Shall we, then, reckon curiosity among the things to be condemned? Or shall anything restore us to hope but your complete mercy, since you have begun to change us? And you know to what extent you have already changed me, first healing me of the lust of vindicating myself, so that you might forgive all the rest of my iniquities and heal all my infirmities, and redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with tender mercies and loving kindness, and satisfy my desire with good things; you curbed my pride with fear and tamed my neck to your yoke. And now I bear it and it is light to me, because you have so promised and have so made it. And in very truth it was, but I knew it not when I feared to take it up.
But, O Lord, you alone reign without pride, because you are the only true Lord and have no lord. Tell me, has this third kind of temptation left me, or can it ever leave me throughout this lifetime - the desire to be feared and loved by men for no other purpose but that I may enjoy that which is no joy? It is miserable life and an unseemly ostentation! From this especially it comes that we do not love you nor have a holy fear of you. And therefore you resist the proud and give grace to the humble. Yes, you thunder down on the ambitious designs of the world, and the foundations of the hills tremble.
Because certain offices of human society make it necessary for the holder to be loved and feared of men, the adversary of our true blessedness presses hard on us, spreading everywhere his snares of "Well done, well done." Greedily reaching for them, we may be caught unaware and separate our joy from your truth and fix it in the deceits of men, and take pleasure in being loved and feared - not for your sake, but in your stead. Having been made like our adversary, then, he may have us for his own, not in the harmony of charity but in the fellowship of punishment. He aspired to exalt his throne in the north, so that we men, dark and cold, might serve him who would become a perverse and distorted imitation of you.
But we, O Lord, lo, we are your little flock. Possess us as yours. Stretch your wings over us, and let us take refuge under them. Be our glory. Let us be loved for your sake and let your Word be reverenced in in us. Those who desire to be praised by the men you condemn will not be defended by men when you judge, nor delivered when you pass sentence. But when - not as when the sinner is praised in the desires of his soul, nor when the unrighteous is blessed in his ungodliness - but when a man is praised for some gift which you have given him, and he is more gratified by the praise for himself than that he possess the gift for which he is praised, such a one also is praised while you blame. Truly, the man who praised him is better than the one being praised. For the one took pleasure in the gift of God in man, while the other was better pleased with the gift of man than that of God.
We are assaulted by these temptations daily, O Lord; without ceasing we are tried. Our daily furnace is the human tongue. And in this respect, too, you command continence [self-mastery] of us. Give what you command and command what you will. You know the groaning of my heart on this matter, and the rivers that flood my eyes. For I cannot ascertain how far I am clean of this plague, and I stand in great fear of my secret faults which your eyes perceive but mine do not. For in other kinds of temptation I have some way of examining myself; in this, hardly any. For in keeping my mind from the pleasures of the flesh and from idle curiosity, I see how much I have been able to do without them, either voluntarily foregoing them or not having them available.
Then I ask myself how much more or less troublesome it is to me not to have them. Riches may be desired that they may serve someone of these lusts, or two, or all three of them. If the soul cannot tell whether it despises riches when it has them, it may cast them aside so that it may prove itself in this way. But to be without praise and to test our abilities in that regard, must we live wickedly, or lead a life so abandoned and atrocious that no one could know us without detesting us? What greater madness could be said or thought? But if praise is usual, and if it ought to accompany a good life and good works, we ought to forego its company as little as we would the good life itself. Yet I cannot tell whether I shall be contented or troubled by being without something unless i am deprived of it.
What, then, do I confess to you, O Lord, in this kind of temptation? What, but that I am delighted with praise, but with truth itself more than with praise? For if it were proposed to me, whether I would rather, being mad or in error on all things, be praised by all men, or being consistent and well assured in the truth, be blamed by all, I see which I would choose. Yet I would rather that the approval of another should not even increase my joy for any good in me. I admit, though, that it does increase it, and more than that, that criticism diminishes it.
When I am troubled at this misery of mine, an excuse presents itself to me - of what value it is, only you know, O God, for it leaves me uncertain. Here it is: It is not self-control [continence] alone which you have commanded of us (that is, that we should hold back our love from certain things) but also righteousness as well (that is, upon what to bestow our love) and have wished us to love not only you but also our neighbor. Often when I am gratified by intelligent praise, I appear to myself to be pleased by the competence or insight I see in my neighbor. In the same way, I seem to be sorry for the defect in him when I hear him criticize either what he does not understand or what is good.
For I am sometimes grieved at the praise I get, either when those things are praised in me which I dislike in myself, or when lesser or trifling goods are more valued than they ought to be. But again, how do I know whether i am affected like this because I do not want him who praises me to differ from me about myself - not being influenced by consideration for him, but because those same good things which please me in myself please me more when they please someone else as well? For, in a sense, I am not praised when my judgment of myself is not praised, whenever either those things which displease me are praised, or those which please me less are praised more. It seems then that I am uncertain about myself in this matter.
Behold, O Truth, in you I see that I ought not to be moved at my own praises for my own sake, but for the good of my neighbor. And whether this is so with me, I do not know. For concerning this I know less of myself than you do. I beseech you now, O my God, reveal me to myself, too, that I may confess to my brethren who are to pray for me where I find myself weak. Once again, let me examine myself more diligently. If, in the praise I receive I am moved with consideration for the good of my neighbor, why am I less moved if someone else is unjustly criticized than if it be myself? Why am I more irritated by reproach cast upon me than at that cast upon another in my presence with the same injustice? Do I not know this also? Or is it finally that I deceive myself, and do not know the truth before you in my heart and speech? Put such madness far from me, O Lord, lest my own mouth be to me the sinner's oil to anoint my head.
I am poor and needy; yet I am better when in secret groaning I am displeased with myself and seek your mercy until what is lacking in my defective condition is renewed and made complete in that peace which the eye of the proud does not know.
The word which comes out of the mouth, and the actions known to men bring with them a most dangerous temptation from to love of praise, which, to establish a certain glory of our own solicits and collects men compliments. It tempts, even when I reprove myself for it within myself, on the very ground that it is reproved. Often a man glories even more vainly in his very scorn of praise. And so he is no longer avoiding vainglory when he glories in his scorn of vainglory.
Within us, also, is another evil, arising out of the same kind of temptation, by which men become vain, pleasing themselves in themselves, though they do not please nor displease nor aim at pleasing others. But by pleasing themselves they greatly displease you. They do not merely take pleasure in things that are not good as if they were good, but take pleasure in your good things as if they were their own; or if, acknowledging the good things to be yours, they think they deserve them, or even if they regard them as from your grace, they do not use them with brotherly rejoicing, but begrudge that same grace to others. In all these and similar perils and labors, you see the trembling of my hearts. It is not so much that I never inflict these wounds on myself, as that they are ever anew healed by you.
Where have you not walked with me, O Truth, teaching me what to avoid and what to desire when I submitted to you what I could see here below and asked your counsel? With my external senses I surveyed the world as I was able, and observed the life which my body derives from me and from these senses themselves. From this I advanced inwardly into the recesses of memory - those various and spacious chambers, wonderfully filled with unnumbered wealth. I considered and was afraid, and could discern none of these things without you, and found none of them to be you.
It was not I, myself, who discovered these things, I, who went over them all and labored to distinguish and evaluate everything according to its worth, taking some things from the report of my senses, asking questions about others which I felt to be mixed up with myself, numbering and distinguishing the reporters themselves. Then, in the vast storehouse of my memory I examined some things carefully, relegating others to the background, taking out others into the light. Yet it was not myself who did these things - that is, the power by which I did them was not my own. Nor was it you, for you are the unfailing light which I consulted concerning all these things, as to whether they were, what they were, and what their real value was. And I heard you teaching and commanding me. And this I often do. It delights me, as far as I can be freed from necessary duties, to have recourse to this pleasure.
But in all these which I go over in consultation with you, I can find no safe place for my soul but in you, in whom all my scattered members may be gathered, so that nothing about me may depart from you. And sometimes you introduce me to a most rare affection in my inmost soul, an inexplicable sweetness that seems to have nothing in it that would not belong to the life to come if it were perfected in me. But by these wretched weights of mine, I relapse again into these lower things, am swept back by my old custom, and am held. I weep greatly, yet I am greatly held. To such an extent does the burden of bad habits weigh us down. I can stay in this condition, but I would not; I would stay there, but I cannot; in both ways, I am miserable.
And thus I have reflected on the weariness of my sins in that threefold lust, and have called your right hand to my help. For with a wounded heart I have seen your brightness, being beaten back, I said, "Who can attain to it ? I am cut off from before your eyes!" You are the Truth who presides over all things, but I, through my covetousness, would not indeed forego you, but wished to possess a lie along with you, as no one wishes to speak so falsely as to be ignorant of the truth itself. So then, I lost you, because you do not deign to be enjoyed along with a lie.
Whom could I find to reconcile me to you? Was I to solicit angels? By what prayers? By what sacraments? Many seeking to return to you, and not able of themselves, have, as I hear, tried this, have fallen into a desire for curious visions, and have been deemed worthy to be deluded. For they, being exalted, sought you by the pride of learning, thrusting themselves forward instead of beating their breasts. And so, by a correspondence of heart, they drew to themselves the princes of the air, as conspirators and allies of their pride, by whom, through the power of magic they were deceived - seeking a mediator by whom they might be cleansed and there was none. For it was the devil himself, transforming himself into an angel of light. And he allured proud flesh all the more in that he was without a fleshly body.
