Let us burn together with this thirst; let us run together to the fountain of understanding. Let us . . . long rather for it as a hart yearns for a spring . . . let us long for the wellspring of which Scripture says, With you is the fountain of life. . . . Long for the fountains of water. With God is the fountain of life, a fountain that can never dry up. . . . God has everything that will refresh you. He is able to fill anyone who comes to him. . . . This is what I am thirsting for, to reach him and to appear before him. I am thirsty on my pilgrimage, parched in my running, but I will be totally satisfied when I arrive.

I am longing and thirsting for the worship of my living God, he is saying. To see the face of God means worshiping him according to the Law, and such worship was confined to Jerusalem. . . . very appropriately do they name God strong and living as they take note of the lifeless and immobile idols of the Babylonians.

Christ the Lord is the fountain of waters from which flows everything that restores us. Flowing streams can often run dry, but a fountain is always supplied with water. So we are rightly invited to hurry to the liquid of the sacred source; there our desire is never able to experience thirst.

The person, however, who has once tasted virtue and has come to understand its nature by his own experience of the good is no longer the kind of person who must be dragged away from his passionate attachment to evil by necessity and warning and compelled to look to virtue. On the contrary, he has an excessive thirst for what is superior. . . . [He] thirsts for participation in God more than the hart longs for the fountains of water. And it follows that the person who finds the fountain after this excessive thirst draws in as much water as the abundance of his desire draws off. But he who has received what he desired in himself is full of what he desired. For that which has become full is not again emptied on the model of physical satiety, nor does that which was drunk remain inactive in itself. In whomever the divine fountain has come into existence, it transforms the one who has embraced it to itself and imparts to this person a portion of its own power.^[1]

Nothing nourishes like that which nourishes the spirit. Blessed are those who weep, for they will laugh.

There is a weeping that springs from contemplating eternal good and longing for future light, and tears of joy and desire cannot help but break out as the soul is athirst for the mighty living God.

Where is your God? If a pagan says this to me, I cannot retort, What about you? Where is your God? because the pagan can point to his god. He indicates some stone with his finger and says, Look, there’s my god! Where is yours? If I laugh at the stone, and the pagan who pointed it out is embarrassed, he looks away from the stone toward the sky; then perhaps he points to the sun and says again, Look, there’s my god! Where is yours? He has found something he can demonstrate to my bodily eyes. For me it is different, not because I have nothing to demonstrate but because he lacks the kind of eyes to which I could demonstrate it. He was able to point the sun out to my bodily eyes as his god, but how can I point out to any eyes he has the sun’s Creator?

Seeing that God is Creator, he is in everything made; seeing that he is excellence and wisdom, he is in all holy powers. . . . God is even in people sometimes in excellence, sometimes in accomplishment: it is of angels to behave always according to God; of demons, never; of people to behave sometimes rightly, sometimes not.

I look for my God in every bodily creature, whether on earth or in the sky, but I do not find him. I look for his substance in my own soul but do not find him there. Yet still I have pondered on this search for my God and, longing to gaze on the invisible realities of God by understanding them through created things, I poured out my soul above myself, and now there is nothing left for me to touch, except my God. For there, above my soul, is the home of my God; there he dwells, from there he looks down on me, from there he created me, from there he governs me and takes thought for me, from there he arouses me, calls me, guides me and leads me on, and from there he will lead me to journey’s end.

After the sad events, therefore, he proclaims pleasant ones and ahead of time teaches that they will quickly secure their recall, and with the guidance of God’s grace, they will return to the land of their desire and will rebuild God’s house, will celebrate the customary festivals and welcome into their ears the festive sound and spiritual melody.

In God’s home there is an everlasting party. What is celebrated there is not some occasion that passes; the choirs of angels keep eternal festival, for the eternally present face of God is joy never diminished. This is a feast day that does not open at dawn or close at sundown.

Rejoicing refers to the singing of psalms, while confession must include lamentation over sins. The combination of these two things undoubtedly makes for a complete Christian. . . . What is sweeter and more salutary than to praise God and to continually accuse oneself.

Do not be sad, spirit, but hope in the Lord because I confess to him. He is the Savior of my countenance, that is, my God is the restorer of his own image.

Troubled by the hazardous turnings of this world, David says, Why are you sad, O soul, why do you trouble me? Hope in God, for I will give praise to him, the salvation of my countenance and my God. Therefore, when we are distressed and apprehensive, let hope strengthen us with the expectation of things that are to come. Look to each phrase individually. Hope, for I will give praise, he says; not I give praise, but I will give praise. This means: I will give praise better at that time when I shall behold the glory of God with face unveiled and be transformed into the same image. As he was consoling himself, suddenly turning to himself, he says, My soul is troubled within myself; that is, I, who ought to strengthen others, am myself disturbed, and because I do not have strength of myself, let us receive it from the Creator.

