Thirst for the Face of God

My destroying serpent toward God, according to the deer. When you see, therefore, a soul being surrounded by various pleasures and many thoughts, the old age of wickedness and the old man are cast off, and the new man is clothed in its place, even if you wish to take it as a proverb or as a literal statement. 'Let a female deer and a colt of graces converse with you.'

Let the word be about a woman. The woman is a female deer in relation to the man, if she destroys the pleasures being cast upon her by the hunters. Furthermore, she is also a colt of grace; for she ought to be new according to temperance and grace, to be a colt of the virtues, so that the graces may mount him. For often the virtues themselves are so called according to that which is written: 'a crown of grace,' a crown of virtues. Being light and truth and righteousness according to his thoughts of the contests, she is She is a multitude of graces, not in her essence, but in her activities and desires

My soul thirsted toward God, the strong and living one (Psalm 63:1). To thirst is often to take hold of love. Thus indeed in another psalm he says: 'O God, my God, toward you I cry out; my soul thirsted for you' (Psalm 63:2); for he who longs for something and asks in order to receive it, thirsts for it. 'Toward God,' therefore, 'the living one.' Just as the divine men, being altogether filled with spirit and always lifted up toward theology, say: 'The Lord lives,' so Elisha said: 'The Lord lives and your soul lives' (2 Kings 4:9). Thus your soul lives just as he whom you have shared in lives. But you, as one sharing in him, live in this way. Regarding something literal, which the Arian ones interpret badly, to see it beautifully: 'Just as the living Father sent me, and I live through the Father' (John 14:19). And they took as a pattern that: as if someone were to say: 'Just as my rational father is, and I am rational, and just as my father is living, I am living.' Since therefore my father is a living thing, and I live through him because he is living.

Son. Just as man is said to be a living being because of the father, since he is a son of a living being. When will I arrive and see the face of God? Men who are still in life thirst for God as the deer thirsts for the springs of the waters (Ps 42:1). Yet they do not say that their desire stands at this point; for they are still far from God in some way of relation and disposition, not in place; nor is anything locally far from God, for he 'fills the heaven and the earth' (Jer 23:24). Therefore he who approaches him says: 'Where shall I go from your spirit and from your face, where shall I flee? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into Hades, you are there' (Ps 139:7-8).

Thus those in this life having received a vision of the coming age thirst courageously for God, as if they see themselves far off while the evil of the world and the weight of the world and the corruptible are still pressing upon them. And this is so, since in the feasts of the Hebrews it was customary to see three times of the year; for 'three times of the year all your male shall be seen before me' (Ex 23:27), and 'he shall not be seen before me empty' (Ex 23:29). No one shall be seen before him empty.

Since therefore even this one aims for the springs of the waters, he prays to be fulfilled, so that he may arrive and see the face of God not as a ruler but no longer empty. Therefore he asks: fragmentary... he reasons: 'When then shall I attain to the perfect good, so that, having seen the face... of the graces being given toward him?' My tears became to me bread day and night (Ps 119:92). He says this because he knew himself still lacking the face of God... fragmentary... a lament completing the ascent to virtue, from toil and... fragmentary... according to this, indeed, the meaning is said: 'those sowing in tears shall reap in joy' (Ps 126:5). Going...