You, oh Christ, are the Kingdom of Heaven

You, oh Christ, are the Kingdom of Heaven

by St. Symeon the New Theologian

You, oh Christ, are the Kingdom of Heaven;
You, the land promised to the gentle;
You the grazing lands of paradise;
You, the hall of the celestial banquet;
You, the ineffable marriage chamber;
You the table set for all,
You the bread of life;
You, the unheard of drink;
You, both the urn for the water
and the life-giving water;
You, moreover, the inextinguishable lamp
for each one of the saints;
You, the garment and the crown
and the one who distributes crowns;
You, the joy and the rest;
You, the delight and glory;
You the gaiety;
You, the mirth;
and Your grace, grace of the Spirit of all sanctity,
will shine like the sun in all the saints;
and You, inaccessible sun,
will shine in their midst
and all will shine brightly,
to the degree of their faith,
their asceticism,
their hope
and their love,
their purification
and their illumination
by Your Spirit.

English version by
George A. Maloney, S.J.

As soon as your mind has experienced

Poems by St. Symeon the New Theologian


As soon as your mind has experienced


As soon as your mind has experienced
what the scripture says:
"How gracious is the Lord,"
it will be so touched with that delight
that it will no longer want to leave the place of the heart.
It will echo the words of the apostle Peter:
"How good it is to be here."



How are You at once the source of fire,


How are You at once the source of fire,
how also the fountain of dew?
How at once burning and sweetness,
how a remedy for all corruption?

How do You make gods of us men,
how do You make darkness light?
How do You make one reascend from Hell,
how do You make us mortals imperishable?

How do You draw darkness to light,
how do You triumph over night?
How do You illumine the heart?
how do You transform me entirely?

How do You become one with men,
how do You make them sons of God?

English version by
George A. Maloney, S.J.



The fire rises in me,

The fire rises in me,
and lights up my heart.
Like the sun!
Like the golden disk!
Opening, expanding, radiant‹
Yes!
‹a flame!

I say again:
I don't know
what to say!

I'd fall silent
‹If only I could‹
but this marvel
makes my heart leap,
it leaves me open mouthed
like a fool,

urging me
to summon words
from my silence.

English version by
Ivan M. Granger

In the midst of that night, in my darkness,

In the midst of that night, in my darkness,

by St. Symeon the New Theologian


In the midst of that night, in my darkness,
I saw the awesome sight of Christ
opening the heavens for me.
And he bent down to me and showed himself to me
with the Father and the Holy Spirit
in the thrice holy light --
a single light in three, and a threefold light in one,
for they are altogether light,
and the three are but one light,.
And he illumined my soul
more radiantly than the sun,
and he lit up my mind,
which had until then been in darkness.
Never before had my mind seen such things.
I was blind, you should know it, and I saw nothing.
That was why this strange wonder
was so astonishing to me,
when Christ, as it were, opened the eye of my mind,
when he gave me sight, as it were,
and it was him that I saw.
He is Light within Light, who appears
to those who contemplate him,
and contemplatives see him in light --
see him, that is, in the light of the Spirit...
And now, as if from far off,
I still see that unseeable beauty,
that unapproachable light, that unbearable glory.
My mind is completely astounded.
I tremble with fear.
Is this a small taste from the abyss,
which like a drop of water
serves to make all water known
in all its qualities and aspects?...
I found him, the One whom I had seen from afar,
the one whom Stephen saw
when the heavens opened,
and later whose vision blinded Paul.
Truly, he was as a fire in the center of my heart.
I was outside myself, broken down, lost to myself,
and unable to bear the unendurable brightness of that glory.
And so, I turned
and fled into the night of the senses.

English version by
John Anthony McGuckin

O totally strange and inexpressible marvel!

O totally strange and inexpressible marvel!

by St. Symeon the New Theologian

O totally strange and inexpressible marvel!
Because of my infinite richness I am a needy person
and imagine to have nothing, when I possess so much,
and I say: "I am thirsty," through superabundance of the waters
and "who will give me," that which I possess in abundance,
and "where will I find," the One whom I see each day.
"How will I lay hold of," the One who is within me,
and beyond the world, since he is completely invisible?

Don't put yourself in despair

Don't put yourself in despair

by St Symeon the New Theologian

IF you ignore these things, my beloved one, don’t put yourself in despair, saying, ‘I have not seen these things, nor can I ever know them; I will never have the power to reach and rise up to the height of this knowledge, contemplation and cleanness’. Don’t you say, again, ‘Because, if someone won’t become like this, to ware in himself the Christ as God in this life already, and see the Christ himself and whole, and take Him to dwell in himself, one won’t enter in His Kingdom, of what use is it to me to fight, even a little, or even to lose the current pleasures?’ Don’t say this; don't even think about it, but if you wish, listen to my advice and I will announce you the way of salvation, with the help of the Grace of the all-holy Spirit.