For they were mortal and sinful; but you, Lord, to whom they proudly sought to be reconciled, are immortal and sinless. But a mediator between God and man must have something in him like God, something in him like men, lest being only like man, he should be far from God, and being only like God, should be too unlike man and so not a mediator. In your secret judgment, then, pride deserved to be deluded by that deceitful mediator who has one thing in common with man: that is sin. Another he would appear to have in common with God: not being clothed with the mortality of flesh, and so would boast himself to be immortal. But since the wages of sin is death, this he has in common with mankind, that with them he is condemned to death.
But the true Mediator, whom you have pointed out to the humble in your secret mercy, and sent, that by his example they too might learn that same humility - that Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, appeared between mortal sinners and the immortal just One - mortal, as men are mortal; just, as God is just; so that because the wages of righteousness is life and peace, he might cancel the death of justified sinners by a righteousness united with God. He was willing to undergo death in common with them. Hence he was shown forth to holy men of old, so that they, through faith in his Passion to come, even as we through faith in it as already past, might be saved. For as Man, he was Mediator; but as for Word, he was not in the middle between God and man, because he was equal to God, and God with God, and together with the Holy Spirit, one God.
How you have loved us, good Father, who spared not your only Son, but delivered him up for us wicked ones! How you have loved us, for whom he did not count it robbery to be equal with you, but became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross! He alone was free among the dead, having power to lay down his life and power to take it up again. For us he was both Victor and Victim, Victor because he was the Victim. He was Priest and Sacrifice for us, and Priest because he was Sacrifice, making us sons to you instead of slaves, by being born himself your Son [in his incarnation] and becoming our slave. Rightly, then, is my hope strongly fixed in him that you will heal all my infirmities by him who sits at your right hand and makes intercession for us. Otherwise I should despair. For many and great are my infirmities, many they are and great! But your medicine is greater. We might think that your Word was far from any union with mankind, and despair of ourselves if he had not been made flesh and dwelt among us.
Terrified by my sins and the load of my misery, I had resolved in my heart and had purposed to flee into the wilderness. But you forbade me and strengthen me, saying, Since Christ died for all, they who live should no longer live unto themselves but unto him who died for them. See, Lord, I cast all my care upon you, that I may live and behold wondrous things out of your law. You know my skillfulness and my infirmities: teach me and heal me. He, your only Son, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, has redeemed me with his blood. Let not the proud speak evil of me, because I consider my ransom, and eat and drink and minister it to others. And being poor, I desire to be satisfied with that Food together with those who eat and are satisfied. And they that seek him shall praise the Lord.
BY SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Page 6
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Monday, April 28, 2014
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
I am not greatly concerned with all the attractions of sweet scents. When they are absent, I do not miss them; when they are present, I do not refuse them, yet am ready to be without them. So I seem to myself, though possibly I am deceived. For that is also a lamentable darkness which conceals my capabilities from me, so that my mind, inquiring into itself concerning its own powers, does not readily dare to believe itself, because even what is already in it is largely concealed unless it is exposed by experience. And no one ought to be secure in this life, the whole of which is called a temptation, so that he who has been made better from worse may also from better be made worse. Our only hope, our only confidence, our only assured promise, is your mercy.
The delights of the ear had more firmly entangled and conquered me, but you have unbound and liberated me. Now, I still find some repose in those melodies into which your words breathe soul, when they are sung with a sweet and trained voice. Yet I do not allow myself to be held by them, for I can disengage myself from them when I wish. But with the words which are the life of such melodies and by which they gain admission into me, they seek a place of some honor in my heart, and I can scarcely assign them a fitting one.
For at times I seem to myself to give them more honor than is proper, sensing that our minds are more devoutly and fervently inflamed in devotion by the holy words themselves when they are sung this way, than when they are not. I notice that the different emotions of my spirit, by their sweet variety, have their appropriate expressions in the voice and singing, by some hidden relationship which stirs them up. But this gratification of my flesh, which must not be allowed to take control over my mind, often beguiles me. My feelings do not serve reason, so as to follow it patiently, but after having gained admission for the sake of reason, strive to grab the reins and take the lead. Thus, in these things I sin without knowing it, but realize it afterwards.
At other times, anxiously shunning this very deception, I err by being too strict, and sometimes to the degree of wishing to have every melody of sweet music to which David's Psalter is often sung banished both from my ears and from the Church itself. That way seems safer which I remember having often heard was followed by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. He made the reader of the psalm utter it with such a slight inflection of the voice that it was more like speaking than singing. Yet, again, when I remember the tears I shed at the songs of your Church in the early days of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved not by the singing, but by what is being sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and skillful modulation, I recognize once more the great usefulness of this practice.
Thus, I vacillate between the perilous pleasure and proved soundness - inclined rather to approve the custom of singing in the Church (though not pronouncing it as an irrevocable opinion) so that the weaker minds may rise to the feeling of devotion by the delight of the ears. Yet when I happen to be more moved by the singing than by what is being sung, I confess that I have sinned gravely, and then would rather not have heard the singing. See my condition now! Weep with me and weep for me, you who can so control your inward feelings that good results follow. For you who do not act this way, these things do not concern you. But O my God, hear me and look upon me, and have mercy on me and heal me, you in whose presence I have become a puzzle to myself; and this is my infirmity.
There remain the delights of these eyes of my flesh, about which to make my confession in the hearing of the ears of your temple, those brotherly and devout ears, and so to conclude the temptations of the lust of the flesh which still assault me, as I groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed upon with my house from heaven.
My eyes love beautiful and varied forms, and bright and soft colors. let these not occupy my soul; let God rather possess it, who made these things very good indeed - for he is my Good, not these. Yet, these affect me during the whole waking day. No rest is given from them, as there sometimes is in silence from music and from all voices. For that queen of colors, the light, flooding all we look upon, wherever I am during the day, gliding past me in various forms, soothes me when I am busied about other things and not noticing it. And it entwines itself so strongly, that, if it is suddenly withdrawn, I look longingly for it, and if it is long absent, my mind is saddened.
O Light that Tobit saw when with his eyes closed in blindness, he taught his son the way of life, and led the way himself with the feet of charity, never going astray. Or the Light which Isaac saw, when his bodily eyes were so dim by reason of old age that he could not see, it was granted him to bless his sons without knowing which was which, but in blessing them to know them. Or which Jacob saw, blind through great age but with an illumined heart, when he shed light upon the different races of people yet to come - fore-shown in the persons of his sons - and he laid his hands, mystically crossed, on his grandchildren, the sons of Joseph, not as their father by his outward eye corrected them, but as he himself inwardly discerned them.
This is the true Light, the only one, and all who see and love it are one. But that corporeal light of which I spoke, seasons the life of this world for those who blindly love it with an enticing and fatal sweetness. They who know how to praise you for this earthly light, "O God, Creator of All," and sing of it in your hymns, but are not taken up with it in their sleep. Such I desire to be. I resist these seductions of the eyes, lest my feet by which i walk on your path be entangled. And I lift up my inward eyes to you, that you would be pleased to pluck my feet out of the snare. You do repeatedly pluck them out, for they are entangled. You do not cease to pluck them out, but I constantly remain fast in the snares set round me on all sides. For you shall neither slumber nor sleep, who keep Israel.
What innumerable things, made by various arts and products, in our clothing, shoes, vessels and every kind of work, in pictures, too, and various images - and these far in excess of all necessary and moderate use, and all devotional significance, men have added for the enthrallment of their own eyes! Outwardly they follow what they make themselves, and inwardly forsake him by whom they themselves were made - yes, and destroying that which he made them!
I also sing a hymn to you, my God and my joy, for these things, and offer a sacrifice of praise to my Sanctifier for all those beautiful designs which pass through men minds and are conveyed to artistic hands, coming from that Beauty which is above our souls, which my souls sighs after day and night. But as for the makers and followers of those outward beauties, they derive from that Beauty their power of judging them, but not of using them. And this power, too, is there, though they do not see it, so they might not wander, but keep their strength for you and not dissipate it on delicious lassitude. And though I speak this way and see this, I, too, get my steps entangled with these outward beauties, but you rescue me. O Lord, you rescue me, because your loving kindness is ever before my eyes. For I am caught miserably, but you rescue me mercifully. Sometimes I am not even aware of this, not having become wholly entangled. At other times, the rescue is painful, because I was held fast in them.
So this is added another form of temptation, more complex in its peril. For besides the lust of the flesh which lies in the gratification of all our senses and pleasures, whose slaves wander far from you, are wasted and perish, the soul has, through those same bodily senses a certain vain and curious desire, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning - not delighting in the flesh, but in making experiments through the flesh. This longing, since it originates in an appetite for knowledge, and since sight is the sense mainly used to acquire knowledge, is called in divine language the lust of the eyes. For seeing properly belongs to the eye, yet we use this word in connection with the other senses, too, when we exercise them in the search for knowledge.
For we do not say, "Listen how it glows!" or "Smell how it glistens" or "Taste how it shines" or "Feel how it gleams" for all these are said to be seen. Yet we not only say, "See how it shines" which the eyes alone can perceive; but we also say, "See how it sounds, see how it smells, see how it tastes, and see how hard it is." And so the general experience of the senses, as we said, is called the lust of the eyes because the office of seeing, though properly belonging to the eyes, is applied to the other senses by analogy when they seek after any knowledge.
By this it may be more clearly discerned when the object of the senses is pleasure and when it is curiosity. For pleasure seeks objects that are beautiful, melodies, fragrant, tasty, soft; but curiosity, for the sake of novelty, seeks the very opposite as well, not in order to experience their trouble, but from the passion of experimenting and knowing.