My soul was troubled as it turned to me. It would not be, would it, if it turned to God? It is troubled when it turns to myself. When turned toward the unchangeable, it received new strength, but when turned to what is prone to change it was disturbed. . . . Since there is in me no stability, neither is there any hope for me in myself. My soul was troubled as is turned to me. Would you like to free your soul from its anxiety? Then do not let it linger in yourself. . . . Put no trust in yourself but only in your God. If you trust in yourself, your soul will be turned toward yourself and gravely troubled, because it cannot yet find any grounds for security in you. So then, if my soul turned toward myself and found itself disturbed, what is left to me but humility, the humble refusal of the soul to place any reliance on itself? What course is open to it, except to make itself very small indeed, and to humble itself so that it may be raised up? Let it attribute nothing to itself, and then what is profitable may be granted to it by God.

God is not to be sought from the height of arrogance, but the remembrance of him is found in situations of lowly humility.

When we come up against the demon of acedia, then with tears let us divide the soul and have one part offer consolation and the other receive consolation. And sowing within ourselves goodly hopes, let us chant with holy David this [verse].

When deep calls deep, the Son calls the Father from the depth of land and river, and you have opened the cataracts of heaven. As the Holy Spirit descends, the Father addresses the Son from the height of the heavens. When he calls from the deep to deep, the glory of the Lord comes to me.

Listen to this: Deep calls on deep at the voice of your floodgates. Scripture of the Old Testament calls on Scripture of the New Testament for the consummation of holiness and the fullness of grace; it calls with the voice of grace and the outflowing of spiritual abundance.

Any human being, even a holy, good-living person, even one who has made great progress, is a deep place, and such a person calls on another depth when he proclaims to another some part of the faith, some part of the truth, with a view to eternal life. But the deep that preaches is profitable to the deep he calls to if he calls in the sound of God’s cataracts. Deep calls to deep, one person wins over another, but not with his own voice only: he calls in the sound of your cataracts.

The waves wash over me in the sufferings I undergo now, but your threats are judgments poised above me. All my present hardships are your waves, but all your menaces hang over me, ready to break on my head. In the waves this abyss that I am calls out, but behind your impeding threats is that other abyss to which this one calls. Already I flounder amid your waves, but your threats are far more serious and they hang over me, for a threat is something not yet pressing down but poised overhead. Yet you set me free, and therefore I have said to my soul, Hope in God, because I will confess to him, the salvation of my countenance, my God. The more my woes are multiplied, the gentler will be your mercy.

I considered further that though the impending troubles are so numerous, it is very easy for you to provide a solution; if by day you bid lovingkindness to be shown us—in other words, relief from the troubles to occur—it happens so quickly that immediately those in receipt of good things set about singing through the night and offering hymns of praise to you for what has happened. When God enjoins mercy by day, then, immediately by night his song is with me, as if to say, So prompt will be the discharge of his command that, with his command given by day, it is possible for me to sing by night of the good things done to me.

It is precisely what is learned in quietness that is later manifested in distress. The words of the Law are learned in restful times, but their fruit is later displayed in affliction.

It is of the greatest ignorance to think that God is in a place. God does not stand in a place. He is free.

Pondering all this within myself, then, I was again encouraged not to be alarmed but to hope in God, who readily provides me with salvation and again makes me esteemed. Turning their thoughts over and over, sometimes in despair, sometimes in hope, is typical of people suffering.

When the inner person shows signs for a time of wavering between vice and virtue, say, Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God. You must never let suggestions of evil grow on you or a babel of disorder win strength in your breast. Kill the enemy while he is small, and, that you may not have a crop of tares, nip the evil in the bud.

Do not despair of salvation, O soul, he is saying: you have God as Savior; in him you gain sound hope. Quench your discouragement and receive consolation.

I beseech you to remember in all your present contest the great reward laid up in heaven for those who are persecuted and reviled for righteousness’ sake, and to be glad and leap for joy on account of the Son of man,^[1] just as the apostles once rejoiced when they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for his name.^[2] And if you should ever perceive your soul drawing back, let the mind of Christ, which is in us,^[3] say to it, when it wishes to trouble that mind as much as it can, Why are you sorrowful, my soul, and why do you disquiet me? Hope in God, for I shall yet give him thanks. I pray that our souls may never be disquieted, and even more that in the presence of the tribunals and of the naked swords drawn against our necks they may be guarded by the peace of God, which passes all understanding,^[4] and may be quieted when they consider that those who are foreigners from the body are at home with the Lord of all.^[5] But if we are not so strong as always to preserve calm, at least let not the disquiet of the soul be poured forth or appear to strangers, so that we may have the opportunity of giving an apology to God, when we say to him, My God, my soul is disquieted within me.

My personal savior is my God: I trusted that you would doubtless meet my request, since you personally are my salvation and my Lord (the term personal savior meaning my support, my glory—in other words, It is you yourself who provides me with this).