the mystical temple of god 582 for Me, so that attracted by your love I may rest in them, like the groom in his bridal chamber, as God on His own altar.”28 Once, the God of infinite goodness desired that a temple be set up for Him by the king of the Israelites. And so He intimated His desire to His prophet, and dispatched him to David with these instructions: “Go, tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD: Should you build me a house to dwell in?’” (2 Sam29 7:5). How much more ardently does He desire to have an altar — I say, the whole heart — dedicated to Him in His Mystical Temple? From this arises this entreaty, so to speak, addressed to each one of us, as it is found in the writings of the Sage: “My son, give me your heart” (Prov 23:26). For what purpose? That He may inhabit it, reside therein, and stay, reign and rest therein forever. For the Roman Philosopher30 himself believes: “God dwells in each good man” (Seneca. Ep. 41).31 For that reason the golden Aurelius32 accedes to this, when he proposes the goal of created man to us in the following discourse: “God made man that by loving he may possess the highest Good: God is therefore the most noble possession of man.”33 But if God is the possession of man, then certainly He is most deserving of the most noble place in men; for the more excellent things are to be held in a more excellent way, and the more sublime are to be honored in a more sublime way. Yet what is more excellent or more sublime than God? Since then there is nothing in man either more deserving, or more noble, than his heart, God is to be placed here as on His altar, so that He may rejoice most fully in His whole possession. 28 John of Jesus and Mary, The Book on the Prudence of the Just, Part V, Ch. 1: Complete Works, vol. II, Cologne 1622, p. 391 29 The original text refers to 2 Kings. 30 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a Roman philosopher who belonged to the Stoic school. 31 Seneca, Books of Moral Epistles to Lucilius, I, 312: Book IV, ep. 12 (41) (The Italian Corpus of Roman Writers, edited Hectore Romagnoli, Milan 1933). 32 This is how the author denotes St. Aurelius Augustine. 33 This text could not be located in the works of St. Augustine.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI2Mw==