What pleasure is there to see in a mangled corpse that which makes you shudder? And yet, if it is lying near, we flock to it, to be made sad and to turn pale. They fear they will see it in their sleep, as if anyone had forced them to look at it when they were awake, or any report of its beauty had attracted them to it! Thus, it is also with the other senses, which would take too long to go through. From this malady of curiosity come all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. From it men go on to search out the secret powers of nature (which do not pertain to us) which to know brings no profit, and which men desire to know simply for the sake of knowing. From this malady, too, with the same goal of gaining perverted knowledge, we consult the magical arts. Even in religion itself God is tempted when signs and wonders are demanded of him - not desired for any saving purpose, but merely to make trial of him.
In such a vast wilderness as this, full of snares and dangers, I have cut many of them off and thrust them out of my heart, as you have given me power to do, O God of my salvation. Yet when do I dare say - since so many things of this kind buzz on all sides about our daily life - when do I dare say that nothing of this sort engages my attention or causes an idle interest in me? True, the theatres no longer carry me away now-a-days nor do I care to know the courses of the stars, nor did my soul ever consult departed spirits. I detest all unhallowed rites. But yet, O Lord, my God, to whom I owe humble and single hearted service, by what subtlety of suggestion does the enemy tempt me to require some sign from you! But I beseech you by our King, and by our pure and holy country Jerusalem, that as any consent on my part to such thoughts is far from me, so may it ever be farther and farther. But when I pray to you for the salvation of anyone, my goal and intention is far different. For you do what you will, and you give me the grace and will give me the grace to follow you willingly.
Nevertheless, in how many petty and contemptible things is our curiosity tempted daily, and who can recount how often we give in to it? How often, when people are telling idle tales, do we begin, as if we were tolerating them to keep from offending the weak, and then gradually begin to take an interest in them! I do not go now-a-days to the circus to see a dog chasing a hare, but if by chance I pass such a chase in the field, it may distract me even from some serious thought, and draw me after it - not that I turn aside the body of my horse, but by the inclination of my mind. And unless you, reminding me of my weakness, speedily warn me to lift my thoughts to you above the sight, or to despise it wholly and pass on by, I, vain creature that I am, will stand gazing at it.
When sitting at home, my attention is often distracted by a lizard catching flies, or by a spider entangling flies as they rush into her web. Is the feeling of curiosity different because they are by small creatures? I go on from such distractions to praise you, the wonderful Creator and Disposer of all things; but that is not what attracts my attention. It is one thing to get up quickly; it is another not to fall. And of such things my life is full, and my only hope is your wonderful, great mercy. For when this heart of ours becomes the receptacle of such things, and bears multitudes of these abounding vanities, then, our prayers are often interrupted and disturbed by them, and while in your presence we direct the voice of our heart to your ears, such a great concern as this is interrupted by the influx of I know not what idle thoughts.
Page 5
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
The delights of the ear had more firmly entangled and conquered me, but you have unbound and liberated me. Now, I still find some repose in those melodies into which your words breathe soul, when they are sung with a sweet and trained voice. Yet I do not allow myself to be held by them, for I can disengage myself from them when I wish. But with the words which are the life of such melodies and by which they gain admission into me, they seek a place of some honor in my heart, and I can scarcely assign them a fitting one.
For at times I seem to myself to give them more honor than is proper, sensing that our minds are more devoutly and fervently inflamed in devotion by the holy words themselves when they are sung this way, than when they are not. I notice that the different emotions of my spirit, by their sweet variety, have their appropriate expressions in the voice and singing, by some hidden relationship which stirs them up. But this gratification of my flesh, which must not be allowed to take control over my mind, often beguiles me. My feelings do not serve reason, so as to follow it patiently, but after having gained admission for the sake of reason, strive to grab the reins and take the lead. Thus, in these things I sin without knowing it, but realize it afterwards.
At other times, anxiously shunning this very deception, I err by being too strict, and sometimes to the degree of wishing to have every melody of sweet music to which David's Psalter is often sung banished both from my ears and from the Church itself. That way seems safer which I remember having often heard was followed by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. He made the reader of the psalm utter it with such a slight inflection of the voice that it was more like speaking than singing. Yet, again, when I remember the tears I shed at the songs of your Church in the early days of my recovered faith, and how even now I am moved not by the singing, but by what is being sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and skillful modulation, I recognize once more the great usefulness of this practice.
Thus, I vacillate between the perilous pleasure and proved soundness - inclined rather to approve the custom of singing in the Church (though not pronouncing it as an irrevocable opinion) so that the weaker minds may rise to the feeling of devotion by the delight of the ears. Yet when I happen to be more moved by the singing than by what is being sung, I confess that I have sinned gravely, and then would rather not have heard the singing. See my condition now! Weep with me and weep for me, you who can so control your inward feelings that good results follow. For you who do not act this way, these things do not concern you. But O my God, hear me and look upon me, and have mercy on me and heal me, you in whose presence I have become a puzzle to myself; and this is my infirmity.
There remain the delights of these eyes of my flesh, about which to make my confession in the hearing of the ears of your temple, those brotherly and devout ears, and so to conclude the temptations of the lust of the flesh which still assault me, as I groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed upon with my house from heaven.
My eyes love beautiful and varied forms, and bright and soft colors. let these not occupy my soul; let God rather possess it, who made these things very good indeed - for he is my Good, not these. Yet, these affect me during the whole waking day. No rest is given from them, as there sometimes is in silence from music and from all voices. For that queen of colors, the light, flooding all we look upon, wherever I am during the day, gliding past me in various forms, soothes me when I am busied about other things and not noticing it. And it entwines itself so strongly, that, if it is suddenly withdrawn, I look longingly for it, and if it is long absent, my mind is saddened.
O Light that Tobit saw when with his eyes closed in blindness, he taught his son the way of life, and led the way himself with the feet of charity, never going astray. Or the Light which Isaac saw, when his bodily eyes were so dim by reason of old age that he could not see, it was granted him to bless his sons without knowing which was which, but in blessing them to know them. Or which Jacob saw, blind through great age but with an illumined heart, when he shed light upon the different races of people yet to come - fore-shown in the persons of his sons - and he laid his hands, mystically crossed, on his grandchildren, the sons of Joseph, not as their father by his outward eye corrected them, but as he himself inwardly discerned them.
This is the true Light, the only one, and all who see and love it are one. But that corporeal light of which I spoke, seasons the life of this world for those who blindly love it with an enticing and fatal sweetness. They who know how to praise you for this earthly light, "O God, Creator of All," and sing of it in your hymns, but are not taken up with it in their sleep. Such I desire to be. I resist these seductions of the eyes, lest my feet by which i walk on your path be entangled. And I lift up my inward eyes to you, that you would be pleased to pluck my feet out of the snare. You do repeatedly pluck them out, for they are entangled. You do not cease to pluck them out, but I constantly remain fast in the snares set round me on all sides. For you shall neither slumber nor sleep, who keep Israel.
What innumerable things, made by various arts and products, in our clothing, shoes, vessels and every kind of work, in pictures, too, and various images - and these far in excess of all necessary and moderate use, and all devotional significance, men have added for the enthrallment of their own eyes! Outwardly they follow what they make themselves, and inwardly forsake him by whom they themselves were made - yes, and destroying that which he made them!
I also sing a hymn to you, my God and my joy, for these things, and offer a sacrifice of praise to my Sanctifier for all those beautiful designs which pass through men minds and are conveyed to artistic hands, coming from that Beauty which is above our souls, which my souls sighs after day and night. But as for the makers and followers of those outward beauties, they derive from that Beauty their power of judging them, but not of using them. And this power, too, is there, though they do not see it, so they might not wander, but keep their strength for you and not dissipate it on delicious lassitude. And though I speak this way and see this, I, too, get my steps entangled with these outward beauties, but you rescue me. O Lord, you rescue me, because your loving kindness is ever before my eyes. For I am caught miserably, but you rescue me mercifully. Sometimes I am not even aware of this, not having become wholly entangled. At other times, the rescue is painful, because I was held fast in them.
So this is added another form of temptation, more complex in its peril. For besides the lust of the flesh which lies in the gratification of all our senses and pleasures, whose slaves wander far from you, are wasted and perish, the soul has, through those same bodily senses a certain vain and curious desire, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning - not delighting in the flesh, but in making experiments through the flesh. This longing, since it originates in an appetite for knowledge, and since sight is the sense mainly used to acquire knowledge, is called in divine language the lust of the eyes. For seeing properly belongs to the eye, yet we use this word in connection with the other senses, too, when we exercise them in the search for knowledge.
For we do not say, "Listen how it glows!" or "Smell how it glistens" or "Taste how it shines" or "Feel how it gleams" for all these are said to be seen. Yet we not only say, "See how it shines" which the eyes alone can perceive; but we also say, "See how it sounds, see how it smells, see how it tastes, and see how hard it is." And so the general experience of the senses, as we said, is called the lust of the eyes because the office of seeing, though properly belonging to the eyes, is applied to the other senses by analogy when they seek after any knowledge.
By this it may be more clearly discerned when the object of the senses is pleasure and when it is curiosity. For pleasure seeks objects that are beautiful, melodies, fragrant, tasty, soft; but curiosity, for the sake of novelty, seeks the very opposite as well, not in order to experience their trouble, but from the passion of experimenting and knowing.
What pleasure is there to see in a mangled corpse that which makes you shudder? And yet, if it is lying near, we flock to it, to be made sad and to turn pale. They fear they will see it in their sleep, as if anyone had forced them to look at it when they were awake, or any report of its beauty had attracted them to it! Thus, it is also with the other senses, which would take too long to go through. From this malady of curiosity come all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. From it men go on to search out the secret powers of nature (which do not pertain to us) which to know brings no profit, and which men desire to know simply for the sake of knowing. From this malady, too, with the same goal of gaining perverted knowledge, we consult the magical arts. Even in religion itself God is tempted when signs and wonders are demanded of him - not desired for any saving purpose, but merely to make trial of him.
