Transience of created things

10,15. Turn us toward yourself, O God of Hosts, show us your face and we
shall be saved;1 for wheresoever a human soul turns, it can but cling to
what brings sorrow unless it turns to you, cling though it may to beautiful
things outside you and outside itself. Yet were these beautiful things not
from you, none of them would be at all. They arise and sink; in their rising
they begin to exist and grow toward their perfection, but once perfect they
grow old and perish; or, if not all reach old age, ye certainly all perish. So
then, even as they arise and stretch out toward existence, the more
quickly they grow and strive to be, the more swiftly they are hastening
toward extinction. This is the law of their nature. You have endowed them
so richly because they belong to a society of things that do not all exist at
once, but in their passing away and succession together form a whole, of
which the several creatures are parts. So is it with our speaking as it
proceeds by audible signs: it will not be a whole utterance unless one word
dies away after making its syllables heard, and gives place to another.
Let my soul use these things to praise you,
O God, creator of them all,
but let it not be glued fast to them by sensual love,
for they are going whither they were always destined to go,
toward extinction;
and they rend my soul with death-dealing desires,
for it too longs to be, and loves to rest in what it loves.
But in them it finds no place to rest,
because they do not stand firm;
they are transient, and who can follow them with the senses of the body?
Or who can seize them, even near at hand?
Tardy is carnal perception, because it is carnal;
such is the law of its nature.
Sufficient is it for another purpose, for which it was made,
but insufficient to catch the fleeting things
that rush past from their appointed beginning
to their appointed end.
In your Word, through whom they are created,
they hear your command,
From here begin, and thus far you shall go.

11,16. Be not vain, my soul, and take care that the ear of your heart be
not deafened by the din of your vanity. You too must listen to the selfsame
Word who calls you back, and there find a place of imperturbable quiet,
where love is never forsaken unless it chooses to forsake. See, those
things go their way that others may succeed them, and that a whole may
exist comprised of all its parts, though a lowly whole indeed. But I, says
the Word of God, shall I depart to any place? Fix your swelling there, 2 my
soul, lay up there for safekeeping whatever you have thence received, if
only because you are weary of deceits. Entrust to the Truth whatever of
truth is in you, and you will lose nothing; your rotten flesh will flower
anew,3 all your diseases will be healed,4 all your labile elements will be
restored and bound fast to you; they will not drag you with them in their

1 See Ps 118(119): 142; Jn 14:6

2 See Jn 14:23
3 See Ps 27(28): 7
4 See Mt 4:23; Ps 102(103):3

own collapse, but will stand firm with you and abide, binding you to the
ever-stable, abiding God.5
17. Why follow your flesh, perverted soul? Rather let it follow you, once
you are converted. Whatever you experience through it is partial, and you
do not know the whole, of which these experiences are but a part,
although they give you pleasure. Were your carnal perception able to
grasp the whole, were it not, for your punishment, confined to its due part
of the whole, you would long for whatever exists only in the present to
pass away, so that you might find greater joy in the totality. When with
this same carnal perception you listen to human speech, you do not want
to halt the succession of syllables: you want them to fly on their way and
make room for others, so that you may hear the whole. So is it always with
the constituent elements of a simple object, constituents which do not all
exist simultaneously: in their entirety the give us greater pleasure,
provided we can perceive them all together, than they do separately. But
better still, better by far, is he who made all things. He is our God, who
does not pass away, for there is nothing else to supplant him.
12,18. If sensuous beauty delights you, praise God for the beauty of
corporeal things, and channel the love you feel for them onto their Maker,
lest the things that please you lead you to displease him. If kinship with
other souls appeals to you, let them be loved in God, because they too are
changeable and gain stability only when fixed in him; otherwise they
would go their way and be lost. Let them be loved in him, and carry off to
God as many of them as possible with you, and say to them:
Let us love him, for he made these things and he is not far off, 6 for he did
not make them and then go away: they are from him but also in him. You
know where he is, because you know where truth tastes sweet. He is most
intimately present to the human heart, but the heart has strayed from
him. Return to your heart, then, you wrongdoers, and hold fast to him who
made you. Stand with him and you will stand firm, rest in him and you will
find peace. Where are you going, along your rough paths? Tell me, where
are you going? The good which you love derives from him, and insofar as it
is referred to him it is truly good and sweet, but anything that comes from
him will justly turn bitter if it is unjustly loved by people who forsake him.
Why persist in walking difficult and toilsome paths? 7 There is no repose
where you are seeking it. Search as you like, it is not where you are
looking. You are seeking a happy life in the realm of death, and it will not
be found there. How could life be happy, where there is no life at all?
19. He who is our very life came down 8 and took our death upon himself.
He slew our death by his abundant life and summoned us in a voice of
thunder to return to him in his hidden place, that place from which he set
out to come to us when first he entered the Virgins womb. There a human
creature, mortal flesh, was wedded to him that it might not remain mortal
for ever; and from there he came forth like a bridegroom from his nuptial
chamber, leaping with joy like a giant to run his course. 9 Impatient of delay
he ran, shouting by his words, his deeds, his death and his life, his descent

5 See Ps 101:13 (102:12); Heb 1:11

6 See Ps 99(100): 3; Acts 17:27
7 See Wis 5:7
8 See Jn 6:33
9 See Ps 18:6-7 (19:5)

to hell and his ascension to heaven, 10 shouting his demand that we return
to him. Then he withdrew from our sight, 11 so that we might return to our
own hearts and find him there. He withdrew, yet look, here he is. It was
not his will to remain with us, yet he has not abandoned us either; for he
has gone back to that place which he never left because the world was
made through him, and though he was in this world he had made 12 he
came into it to save sinners. 13 To him my soul confesses, and he heals this
soul that has sinned against him. 14 O mortals, how long will you be heavyhearted?15 Life has come down to you, and are you reluctant to ascend
and live? But what room is there for you to ascend, you with your highflown ways and lofty talk? 16 Come down, that you may ascend, ascend
even to God, for you have fallen in your attempts to ascend in defiance of
God.
This is what you must tell them, to move them to tears in this valley of
weeping,17 and by this means carry them of with you to God, because if
you burn with the fire of charity as you speak, you will be saying these
things to them by his Spirit.

10 See Eph 4:8-9

11 See Lk 24:51; Acts 1:9
12 See Jn 1:10-11
13 See 1 Tim 1:15
14 See Ps 40:5 (41:4)
15 See Ps 4:3(2).
16 See Ps 72(73):9
17 See Ps 83:7(84:6)