HOMILY.

would open it. Alas for my great inconsideration and neglect!

4. Truly, loving Pastor, I am that lost little sheep whom You, having hunted after my winding aberration, have lifted together onto Your shoulders and readopted to the greenery of Your vineyard. Hosanna, therefore, grace, grace, my Purpled Illuminator, who long ago, by the vows and sighs of my mother Monica, bound me to You supplicantly in her very presence. I beseech You, by that friendship which is between You and me, do not deny this light to my intellect, that I may, namely, now and henceforth surrender my whole self to Your paternal disposition and offer it to Your will, and wish to be just as willingly poor, desolate, despised, and rejected in this age, as rich, honored, grateful, or much spoken of in the mouths of men.

5. Come, sweet little Jesus, unrewardable Generator of the Word, convert for me henceforth into bitterness all carnal consolation that draws me away from the love of eternal things, and that ill-attracts me to itself by the fuel of some delightful present good. Impart, I pray, in place of transitory earthly science and all the crumbling magnificence of the masked world, a crumb of Your ambrosial and pure celestial wisdom, which abdicates all these lowest things and is jealous of You alone. Your tablets, Your letters, are the most pleasant sophia wisdom, the most profound sophia wisdom that surpasses all the doctrine of the philosophers and wise men of this world.

6. Let me always hold myself as a pilgrim, as a hermit and an exile upon the earth, to whom nothing pertains regarding the tumults of the flesh; for he who glides toward the interior, toward Your spiritual delights, must decline with You far from the crowd. It is certainly better to be hidden and to postpone everything entirely, and to take care of oneself, and to have only oneself before one's eyes, than to neglect oneself, to wear out phantasms, and while neglecting one's own field, to plow another's.

7. Let it not even shame or weary me to listen willingly to others always for the love of You, and to appear poor and dishonored in this life, and to become a fool for Your sake. O that I were no lover of myself, but could resign myself entirely to You, and fully leave, annihilate, and cast myself away for Your sake!