso
”The love of God, unutterable and perfect,
flows into a pure soul the way
that light
rushes into a transparent
object.
The more love that it finds, the more it gives
itself; so that, as we grow
clear and open,
the more complete the joy of
heaven is.
This next part comes from a
dialogue between Dante and a soul who is occupying a lesser seat in heaven:
But you who are so happy here, tell me:
do you aspire to a more
profound
insight, or a greater ecstasy?
She smiled a little, as did the shades beside her;
then answered with such
gladness that her whole
being seemed to glow with
love’s first fire:
“Brother, God’s generosity itself
calms our will, and makes us
want no more
than what we have, and long
for nothing else.
If we desired any greater bliss,
we would not be in harmony
with Him
whose love assigns us to a
lower place.
The essence of this joy is that we all
have given up our personal
desires
so that our will is merged
with God’s own will.
Therefore our rank in heaven, from height to height,
is just as dear to each
particular soul
as to the Master who appointed
it.
In His will is our peace: it is the sea
into which all currents and
all streams
empty themselves, for all
eternity.”
May you, too, find you peace in
His will.
God bless you!
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