"Look up cheerfully and tell your Lord, either aloud or in your heart, ‘What I am, Lord, I offer you, for it is yourself’. And keep in mind, simply, plainly and unashamedly, that you are as you are, and that there is no need to inquire more closely.
"This is not a very difficult thing to do, however stupid one might be – or so it seems to me. Sometimes I have to smile, although ruefully, when people say to my surprise (and not the simple and illiterate, but those who are learned and extremely clever) that what I write to you and others is so difficult and technical, so subtle and elusive, that it can hardly be understood by a theologian, however erudite, or by any man or woman, however intelligent. At least this is what they say.
"I invariably answer that nowadays it is not just a handful but nearly everyone who is blinded by subtle scholarship, theological or natural (there may possibly be the odd exception among the ‘specially chosen of God’). And this blindness is a cause for deep regret… For the result is that through their blindness and sophistication people have no more insight and understanding of this simple exercise then the child at his ABC’s has of the knowledge of the greatest scholar in the universe – if indeed as much. Yet in truth it is this simple exercise that can unite the soul of the most uncouth man alive to God in love and humility and perfect charity."
Book of Privy Counsel
[This is the last quote posted this week, from this book. The entire little book is an argument against those who claim Christianity gives no instruction as to 'mental prayer' or what is now called meditation. The book speaks especially to those in the unitive state.]
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