In such a vast wilderness as this, full of snares and dangers, I have cut many of them off and thrust them out of my heart, as you have given me power to do, O God of my salvation. Yet when do I dare say - since so many things of this kind buzz on all sides about our daily life - when do I dare say that nothing of this sort engages my attention or causes an idle interest in me? True, the theatres no longer carry me away now-a-days nor do I care to know the courses of the stars, nor did my soul ever consult departed spirits. I detest all unhallowed rites. But yet, O Lord, my God, to whom I owe humble and single hearted service, by what subtlety of suggestion does the enemy tempt me to require some sign from you! But I beseech you by our King, and by our pure and holy country Jerusalem, that as any consent on my part to such thoughts is far from me, so may it ever be farther and farther. But when I pray to you for the salvation of anyone, my goal and intention is far different. For you do what you will, and you give me the grace and will give me the grace to follow you willingly.
Nevertheless, in how many petty and contemptible things is our curiosity tempted daily, and who can recount how often we give in to it? How often, when people are telling idle tales, do we begin, as if we were tolerating them to keep from offending the weak, and then gradually begin to take an interest in them! I do not go now-a-days to the circus to see a dog chasing a hare, but if by chance I pass such a chase in the field, it may distract me even from some serious thought, and draw me after it - not that I turn aside the body of my horse, but by the inclination of my mind. And unless you, reminding me of my weakness, speedily warn me to lift my thoughts to you above the sight, or to despise it wholly and pass on by, I, vain creature that I am, will stand gazing at it.
When sitting at home, my attention is often distracted by a lizard catching flies, or by a spider entangling flies as they rush into her web. Is the feeling of curiosity different because they are by small creatures? I go on from such distractions to praise you, the wonderful Creator and Disposer of all things; but that is not what attracts my attention. It is one thing to get up quickly; it is another not to fall. And of such things my life is full, and my only hope is your wonderful, great mercy. For when this heart of ours becomes the receptacle of such things, and bears multitudes of these abounding vanities, then, our prayers are often interrupted and disturbed by them, and while in your presence we direct the voice of our heart to your ears, such a great concern as this is interrupted by the influx of I know not what idle thoughts.
Page 5
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Far be it, Lord, far be it from the heart of your servant who is confessing here to you, far be it from me to think that I am happy, be the joy what it may. For there is a joy which is not given to me ungodly, but to those who love you for your own sake, whose joy is you yourself. And this is the happy life: to rejoice in you, of you, for you. This is true joy and there is no other, and not the true joy. yet their will is not turned except by some semblance of joy.
Is it, then, not certain that all wish to be happy, inasmuch as they who do not wish to joy in you (which is the only happy life) do not truly desire the happy life? Or do all men desire this, but the flesh strives against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, so that they cannot do what they wish to do? Do they then settle on that which they can do, and are content with that, because they do not desire strongly enough what they cannot do to make them able to do it?
For if I ask anyone if he would rather rejoice in truth or falsehood, he will hesitate as little to say "In the truth" as he would to say that he desires to be happy. But a happy life is joy in the truth, for this is rejoicing in you, who are the Truth, O God, my Light, the Health of my countenance and my God. This happy life all desire; all desire this life which is the only happy life, for all desire to rejoice in the truth. I have met with many who would deceive others; none who want to be deceived. And when they love a happy life, which is nothing else than rejoicing in the truth, then they also love the truth - which they could not love if there were not some knowledge of it in their memory. Why then, do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are more strongly occupied with other things which have more power to make them miserable than that which they so dimly remember has to make them happy. For there is yet a little in men; let them walk, lest the darkness overtake them.
But why does truth generate hatred, and why does your servant, preaching the truth, become their enemy, since a happy life is loved, which is nothing else but rejoicing in the truth? How is this so unless the truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else want what they love to be the truth? And because they do not want to be deceived, they do not want to be convinced that they are. Therefore, they hate the truth, for the sake of the thing they love instead of the truth.
They love the truth when it enlightens, they hate it when it reproves. Since they would not be deceived, yet would deceive, they love it when it reveals itself to them, but hate it when it reveals them to themselves. Thus, the truth shall repay them, by exposing those who do not wish to be exposed by it, and yet not revealing itself to them. Thus, thus, yes, thus does the mind of ma - blind, sick, foul and ill-behaved - wish to be hidden, but does not want anything hidden from it. But the very opposite happens. The mind is not happen from the truth, while the truth remains hidden from it. Happy then will it be, when without any other distraction, it shall rejoice in that sole Truth by which all things are true.
See what a space I have covered in my memory in seeking you, O Lord! And I have not found you outside it, nor have I found anything concerning you but what I retained in my memory ever since I learned of you. Since I learned of you I have not forgotten you. Where I found truth, there I found my God, the Truth itself. And since I learned this I have not forgotten it. Thus, since the time I learned of you, you have resided in my memory. There I find you when I call you to remembrance, and delight in you. These are my holy delights which you have given me in your mercy, being mindful of my poverty.
But where do you abide in my memory, O Lord? Where do you abide there? What kind of dwelling place have you made for yourself there? What kind of sanctuary have you built there for yourself? You have given this honor to my memory, to abide in it; but in what part of it you dwell - that I am pondering. For in thinking about you, I passed beyond such parts of it as the animals have, for I did not find you there among corporeal things. And I came to those areas in which I stored the affections of my mind, and did not find you there.
Then, I entered into the inner-most seat of my mind - which the mind has in my memory, since the mind remembers itself - but you were not there. For as you are not a corporeal image, nor the affection of a living being (as when we rejoice, sympathize with, desire, fear, remember, forget, or the like) so neither are you the mind itself. Because you are the Lord God of the mind, and all these things change, but you remain unchangeable over them all - and yet you have vouchsafed to dwell in my memory ever since I learned of you. So why do I now seek to know the part of my memory in which you dwell, as if there were places in the mind? Assuredly, you dwell in it since I have remembered you ever since I learned of you, and since I find you there when I call you to remembrance.
Where then did I find that I might learn of you? You were not in my memory before I learned of you. Where did I find you, that I might learn of you, but in yourself, above myself. Place there is none; we go backward and forward, and there is no 'place' [location] Everywhere, O Truth, you hear those who ask counsel of you, and answer all of them at once, though they ask your counsel on many different things. You answer them clearly, though they do not hear clearly. All consult you on whatever they wish, though they do not always hear back what they wish. He is your best servant who looks not so much to hear what he desires from you, as to desire that which he hears from you.
Too late have I loved you, O Beauty, ancient yet ever new. Too late have I loved you! And behold, you were within, but I was outside, searching for you there - plunging, deformed amid those fair forms which you had made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Things held me far from you, which , unless they were in you did not exist at all. You called and shouted, and burst my deafness. You gleamed and shone upon me, and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrant odours on me, and I held back my breath, but now I pant for you. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and now I yearn for your peace.
When I come to be united with you with my whole self, I shall no more sorrow or labor, and my life shall be wholly alive, being wholly full of you! You lift up the one you fill, but I am still a burden to myself, because I am not full of you. Lamentable joys strive with joyous sorrows: and on which side the victory will be I do not know. Woe is me! Lord, have mercy on me. My evil sorrows strive with my good joys; and I do not know on which side the victory may be. Woe is me! Lord, have mercy on me! Woe is me! See! I do not hide my wounds; you are the Physician, I the sick. You are the merciful, I the miserable one. Is not the life of man upon earth all trail?
Who wishes for troubles and difficulties? You command them to be endured, not to be loved. No man loves what he endures, though he may love to endure. For though he rejoices that he endures, he would rather there were nothing for him to endure. In adversity, I long for prosperity; in prosperity I fear adversity. What middle ground is there between these two - where the life of man is not all trail? Woe to the prosperities of the world, twice woe-woe from fear of adversity and woe from corruption of joy! Woe to the adversities of this world, twice woe, and triple woe: woe from longing for prosperity, woe because adversity itself is a hard thing, and woe for fear that it may make a shipwreck of our endurance! Is not the life of man upon earth all trail without intermission?
And all my hope is only in your exceeding great mercy. Give what you command, and command what you will. You command self-restraint, and "When I knew" said one, "that no man can be continent unless God gave it, that was a point of wisdom also to know whose gift it is." For by self-restraint, verily, we are bound up and brought back together into wholeness, whereas, we had been splintered in many ways. For he loves you too little who loves anything else with you which he does not love for you. O love, whoever burns and is never quenched! O Charity, my God! Enkindle me. You command continence; give me what you command and command what you will.
Truly, you command that I should be continent from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. You have commanded self-restraint from fornication, and as for wedlock itself, you have counselled something better than what you have permitted. And since you gave it, it was done, even before I became a minister of your Sacrament. But there yet lives in my memory (of which I have spoken at length) the images of such things as my bad habits had fixed there. These rush into my thoughts when I am awake, but in my sleep they not only seem pleasurable, but even to obtain my consent in what very closely resembles reality.
Yes, the illusion of the images so far prevails in my soul and in my flesh, that when I am asleep, false visions persuade me to what the true ones cannot when I am awake. Am I not myself at such times, O Lord my God? There is yet so much difference between myself and myself in that instant in which I pass from walking to sleeping, or return from sleeping to walking! Where is reason, then, which resists such suggestions when awake and remains unmoved when such suggestions are urged on it? Is it closed up when my eyes are closed? Is it lulled asleep with the senses of the body? But whence is it that often, even in sleep, we resist and mindful of our purpose and continuing most chastely in it, give no assent to such enticements? And there is yet so much difference that, when it happens otherwise, upon waking we return to peace of conscience, and by this very difference in the two states, discover that it was not we who did it, while we feel sorry that in some way it was done in us.