Rose de Noël_hellebore

Sometime words can grow stranges flowers.

Becoming invisible and suddenly appearing

by Symeon the New Theologian



I DIDN'T know yet, my Lord, that you exist, you who made me from clay and gave me all these goods. I didn’t know yet, that you yourself was my un-proud God and Lord. Because I had not received yet the grace to hear your voice in order to know you; you had not yet come and said mystically to me that ‘I am’. I was unworthy and unclean, still having the ears of my soul obstructed by the clay of sin, and my eyes under the command of disbelief and of the sense and fog of the passions. And I was seeing thus you my God, but without knowing, not having first believed that God, as much as possible being seen, he is being seen by some, I could not discern that God or God’s glory is this, which, sometimes thus, sometimes otherwise, is revealed, but the miracle being unusual astonished me and filled the whole of my soul and of my heart with joy, so that I was seeing even my very body partake of that ineffable grace. But I didn’t know yet clearly who you are, whom I was seeing.
I started to see more often the light, sometimes inside, when my soul enjoyed serenity and peace, sometimes outside somewhere far away appeared to me or it was wholly hiding itself and hidden it was bringing sadness unbearable to me, because I was thinking it will no more in any way be revealed. And while I was mourning and weeping and showing all kinds of strangeness, obedience and humility, it was revealing itself upon me just like the sun, that cuts the fatness of the cloud and little by little appears friendly in the shape of a sphere.
This way then you, the ineffable, the invisible, the untouchable, the immovable, the everywhere forever and in everything present and filling everything, at all times, to say so, in day and night being seen and hidden, going away and coming, becoming invisible and suddenly appearing, little by little you drove away the darkness inside me, you drove away the cloud, you made thinner my fatness, the dirt of my spiritual eyes you cleaned perfectly, removed the obstacles from the ears of my mind and you opened them, you surrounded and removed the covering of insensitivity, and besides these, all passion and all carnal pleasure you drove to perfect sleep and perfectly you exiled it away from me. ...
These are God’s wonders towards us, brothers! And while we are elevated to a greater perfection, no more like before without shape or form the shapeless and formless comes, or the presence and arrival of His light in silence works in us - but how? In some form, yet God’s form. God is revealed not in a shape or outline, but in incomprehensible, wonderful and formless light formed is revealed simple - nothing more can we say or express - , He starts to be revealed clearly and to be known in a great familiarity and to be seen much clearly, the invisible, invisibly speaks and hears and, as if a friend to a friend, face to face, who is by his nature the God speaks with them who have been born from Him by grace Gods, and as a father loves and by his sons He is loved in a great warmth and He becomes for them a strange vision and a more terrific sound, without being able either to be spoken by them worthily, or to be neglected, covered in silence. Because by the yearning for Him they always are lit up and mystically by Him resound.
Christ does not bless those who just teach, but those who have already worked His commands and received the Grace to see above and look in themselves the Light and the Thunders of the Spirit, thus having understood in a real vision, knowledge and energy of the Light, all that are going also to say and teach to the others. This is how, as we said, must rise those who try to teach others, so that they won’t talk about things they don’t know, deceiving and dooming themselves and those who believe their words.
Who is blind to the One, is completely blind to all. Who sees the One, has vision of all - and at any rate is removed from their vision, and in the vision of all becomes, and outside of all he is. Inside the One he sees everything, and while being in everything nothing of any thing does he see.

Whoever sees in the One through the One, sees clearly himself and all men and all things, and hidden inside the One, he doesn't see anything of any thing.

Who has not worn the Image of our Lord Jesus Christ, the heavenly man and God, inside his mind and spiritual man, sensing well and knowing Him, is just blood so far and flesh, the sense of spiritual glory unable by words to receive, just as who are born blind, unable are to know the light of the sun by words alone.

Practical and Theological Chapters 4 & 51-53

On his move

Just a moment
I am a bird
I have to fly high in the sky
This is my rock.

Sleeping birds

On a branch, all the family is sleeping.

Meaning of life.

The Secret Rose

Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy woke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew
By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred morns had flowered red
Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;
And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,
And sought through lands and islands numberless years,
Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress. I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

Wiliam Butler Yeats

Trees

Trees,winter trees, more as a background for a child tale.