As intended the lections at the Office of Readings usually provide material to feed the mind, and I was particularly struck by this morning's second one. It is from the the Instructions of St Columbanus (543-615), an Irish itinerant abbot who established momasteries in Frankish Gaul, notably Luxeuil, and spent his last days as head of the abbey at Bobbio in northern Italy. There is a biography of him here. Incidentally he is today the patron saint of motorcyclists: what I wonder, would a sixth century motor cycle look like?
St Columbanus
Fresco in Brugnano cathedral - a dependency of Bobbio
Image: Wikipedia
The passage from his works complements the Wisdom literature from Ecclesiastes which is the first reading. What I think struck ne about the passage was its seeming modernity - which in reality is an illustration of the Vincentian point about always, everywhere and by everyone - but it does seem to speak to continuing and contemporary "crisis of faith". The message seems to be clear - stop fretting and start practising the Faith.
The translation is from the Universalis website; the version in the Divine Office (Thursday Week 7) is by a different hand.
| The immeasurable depths of God |
|---|
God is everywhere. He is immeasurably vast and yet everywhere he is close at hand, as he himself bears witness: I am a God close at hand, and not a God who is distant.
It is not a God who is far away that we are seeking, since (if we
deserve it) he is within us. For he lives in us as the soul lives in the
body – if only we are healthy limbs of his, if we are dead to sin. Then
indeed he lives within us, he who has said: And I will live in them and walk among them. If we are worthy for him to be in us then in truth he gives us life, makes us his living limbs. As St Paul says, In him we live and move and have our being.
Given his indescribable and incomprehensible essence,
who will explore the Most High? Who can examine the depths of God? Who
will take pride in knowing the infinite God who fills all things and
surrounds all things, who pervades all things and transcends all things,
who takes possession of all things but is not himself possessed by any
thing? The infinite God whom no-one has seen as he is? Therefore
let no-one try to penetrate the secrets of God, what he was, how he was,
who he was. These things cannot be described, examined, explored.
Simply – simply but strongly – believe that God is as God was, that God
will be as God has always been, for God cannot be changed.
So who is God? God is the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, one God. Do not demand to know more of God. Those who want to
see into the depths must first consider the natural world, for knowledge
of the Trinity is rightly compared to knowledge of the depths of the
sea: as Ecclesiastes says, And the great depths, who shall fathom them?
Just as the depths of the sea are invisible to human sight, so the
godhead of the Trinity is beyond human sense and understanding. Thus, I
say, if anyone wants to know what he should believe, let him not think
that he will understand better through speech than through belief: if he
does that, the wisdom of God will be further from him than before.
Therefore, seek the highest knowledge not by words and
arguments but by perfect and right action. Not with the tongue,
gathering arguments from God-free theories, but by faith, which proceeds
from purity and simplicity of heart. If you seek the ineffable by means
of argument, it will be further from you than it was before; if you
seek it by faith, wisdom will be in her proper place at the gateway to
knowledge, and you will see her there, at least in part. Wisdom is in a
certain sense attained when you believe in the invisible without first
demanding to understand it. God must be believed in as he is, that is,
as being invisible; even though he can be partly seen by a pure heart.
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