Is not your hand able, O Almighty God, to heal all the diseases of my soul and by your more abundant grace able to quench even the lascivious motions of my sleep? You will increase your gifts in me more and more, Lord, that my soul may follow me to you, disengaged from the bird-lime of lust; that it may not be in rebellion against itself, and may not commit in dreams through these sensual images those debasing corruptions, even to pollution of the flesh, nor give consent to them.
For it is not too hard for the Almighty to work this - that nothing of this sort should have the very least influence over the pure affections of a sleeper, not even so slight a one as a thought might hold back - not just sometime during this life, but even at my present age, for you are able to do more than we can ask or think. But what I still am in this kind of evil, I have confessed to my good lord, rejoicing with trembling in that which you have given me, and bemoaning that in which I am still imperfect; trusting that you will perfect your mercies in me, even to fullness of peace, which my outward and inward man shall have with you, when death is swallowed up in victory.
There is another evil of the day which I wish were sufficient unto it. For by eating and drinking we repair the daily decays of the body, until you destroy both food and belly, when you shall slay my emptiness with a wonderful fullness, and clothe this corruptible with an eternal incorruption. But for the present, necessity is sweet to me, and I fight against this sweetness lest I be taken captive by it. I carry on a daily war by fasting, often bringing my body into subjection. And my pains are expelled by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are, in a manner, pains. They burn and kill like a fever unless the medicine of nourishment comes to relieve us. Since they are readily at hand from the comfort we receive through your gifts (with which land, water and air serve our weakness) our calamity is called pleasure.
This much you have taught me, that I should train myself to take food as medicine. But while i am passing from the discomfort of emptiness to the satisfaction of fullness, in that very passage the snare of lust lies in wait for me. For that passage itself is pleasurable; there is no other way to pass to that state of fullness, and necessity forces us to pass. And although health is the reason for eating and drinking, yet a dangerous delight accompanies it, and frequently tries to control it in order that I may do for enjoyment's sake what I say I do, or wish to do, for health's sake. health and pleasure do not have the same limits. What is enough for health is too little for pleasure. And it is often questionable whether it is necessary care of the body which still asks nourishment, or whether a sensual snare of desire wants to be served.
In this uncertainty, my unhappy soul rejoices and prepares in it an excuse to shield, glad that it is not clearly apparent what would suffice for the moderation of health, so that under the cloak of health it may conceal the business of pleasure. These temptations I try to resist daily, and I call your right hand to my aid, and refer my perplexities to you, because as yet I have no clear resolution in this matter.
I hear the voice of my God commanding, Let not your heart be overcharged with immoderate indulgence and drunkenness. Drunkenness is far from me; you will have mercy that it may never come near me. But over-eating sometimes creeps up on your servant; you will have mercy that it may depart from me. For no man can be continent unless you give it. You give us many things that we pray for, and whatever good we have received before we prayed, we received it from you. Yes, we received it from you that we might afterward know that we received it from you. I was never a drunkard, but I have known drunkards who were made sober by you. It was from you, then, that they who never were drunkards might not be so, and it was your gift that both might know that it was from you.
I heard another voice of yours: "Do not follow your lusts and refrain yourself from your pleasures." And by your grace I have heard that which I have greatly loved: Neither if we eat are we the better; nor if we do not eat are we the worse. Which is to say, neither shall the one make me abound, nor the other make me miserable. I heard another also: For I have learned in whatever state I am, therewith to be content; I know how to abound and bow to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. See there a soldier of the heavenly camp - the dust as we are. But remember, Lord that we are dust, and that of dust you have made man, and he was lost and is found. He [Paul] could not do this by his own strength, because he whom I so love who said these things through the breath of your inspiration, was made of the same dust. He says, I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Strengthen me, that I may be able; grant what you command, and command what you will. He confesses to have received, and when he glories, he glories in the Lord. Another person I have heard begging that he might receive: "Take from me" he says, "the greediness of the belly." From this it appears to me, O my holy God, that when that is done which you command, it is by your gift that it is done.
You have taught me, good Father, that to the pure all things are pure; but that it is evil to the man who gives offence in eating. And that every creature of yours is good, and nothing is to be refused which is received with thanksgiving; and that food does not commend us to God, and that no man should judge us in food or drink; that he who eats should not despise him who does not eat; and that he who does not eat should not judge him who eats.
These things have I learned, thanks and praise be to you, my God, my Master, knocking at the door of my ears, enlightening my heart, delivering me out of all temptation. I do not fear the uncleanness of food, but the uncleanness of lust. I know that Noah was permitted to eat all kinds of flesh that was good for food. I know also that Elijah was fed with flesh; that John, endured with a wonderful abstinence, was not polluted by eating locusts alive, which he fed on. I know, too, that Esau was deceived by craving lentils, and that David blamed himself for desiring a drink of water; and that our King was tempted, not by flesh, but bread. Therefore the people in the wilderness deserved to be reproved, too - not so much for desiring flesh, but because, in their desire for food, they murmured against the Lord.
Placed, then, amid these temptations, I strive daily against lust for food and drink. For it is not the kind [of temptation] that I can resolve to cut off once and for all, and never touch it afterward, as I did with fornication. The bridle of the throat, therefore, is to be held moderately between slackness and strictness. And who is he, O Lord, who is not carried in some degree beyond the bounds of necessity in it? Whoever he is, he is a great one! Let him magnify your name. But I am not such a one, for I am a sinful man. Yet I, too, magnify your name, and he who has overcome the world makes intercession to you for my sins, numbering me among the weak members of his body, because your eyes have overlooked on my imperfect being and in your book shall all be written.
Page 4
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Is it, then, not certain that all wish to be happy, inasmuch as they who do not wish to joy in you (which is the only happy life) do not truly desire the happy life? Or do all men desire this, but the flesh strives against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, so that they cannot do what they wish to do? Do they then settle on that which they can do, and are content with that, because they do not desire strongly enough what they cannot do to make them able to do it?
For if I ask anyone if he would rather rejoice in truth or falsehood, he will hesitate as little to say "In the truth" as he would to say that he desires to be happy. But a happy life is joy in the truth, for this is rejoicing in you, who are the Truth, O God, my Light, the Health of my countenance and my God. This happy life all desire; all desire this life which is the only happy life, for all desire to rejoice in the truth. I have met with many who would deceive others; none who want to be deceived. And when they love a happy life, which is nothing else than rejoicing in the truth, then they also love the truth - which they could not love if there were not some knowledge of it in their memory. Why then, do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are more strongly occupied with other things which have more power to make them miserable than that which they so dimly remember has to make them happy. For there is yet a little in men; let them walk, lest the darkness overtake them.
But why does truth generate hatred, and why does your servant, preaching the truth, become their enemy, since a happy life is loved, which is nothing else but rejoicing in the truth? How is this so unless the truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else want what they love to be the truth? And because they do not want to be deceived, they do not want to be convinced that they are. Therefore, they hate the truth, for the sake of the thing they love instead of the truth.
They love the truth when it enlightens, they hate it when it reproves. Since they would not be deceived, yet would deceive, they love it when it reveals itself to them, but hate it when it reveals them to themselves. Thus, the truth shall repay them, by exposing those who do not wish to be exposed by it, and yet not revealing itself to them. Thus, thus, yes, thus does the mind of ma - blind, sick, foul and ill-behaved - wish to be hidden, but does not want anything hidden from it. But the very opposite happens. The mind is not happen from the truth, while the truth remains hidden from it. Happy then will it be, when without any other distraction, it shall rejoice in that sole Truth by which all things are true.
See what a space I have covered in my memory in seeking you, O Lord! And I have not found you outside it, nor have I found anything concerning you but what I retained in my memory ever since I learned of you. Since I learned of you I have not forgotten you. Where I found truth, there I found my God, the Truth itself. And since I learned this I have not forgotten it. Thus, since the time I learned of you, you have resided in my memory. There I find you when I call you to remembrance, and delight in you. These are my holy delights which you have given me in your mercy, being mindful of my poverty.
But where do you abide in my memory, O Lord? Where do you abide there? What kind of dwelling place have you made for yourself there? What kind of sanctuary have you built there for yourself? You have given this honor to my memory, to abide in it; but in what part of it you dwell - that I am pondering. For in thinking about you, I passed beyond such parts of it as the animals have, for I did not find you there among corporeal things. And I came to those areas in which I stored the affections of my mind, and did not find you there.
Then, I entered into the inner-most seat of my mind - which the mind has in my memory, since the mind remembers itself - but you were not there. For as you are not a corporeal image, nor the affection of a living being (as when we rejoice, sympathize with, desire, fear, remember, forget, or the like) so neither are you the mind itself. Because you are the Lord God of the mind, and all these things change, but you remain unchangeable over them all - and yet you have vouchsafed to dwell in my memory ever since I learned of you. So why do I now seek to know the part of my memory in which you dwell, as if there were places in the mind? Assuredly, you dwell in it since I have remembered you ever since I learned of you, and since I find you there when I call you to remembrance.
Where then did I find that I might learn of you? You were not in my memory before I learned of you. Where did I find you, that I might learn of you, but in yourself, above myself. Place there is none; we go backward and forward, and there is no 'place' [location] Everywhere, O Truth, you hear those who ask counsel of you, and answer all of them at once, though they ask your counsel on many different things. You answer them clearly, though they do not hear clearly. All consult you on whatever they wish, though they do not always hear back what they wish. He is your best servant who looks not so much to hear what he desires from you, as to desire that which he hears from you.
