171 part i: sunday meditations for the entire year 2. “a blind man was sitting by the roadside [begging]” (Lk 18:35). Ponder the intention of that blind man sitting by the wayside, namely that he would receive either alms frompassers-by, or light from the Savior, whose arrival to the city of Jericho he had heard of earlier. Now, if because of these two things this man bore great troubles, sitting by the wayside in heat and cold and pleading with such great insistence for the light for his external eyes by invoking the Savior with cries so insistent that they offended the ears of those following Christ, consider how much perseverance in prayer you need, how much constancy in enduring mortifications and the inconveniences of this life, so that you may receive the internal light, so that you may obtain a spark of devotion, just as a dog gets a crumb and a piece of food from the table of his lord; that you may ultimately merit to receive the fullness of joy in the heavenly realm in the sight and light of the uncreated Sun itself! Just as persistence may attain all, so no heavenly gift is acquired without perseverance in prayer. [f.29r] 3. “Lord, let me receive my sight” (Lk 18:41). If that blind man begged only to have his sight restored so that he could see the world and created things, then with what longing should you ask for the light of the soul; with what prayerful effort and, shall I say, also with a certain holy importunity should you beg to be able to gaze upon and contemplate the Creator Himself? Truly, people who ignore the way of holy contemplation are deprived of a very great good, because one comes by this means to the knowledge of himself and of God, and to the closest union with the Creator of all things, the Supreme Good. Indeed, there is no greater goodness and no better gift of God, among those that He usually lavishes on men, than the gift and goodness of contemplation. For the entire happiness of the saints in Heaven comes from looking upon God. Hence, those who contemplate God, the works of God, and themselves with the most diligent and most attentive mind, taste that blessedness in some measure, they feel it beforehand, and become sharers in it. Sacred contemplation is the eye of the soul; seek it out with your whole heart, implore it with all your might, beg for it earnestly in
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