335 part ii: meditations for more solemn feasts carnal into a spiritual man! If you would stop persecuting Jesus and begin to follow Him! If you would say wholeheartedly: “Lord, what do you want me to do?” Do you really say it? [f.102v] Do you seek Him? Therefore: “Arise, and go into the city, and there you will be told what you must do” (Acts 9:7). Descend, I say, into your very soul, and there you will learn from God visiting it what you shall do, what manner of life you shall undertake and in what way you shall uproot your passions and plant virtues, namely; through the abnegation of your own will. After Holy Communion 1. “And Saul arose from the ground” (Acts 9:8). Saul certainly arose from the ground, for he no longer followed earthly desires. Indeed, he says, also lifting up the others from the ground: “I beseech you ... brothers, by the mercy of God, that you offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasant to God, your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed in the newness of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God” (Rom 12:1-2). These are the words uttered by someone who truly arose from the ground, who was caught up to the third heaven (cf. 2 Cor 12:2). Come now! Pick yourself up from the ground as well. Christ calls you: get up from the ground and “Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth” (Col 3:2). 2. “He was there three days without his sight” (Acts 9:9). No wonder that Saul’s eyes were darkened; that he rapidly became blind, since he was trying to look too quickly with a mind yet unadjusted at the heavenly light, as a sunflower does; he was trying to follow at once Jesus the Sun, as he says: “What do you want me to do?” Note that this happened in order to warn you, so that you would not seek too much enlightenment before you are cleansed, lest you attempt to enter the way of light before you free yourself from darkness. What would a picture painted with the most excellent colors be without a background? Your soul is the image of God.
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