Too late have I loved you, O Beauty, ancient yet ever new. Too late have I loved you! And behold, you were within, but I was outside, searching for you there - plunging, deformed amid those fair forms which you had made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Things held me far from you, which , unless they were in you did not exist at all. You called and shouted, and burst my deafness. You gleamed and shone upon me, and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrant odours on me, and I held back my breath, but now I pant for you. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and now I yearn for your peace.
When I come to be united with you with my whole self, I shall no more sorrow or labor, and my life shall be wholly alive, being wholly full of you! You lift up the one you fill, but I am still a burden to myself, because I am not full of you. Lamentable joys strive with joyous sorrows: and on which side the victory will be I do not know. Woe is me! Lord, have mercy on me. My evil sorrows strive with my good joys; and I do not know on which side the victory may be. Woe is me! Lord, have mercy on me! Woe is me! See! I do not hide my wounds; you are the Physician, I the sick. You are the merciful, I the miserable one. Is not the life of man upon earth all trail?
Who wishes for troubles and difficulties? You command them to be endured, not to be loved. No man loves what he endures, though he may love to endure. For though he rejoices that he endures, he would rather there were nothing for him to endure. In adversity, I long for prosperity; in prosperity I fear adversity. What middle ground is there between these two - where the life of man is not all trail? Woe to the prosperities of the world, twice woe-woe from fear of adversity and woe from corruption of joy! Woe to the adversities of this world, twice woe, and triple woe: woe from longing for prosperity, woe because adversity itself is a hard thing, and woe for fear that it may make a shipwreck of our endurance! Is not the life of man upon earth all trail without intermission?
And all my hope is only in your exceeding great mercy. Give what you command, and command what you will. You command self-restraint, and "When I knew" said one, "that no man can be continent unless God gave it, that was a point of wisdom also to know whose gift it is." For by self-restraint, verily, we are bound up and brought back together into wholeness, whereas, we had been splintered in many ways. For he loves you too little who loves anything else with you which he does not love for you. O love, whoever burns and is never quenched! O Charity, my God! Enkindle me. You command continence; give me what you command and command what you will.
Truly, you command that I should be continent from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. You have commanded self-restraint from fornication, and as for wedlock itself, you have counselled something better than what you have permitted. And since you gave it, it was done, even before I became a minister of your Sacrament. But there yet lives in my memory (of which I have spoken at length) the images of such things as my bad habits had fixed there. These rush into my thoughts when I am awake, but in my sleep they not only seem pleasurable, but even to obtain my consent in what very closely resembles reality.
Yes, the illusion of the images so far prevails in my soul and in my flesh, that when I am asleep, false visions persuade me to what the true ones cannot when I am awake. Am I not myself at such times, O Lord my God? There is yet so much difference between myself and myself in that instant in which I pass from walking to sleeping, or return from sleeping to walking! Where is reason, then, which resists such suggestions when awake and remains unmoved when such suggestions are urged on it? Is it closed up when my eyes are closed? Is it lulled asleep with the senses of the body? But whence is it that often, even in sleep, we resist and mindful of our purpose and continuing most chastely in it, give no assent to such enticements? And there is yet so much difference that, when it happens otherwise, upon waking we return to peace of conscience, and by this very difference in the two states, discover that it was not we who did it, while we feel sorry that in some way it was done in us.
Is not your hand able, O Almighty God, to heal all the diseases of my soul and by your more abundant grace able to quench even the lascivious motions of my sleep? You will increase your gifts in me more and more, Lord, that my soul may follow me to you, disengaged from the bird-lime of lust; that it may not be in rebellion against itself, and may not commit in dreams through these sensual images those debasing corruptions, even to pollution of the flesh, nor give consent to them.
For it is not too hard for the Almighty to work this - that nothing of this sort should have the very least influence over the pure affections of a sleeper, not even so slight a one as a thought might hold back - not just sometime during this life, but even at my present age, for you are able to do more than we can ask or think. But what I still am in this kind of evil, I have confessed to my good lord, rejoicing with trembling in that which you have given me, and bemoaning that in which I am still imperfect; trusting that you will perfect your mercies in me, even to fullness of peace, which my outward and inward man shall have with you, when death is swallowed up in victory.
There is another evil of the day which I wish were sufficient unto it. For by eating and drinking we repair the daily decays of the body, until you destroy both food and belly, when you shall slay my emptiness with a wonderful fullness, and clothe this corruptible with an eternal incorruption. But for the present, necessity is sweet to me, and I fight against this sweetness lest I be taken captive by it. I carry on a daily war by fasting, often bringing my body into subjection. And my pains are expelled by pleasure. For hunger and thirst are, in a manner, pains. They burn and kill like a fever unless the medicine of nourishment comes to relieve us. Since they are readily at hand from the comfort we receive through your gifts (with which land, water and air serve our weakness) our calamity is called pleasure.
This much you have taught me, that I should train myself to take food as medicine. But while i am passing from the discomfort of emptiness to the satisfaction of fullness, in that very passage the snare of lust lies in wait for me. For that passage itself is pleasurable; there is no other way to pass to that state of fullness, and necessity forces us to pass. And although health is the reason for eating and drinking, yet a dangerous delight accompanies it, and frequently tries to control it in order that I may do for enjoyment's sake what I say I do, or wish to do, for health's sake. health and pleasure do not have the same limits. What is enough for health is too little for pleasure. And it is often questionable whether it is necessary care of the body which still asks nourishment, or whether a sensual snare of desire wants to be served.
In this uncertainty, my unhappy soul rejoices and prepares in it an excuse to shield, glad that it is not clearly apparent what would suffice for the moderation of health, so that under the cloak of health it may conceal the business of pleasure. These temptations I try to resist daily, and I call your right hand to my aid, and refer my perplexities to you, because as yet I have no clear resolution in this matter.
I hear the voice of my God commanding, Let not your heart be overcharged with immoderate indulgence and drunkenness. Drunkenness is far from me; you will have mercy that it may never come near me. But over-eating sometimes creeps up on your servant; you will have mercy that it may depart from me. For no man can be continent unless you give it. You give us many things that we pray for, and whatever good we have received before we prayed, we received it from you. Yes, we received it from you that we might afterward know that we received it from you. I was never a drunkard, but I have known drunkards who were made sober by you. It was from you, then, that they who never were drunkards might not be so, and it was your gift that both might know that it was from you.
I heard another voice of yours: "Do not follow your lusts and refrain yourself from your pleasures." And by your grace I have heard that which I have greatly loved: Neither if we eat are we the better; nor if we do not eat are we the worse. Which is to say, neither shall the one make me abound, nor the other make me miserable. I heard another also: For I have learned in whatever state I am, therewith to be content; I know how to abound and bow to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. See there a soldier of the heavenly camp - the dust as we are. But remember, Lord that we are dust, and that of dust you have made man, and he was lost and is found. He [Paul] could not do this by his own strength, because he whom I so love who said these things through the breath of your inspiration, was made of the same dust. He says, I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Strengthen me, that I may be able; grant what you command, and command what you will. He confesses to have received, and when he glories, he glories in the Lord. Another person I have heard begging that he might receive: "Take from me" he says, "the greediness of the belly." From this it appears to me, O my holy God, that when that is done which you command, it is by your gift that it is done.
You have taught me, good Father, that to the pure all things are pure; but that it is evil to the man who gives offence in eating. And that every creature of yours is good, and nothing is to be refused which is received with thanksgiving; and that food does not commend us to God, and that no man should judge us in food or drink; that he who eats should not despise him who does not eat; and that he who does not eat should not judge him who eats.
These things have I learned, thanks and praise be to you, my God, my Master, knocking at the door of my ears, enlightening my heart, delivering me out of all temptation. I do not fear the uncleanness of food, but the uncleanness of lust. I know that Noah was permitted to eat all kinds of flesh that was good for food. I know also that Elijah was fed with flesh; that John, endured with a wonderful abstinence, was not polluted by eating locusts alive, which he fed on. I know, too, that Esau was deceived by craving lentils, and that David blamed himself for desiring a drink of water; and that our King was tempted, not by flesh, but bread. Therefore the people in the wilderness deserved to be reproved, too - not so much for desiring flesh, but because, in their desire for food, they murmured against the Lord.
Placed, then, amid these temptations, I strive daily against lust for food and drink. For it is not the kind [of temptation] that I can resolve to cut off once and for all, and never touch it afterward, as I did with fornication. The bridle of the throat, therefore, is to be held moderately between slackness and strictness. And who is he, O Lord, who is not carried in some degree beyond the bounds of necessity in it? Whoever he is, he is a great one! Let him magnify your name. But I am not such a one, for I am a sinful man. Yet I, too, magnify your name, and he who has overcome the world makes intercession to you for my sins, numbering me among the weak members of his body, because your eyes have overlooked on my imperfect being and in your book shall all be written.
Page 4
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Saturday, April 5, 2014
But whether this is done by images or not, who can readily say? Thus, I name the sun, and the things themselves are not present to my senses, but their images are present to my memory. I name a bodily pain, yet it is not present with me when nothing aches. Yet, unless its image was present in my memory, I would not know what to say of it, nor how to tell pain from pleasures. I name bodily health. When I am sound in body, the thing itself is present with me; yet unless its image were also present in my memory, I could not recall what the sound of this name signified.
Nor would the sick, when health was named, recognize what was being spoken of, unless the same image were retained by the power of memory, although the thing itself was absent from the body. I name numbers by which we count; and it is not their image but the numbers themselves that are present in my memory. I name the image of the sun, and that image is present in my memory. For I do not recall the image of its image, but the image itself is present to me when I call it to mind. I name memory and I recognize what I name. But where do I recognize it but in the memory itself? Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by itself?
