637 chapter 19: the consecration of the mystical temple present, or the priest himself, who acknowledged, my God, Your benefit done for me, and gave You sincere thanks for me? I do not know whether this was then done for me. If it was done, I thank Your Providence, and I now consider as valid all that was done for me; if it was not done, that this benefit may not lack a certain sign of due gratitude on my part: behold now, my God, my Trinity, with all my heart and all the power and effort of my soul and body I render immense thanks to You my God, through Jesus Christ, and through His Mother, and from that time forth my most precious Mother. To whom shall I attribute the progress of my education, my God, my Trinity? You know the dangers to which my ignorant and fragile youthful age was subject, which could perceive nothing except with an animal-like sense. You fostered my limbs and strengthened them; You held my tottering steps and paces and directed them; You weakened my brute nature that I might finally emerge into a rational life. Who then glorified You for me, O my God? But who else O Lord except You, brought forth that next time of my life, in which the use of reason finally dawned on me and the first fruits of my discretion and human freedom then shone bright? And did I consecrate to You the first use of my reason? It may have happened; that it happened, I do not know, but I wish that I did it. For it was fitting that from that time forth I should love, adore and praise You, my God and Creator with the whole of my being, and profess myself your subject, and bring you and publicly declare the tribute of my subjection with fear and love. What was not done then, Lord, I do at the present. I abandon, expend, immolate, sacrifice and offer myself as a holocaust to You now, for that time, with all the first fruits of my actions and feelings that are worthy of You and which are due to You from me, in every possible kind of purity, effort and circumstance.”162 162 Pawłowski, Daniel, Vita P. Casparis Drużbicki Poloni SI, Cracoviae 1670, pp. 3-5. Textual annotations or corrections have been made in accordance with the text of this Consecration, which is found in a copy of this book in the General Archive of the Society of Jesus (AGSI).
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