Crooked Finger (crookedfingers) wrote,
Crooked Finger
crookedfingers
  • Mood: exhausted

it is suddenly illuminated by a resplendent crown of unending light

"11. Our mind is first set on fire by the flame of distress on the consideration of our blindness, so that all the rust of bad habits may be burned up; once the eyes of our hearts are purified, the joy of the heavenly country is made known to us, so that we have been cleansed by weeping over what we have done, we may later more freely contemplate the object of our search through joy. First the darkness of evil is wiped away from our mind's eye by the insertion of burning distress, and then it is suddenly illuminated by a resplendent crown of unending light. After we have seen this light in some way, the mind is engulfed by a certain joyful security, and as if it were at the end of the present life, it is snatched away on high and recreated in some way as something new. There the mind is sprinkled by heavenly dew running out from a immense fountain, and there it realizes that it is incapable of receiving that rapture; sensing the truth, it knows that it does not see the full extent of that truth; it supposes that the nearer it draws to that great truth; the nearer it draws to that great truth, the further away it is from it, because unless it perceived it in some way, it would never sense that it could not perceive it." Gregory the Great pg. 75 'Moral Reflections on the Book of Job' by Gregory the Great Volume 5 Books 23-27.
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