When I name forgetfulness and recognize what I name, how could I recognize it if I did not remember? I do not speak of the sound of the name, but the thing which it signifies. If I had forgotten, I could not recognize what that sound meant. When I remember memory, memory itself is, by means of itself, present with itself; but when I remember forgetfulness, there are present both memory and forgetfulness: memory by which I remember, and forgetfulness which I remember.
But what is forgetfulness, but the absence of memory? How then can that be present, so that I remember it, which, when it is present keeps me from remembering? But if we hold in memory what we remember, we could never recognize forgetfulness when we hear it named unless we remembered it. So then, forgetfulness is retained by memory. It is present then, so that we do not forget it. This being the case, are we to suppose that forgetfulness, when we remember it, is present to the memory only through its image rather than by itself? Because if it were present by itself, it would not cause us to remember, but to forget. Who can search this out? Who shall understand how it is?
Lord, I truly toil in this; yes, and in myself. I have become a difficult soil, requiring too much sweat of the brow. For i am not now searching out the regions of the heavens, or measuring the distances of the stars, or inquiring about the weight of the earth. It is I myself who remember, I, the mind. It is not so strange if what I am not should be far from me. But what is nearer to me than myself? And lo, I do not understand the power of my own memory, though I cannot even name myself without it. For what shall i say, when it is clear to me that I remember forgetfulness? Shall I say that I remember is not in my memory? Or shall I say that forgetfulness is in my memory so that I will not forget? Both of these are most absurd. But what third view is there? How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is retained in my memory, not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it?
How could I say this either, seeing that when the image of anything itself is imprinted on the memory, the thing itself must first be present from which the image may be imprinted? For this is the way I remember Carthage, and in this way I remember all the places I have been; this is the way it is with men faces whom I have seen, and things reported by the other senses. Thus it is with health or sickness of the body. For when these things were present, my memory received images from them, which remain present with me, so that I can look on them and bring them back to mind when I remembered them in their absence. If then this forgetfulness is retained in the memory through its image, not through itself, then, plainly it was once present itself, so that its image might be taken. But when it was present, how did it write its image in my memory, since forgetfulness by its presence erases even what it finds already recorded? And yet, in whatever way, although it is past conceiving or explaining, I am certain that I remember forgetfulness itself, too, by which is blotted out what we remember.
Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, O my God, a deep and boundless multiplicity; and this is the mind and this I am myself. What am I then, O my God? What nature am I? A life various and manifold, exceedingly immense. Behold the innumerable plains and caves and caverns of my memory are innumerably full of unnumbered kinds of things - either through images, as in all physical bodies, or by actual presence, as the arts, or by certain notions or impressions, like the emotions of the mind which are retained by the memory even when we no longer feel them, because whatever is in the memory is in the mind. I run over all these, I fly, I dive on this side and on that, as far as I can, and there is no end. The power of memory is as great as the power of life in this mortal life of man.
What shall I do then, O my God, my true life? I will go even beyond this power of mine which is called memory. Yes, I will go beyond it, so that I may approach you, O lovely Light. What do you say to me? See, I am mounting up through my mind toward you who dwell above me. Yes, I now will pass beyond this power of mine which is called memory, desiring to reach you where you may be reached, and to cleave to you where that is possible. For even beasts and birds have memory, otherwise they could not return to their dens and nests, nor do the many other things they do. Nor indeed could they be used in any way except through their memory. I will pass then beyond memory, too, that I may reach him who has separated me from the four-footed beasts and made me wiser than the fowls of the air. So, I will go on beyond memory, but where shall I find you, O truly Good and certain Sweetness? If I find you without my memory, then I cannot retain you in my memory. And how shall I find you, if I do not remember you?
The woman who lost her drachma and searched for it with a light could never found it unless she had remembered it. And when it was found, how would she know it was the same coin if she did not remember it? I remember having looked for and finding many things, and this I know by it, that when I was searching for any of them, and was asked, "Is this is?" "Is that it?" I said, "No," until the thing I was looking for was offered to me, I could not have found it because I failed to recognize it. And so it always is when we look for and find any lost thing. Nevertheless, when anything is lost from sight by chance (not from the memory, as any visible body might be) still its image is retained within us, and we look for it until it is restored to sight; and when it is found, we recognize it by its image within. We do not say that we have found what was lost unless we recognize it, and we cannot recognize it unless we remember it. It was lost to the eye, but it was retained in the memory.
When the memory itself loses anything, as happens when we forget something and try to recall it, where do we look for it, but in the memory itself? And there, if one thing happens to be offered instead of another, we reject it until we find what we are looking for. And when we find it, we say, "This is it!" We could not say that unless we recognized it, nor recognize it unless we remembered it. Certainly then we had forgotten it. Or, had all of it not been forgotten, and did we look for the part that was missing by the part which we still remembered, as if the memory felt that it could not carry on properly until the missing part was restored to it?
For instance, if we see or think of someone known to us, and having forgotten his name, try to recall it, whatever else occurs does not connect itself with his name, because we are not accustomed to think of that in connection with him. So we go on rejecting these things until something presents itself on which the knowledge we seek rests. And from where does that come, but out of the memory itself? For even when we recognize it as it is brought to mind by someone else, it still comes from memory. For we do not believe it as something new, but upon recollection, agree that what was said was right. But if it had been utterly blotted out of the mind, we would not remember it even when reminded of it. For we have not as yet utterly forgotten what we remember as having forgotten. What we have lost and utterly forgotten, we cannot even search for.
How do I seek you, then, O Lord? For when I seek you, my God, I seek a happy life. I will seek you that my soul may live. For my body lives by my soul, and my soul lives by you. How then do I seek a happy life, seeing that I do not have it until I can rightly say, "It is enough!" How do I seek it? By remembering, as though I had forgotten it, remembering that I had forgotten it? Or by desiring to learn it as something unknown, either never having known, or having so forgotten as not even to remember that it had been forgotten? Is not a happy life what all seek, and is there anyone who does not desire it? Where have they known it, so that they desire it? Where have they seen it, that they love it so much? Somehow we have it, but how I do not know.
There is indeed a way in which one has it and then is happy, and there are some who are happy in the hope of having it. These have it in lesser way than those who have it in very fact; yet they are better off than those who are neither happy in fact nor in hope. Yet even these, if they did not have it in some way, would not so greatly desire to be happy - and that they do desire it is most certain. How they have known it then, I do not know. By what sort of knowledge they have it, I do not know, and I am perplexed whether it is in the memory - for in that case, we would have been happy once.
I do not now inquire as to whether everyone was happy separately, or happy in that man who first sinned, in whom also we all died, and from whom we are all born with misery. I only ask whether the happy life is in the memory. For we could not love it if we did not know it. We hear the name, and we all confess that we desire the thing, for we are not delighted with the mere sound. When a Greek hears it in Latin, he is not delighted, not knowing what is being spoken. But we Latins are delighted, as he would be too, if he heard it in Greek; because the things itself which Greeks and Latins and men of all other tongues long for so earnestly is neither Greek nor Latin. It is therefore known to all, for could they with one voice be asked, "Do you want to be happy?" they would answer, without doubt, "We do." And this could not be unless happiness itself, signified by the name, were retained in their memory.
But is it the same as when one who has seen Carthage remembers it? No. For a happy life is not seen with the eye, because it is not a body. Is it the same as when we remember numbers? No. For the one who has these in his knowledge does not have to look further to reach them. But a happy life we have in our knowledge and therefore love it, and yet we still desire to attain it, so that we may be happy. Is it the same as when we remember eloquence, then? No. For upon hearing this name, some who are not yet eloquent and desire to be so, call it to mind. Through their bodily senses they have observed others to be eloquent, and were delighted by it and wanted to be like them, though actually they would not have been delighted without some inward knowledge of eloquence, nor want to be like them unless they were delighted by it. But in the case of the happy life, we do not experience it in others through any bodily sense.
Do we remember happiness then in the same way we remember joy? Possibly. For I remember my joy even when I am sad, as I remember a happy life even when I am unhappy. Nor did I ever see, hear, smell, taste, or touch my joy with my bodily senses, but I experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced, and the knowledge of it stuck in my memory, so that I can recall it - at times with disgust, at other times with longing, according to the nature of the things which I remember having enjoyed. For I have been immersed in a sort of joy even from foul things which I now abhor and utterly detest when I recall them. At other times I rejoiced in good and honest things which I recall with longing. although they may no longer be present. In that case I recall former joy with sorrow.
Were then, and when, did I experience my happy life that I should remember and love and long for it? Mine is not an isolated case, nor is it that of some few besides me, but all of us desire to be happy. Unless by some certain knowledge we knew what a happy life is, we could not desire it with such certainty. But how is this, that if two men are asked whether they would go to the wars, one might answer that he would and the other that he would not? But if they were asked whether they wanted to be happy, they would instantly, without any hesitation, say they would; and for no other reason would the one choose to go to the wars and the other not, but to be happy. Is it possible that as one looks for his joy in one thing, another in another, all agree in their desire to be happy?
In the same way, if they were asked, they would agree that they wished to have joy, and would they call this joy a happy life? Then although one obtains joy by one means, another by another, both have the same goal they try to reach - joy. Since joy is a thing which all must say they have experienced, it is therefore found in the memory and recognized whenever the name of a happy life is mentioned.
Page 3
If you wish to donate. Thank You. God bless.
By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
Nor would the sick, when health was named, recognize what was being spoken of, unless the same image were retained by the power of memory, although the thing itself was absent from the body. I name numbers by which we count; and it is not their image but the numbers themselves that are present in my memory. I name the image of the sun, and that image is present in my memory. For I do not recall the image of its image, but the image itself is present to me when I call it to mind. I name memory and I recognize what I name. But where do I recognize it but in the memory itself? Is it also present to itself by its image, and not by itself?
When I name forgetfulness and recognize what I name, how could I recognize it if I did not remember? I do not speak of the sound of the name, but the thing which it signifies. If I had forgotten, I could not recognize what that sound meant. When I remember memory, memory itself is, by means of itself, present with itself; but when I remember forgetfulness, there are present both memory and forgetfulness: memory by which I remember, and forgetfulness which I remember.
But what is forgetfulness, but the absence of memory? How then can that be present, so that I remember it, which, when it is present keeps me from remembering? But if we hold in memory what we remember, we could never recognize forgetfulness when we hear it named unless we remembered it. So then, forgetfulness is retained by memory. It is present then, so that we do not forget it. This being the case, are we to suppose that forgetfulness, when we remember it, is present to the memory only through its image rather than by itself? Because if it were present by itself, it would not cause us to remember, but to forget. Who can search this out? Who shall understand how it is?
Lord, I truly toil in this; yes, and in myself. I have become a difficult soil, requiring too much sweat of the brow. For i am not now searching out the regions of the heavens, or measuring the distances of the stars, or inquiring about the weight of the earth. It is I myself who remember, I, the mind. It is not so strange if what I am not should be far from me. But what is nearer to me than myself? And lo, I do not understand the power of my own memory, though I cannot even name myself without it. For what shall i say, when it is clear to me that I remember forgetfulness? Shall I say that I remember is not in my memory? Or shall I say that forgetfulness is in my memory so that I will not forget? Both of these are most absurd. But what third view is there? How can I say that the image of forgetfulness is retained in my memory, not forgetfulness itself, when I remember it?
How could I say this either, seeing that when the image of anything itself is imprinted on the memory, the thing itself must first be present from which the image may be imprinted? For this is the way I remember Carthage, and in this way I remember all the places I have been; this is the way it is with men faces whom I have seen, and things reported by the other senses. Thus it is with health or sickness of the body. For when these things were present, my memory received images from them, which remain present with me, so that I can look on them and bring them back to mind when I remembered them in their absence. If then this forgetfulness is retained in the memory through its image, not through itself, then, plainly it was once present itself, so that its image might be taken. But when it was present, how did it write its image in my memory, since forgetfulness by its presence erases even what it finds already recorded? And yet, in whatever way, although it is past conceiving or explaining, I am certain that I remember forgetfulness itself, too, by which is blotted out what we remember.
Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, O my God, a deep and boundless multiplicity; and this is the mind and this I am myself. What am I then, O my God? What nature am I? A life various and manifold, exceedingly immense. Behold the innumerable plains and caves and caverns of my memory are innumerably full of unnumbered kinds of things - either through images, as in all physical bodies, or by actual presence, as the arts, or by certain notions or impressions, like the emotions of the mind which are retained by the memory even when we no longer feel them, because whatever is in the memory is in the mind. I run over all these, I fly, I dive on this side and on that, as far as I can, and there is no end. The power of memory is as great as the power of life in this mortal life of man.
What shall I do then, O my God, my true life? I will go even beyond this power of mine which is called memory. Yes, I will go beyond it, so that I may approach you, O lovely Light. What do you say to me? See, I am mounting up through my mind toward you who dwell above me. Yes, I now will pass beyond this power of mine which is called memory, desiring to reach you where you may be reached, and to cleave to you where that is possible. For even beasts and birds have memory, otherwise they could not return to their dens and nests, nor do the many other things they do. Nor indeed could they be used in any way except through their memory. I will pass then beyond memory, too, that I may reach him who has separated me from the four-footed beasts and made me wiser than the fowls of the air. So, I will go on beyond memory, but where shall I find you, O truly Good and certain Sweetness? If I find you without my memory, then I cannot retain you in my memory. And how shall I find you, if I do not remember you?
The woman who lost her drachma and searched for it with a light could never found it unless she had remembered it. And when it was found, how would she know it was the same coin if she did not remember it? I remember having looked for and finding many things, and this I know by it, that when I was searching for any of them, and was asked, "Is this is?" "Is that it?" I said, "No," until the thing I was looking for was offered to me, I could not have found it because I failed to recognize it. And so it always is when we look for and find any lost thing. Nevertheless, when anything is lost from sight by chance (not from the memory, as any visible body might be) still its image is retained within us, and we look for it until it is restored to sight; and when it is found, we recognize it by its image within. We do not say that we have found what was lost unless we recognize it, and we cannot recognize it unless we remember it. It was lost to the eye, but it was retained in the memory.
When the memory itself loses anything, as happens when we forget something and try to recall it, where do we look for it, but in the memory itself? And there, if one thing happens to be offered instead of another, we reject it until we find what we are looking for. And when we find it, we say, "This is it!" We could not say that unless we recognized it, nor recognize it unless we remembered it. Certainly then we had forgotten it. Or, had all of it not been forgotten, and did we look for the part that was missing by the part which we still remembered, as if the memory felt that it could not carry on properly until the missing part was restored to it?
For instance, if we see or think of someone known to us, and having forgotten his name, try to recall it, whatever else occurs does not connect itself with his name, because we are not accustomed to think of that in connection with him. So we go on rejecting these things until something presents itself on which the knowledge we seek rests. And from where does that come, but out of the memory itself? For even when we recognize it as it is brought to mind by someone else, it still comes from memory. For we do not believe it as something new, but upon recollection, agree that what was said was right. But if it had been utterly blotted out of the mind, we would not remember it even when reminded of it. For we have not as yet utterly forgotten what we remember as having forgotten. What we have lost and utterly forgotten, we cannot even search for.
How do I seek you, then, O Lord? For when I seek you, my God, I seek a happy life. I will seek you that my soul may live. For my body lives by my soul, and my soul lives by you. How then do I seek a happy life, seeing that I do not have it until I can rightly say, "It is enough!" How do I seek it? By remembering, as though I had forgotten it, remembering that I had forgotten it? Or by desiring to learn it as something unknown, either never having known, or having so forgotten as not even to remember that it had been forgotten? Is not a happy life what all seek, and is there anyone who does not desire it? Where have they known it, so that they desire it? Where have they seen it, that they love it so much? Somehow we have it, but how I do not know.
There is indeed a way in which one has it and then is happy, and there are some who are happy in the hope of having it. These have it in lesser way than those who have it in very fact; yet they are better off than those who are neither happy in fact nor in hope. Yet even these, if they did not have it in some way, would not so greatly desire to be happy - and that they do desire it is most certain. How they have known it then, I do not know. By what sort of knowledge they have it, I do not know, and I am perplexed whether it is in the memory - for in that case, we would have been happy once.
I do not now inquire as to whether everyone was happy separately, or happy in that man who first sinned, in whom also we all died, and from whom we are all born with misery. I only ask whether the happy life is in the memory. For we could not love it if we did not know it. We hear the name, and we all confess that we desire the thing, for we are not delighted with the mere sound. When a Greek hears it in Latin, he is not delighted, not knowing what is being spoken. But we Latins are delighted, as he would be too, if he heard it in Greek; because the things itself which Greeks and Latins and men of all other tongues long for so earnestly is neither Greek nor Latin. It is therefore known to all, for could they with one voice be asked, "Do you want to be happy?" they would answer, without doubt, "We do." And this could not be unless happiness itself, signified by the name, were retained in their memory.
But is it the same as when one who has seen Carthage remembers it? No. For a happy life is not seen with the eye, because it is not a body. Is it the same as when we remember numbers? No. For the one who has these in his knowledge does not have to look further to reach them. But a happy life we have in our knowledge and therefore love it, and yet we still desire to attain it, so that we may be happy. Is it the same as when we remember eloquence, then? No. For upon hearing this name, some who are not yet eloquent and desire to be so, call it to mind. Through their bodily senses they have observed others to be eloquent, and were delighted by it and wanted to be like them, though actually they would not have been delighted without some inward knowledge of eloquence, nor want to be like them unless they were delighted by it. But in the case of the happy life, we do not experience it in others through any bodily sense.
Do we remember happiness then in the same way we remember joy? Possibly. For I remember my joy even when I am sad, as I remember a happy life even when I am unhappy. Nor did I ever see, hear, smell, taste, or touch my joy with my bodily senses, but I experienced it in my mind when I rejoiced, and the knowledge of it stuck in my memory, so that I can recall it - at times with disgust, at other times with longing, according to the nature of the things which I remember having enjoyed. For I have been immersed in a sort of joy even from foul things which I now abhor and utterly detest when I recall them. At other times I rejoiced in good and honest things which I recall with longing. although they may no longer be present. In that case I recall former joy with sorrow.
Were then, and when, did I experience my happy life that I should remember and love and long for it? Mine is not an isolated case, nor is it that of some few besides me, but all of us desire to be happy. Unless by some certain knowledge we knew what a happy life is, we could not desire it with such certainty. But how is this, that if two men are asked whether they would go to the wars, one might answer that he would and the other that he would not? But if they were asked whether they wanted to be happy, they would instantly, without any hesitation, say they would; and for no other reason would the one choose to go to the wars and the other not, but to be happy. Is it possible that as one looks for his joy in one thing, another in another, all agree in their desire to be happy?
In the same way, if they were asked, they would agree that they wished to have joy, and would they call this joy a happy life? Then although one obtains joy by one means, another by another, both have the same goal they try to reach - joy. Since joy is a thing which all must say they have experienced, it is therefore found in the memory and recognized whenever the name of a happy life is mentioned.
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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