CONVERSATION BETWEEN SEMINARIAN AND GOD

Seminarian: Lord, I need to go…I have had enough!

God: Well, you are one of my most wonderful creature, I created you free. You may go but I will not  promise that you will no longer encounter suffering outside this place.

Seminarian: If I will suffer outside this wall, but at least I did a choice. Here I am always following the will of my superiors and they are teaching ideals that even difficult for them to follow.

God: But I choose you and my choice brings always the best. Although it may appear terrifying in the beginning, later you will understand.

Seminarian: Since the time I left my home to follow you, I no longer received anything except misunderstanding, loneliness and despair.

God: I’ve been through that road.

Seminarian: I’d no longer seen my father and my mother for three years and my father died without me because I was so busy preparing my exams that time. Have you consider all these pains?

God: For how many years you want to see your parent? Three, five, ten, twenty or seventy? I have preserved them for eternity. Yes, I have seen you crying behind the door when your father died,  you block the door so that nobody could  enter in your room or else they will know that you are weak. I enjoyed watching you expressing your real emotion.

Seminarian:  Why the people outside who are not  even thinking of you, they seems so happy with their family, their children, their cars and their profession? I can also be like them because you have given me satisfactory intelligence. Here, I could not even have a room of my own and I am ashamed to tell you that even my brief is given by a benefactor.

God: The people outside seemed very happy as you said, seemed to be happy and really happy are different thing. Now I will tell you a secret. “Real happiness is the fruit of the pain  you experience beside the person you love”. Do you love me?

Seminarian: Yes I have given up everything to follow you in the beginning of my journey as I hear your voice in that unknown mountain. But now, I could no longer allow to suffer pain after pain and endless loneliness.

God: if you have given me everything, why are you still keeping your pain? Give it all to me and see my cross, I am happy to die for you.

Seminarian: Perhaps now I understand...

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Augustines prayer

Augustine’s Prayer

        Admonished  by those writers to return into myself, I’ve entered into the deepness of my heart under your guidance, I was able (to do it) because you are my helper. I’ve entered there and gazed with the eyes of my soul, no matter how cloudy is my intelligence, (I saw) an immutable light. That was not the common light visible to all bodies, neither of the same specie but of a superior power. What is then the common light but the (reflection) of His greatness in the universe!

        Who knows the Truth, knows You, and who knows it, knows eternity.  Love knows you. O  eternal Truth and true Love and precious eternity, You are my God, to you I longed day and night. When I knew you for the first time, you lifted me up towards you, to let me see as if there is something to see, while I’m still blind you have resisted my unstable look with your brilliant rays and my whole being trembled with love and fear.

I discovered that I am too far from you in an unlikely place, where I heard your voice from above: “I am the nourishment of the adults. You grow, and you will eat me, without being transform in you, as nutrient of the flesh; but you are transformed in me”.

I recognized that you have taught man for his wickedness and putrefied like cob webs of my soul. I asked: “Truth is therefore nothing, because it is not extending in space either finite or infinite?”; and you shouted from afar: “I am who am”. I heard these words from the ear of my “h ear t”. Now I have no more reason to doubt. It would be more easy for me to doubt my existence than the existence of Truth of which I understand through the creation ( Conf. 7, 10, 16) 

Italian version

Augustine’s Prayer

        Ammonito da quegli scritti a tornare in me stesso, entrai nell’intimo del mio cuore sotto la tua guida e lo potei, perché divenisti il mio soccorritore. Vi entrai e scorsi con l’occhio della mia anima, per quanto torbido mia intelligenza, una luce immutabile. Non questa luce comune, visibile a ogni carne, né della stessa specie ma di potenza superiore, quale sarebbe la luce comune se la sua grandezza l’universo. Non cosi era quella, ma cosa diversa, molto diversa da tutte le luci di questa terra. Neppure sovrastava la mia intelligenza al modo che l’olio sovrasta l’acqua, e il cielo la terra, bensì era più in alto di me, poiché Lei a crearmi, e io più in basso, poiché fui da Lei creato.       

Chi conosce la verità, La conosce, e chi la conosce, conosce l’eternità. La carità la conosce. O eterna Verità e vera carità e cara eternità, tu sei il mio Dio, a te sospiro giorno e notte. Quando ti conobbi la prima volta, mi sollevasti verso di te per farmi vedere come vi fosse qualcosa da vedere, mentre io non potevo ancora vedere respingesti il mio sguardo malfermo col tuo raggio folgorante e io tutto tremai d’amore e  

        terrore. Mi scoprii lontano da te in una regione dissimile, ove mi pareva di udire la tua voce dall’alto: “Io sono il nutrimento degli adulti. Cresci, e mi mangerai, senza per questo trasformami in te, come il nutrimento della tua carne;  ma tu ti trasformerai in me”.

Riconobbe che hai ammaestrato l’uomo per la sua cattiveria e imputridito come ragnatela l’anima mia. Chiesi: “La verità dunque un nulla, poiché non si estende nello spazio sia finito sia infinito?”; e tu gridasti da lontano:  “Anzi, io sono colui che sono”. Queste parole udii con l’udito del cuore. Ora non avevo più motivo di dubitare. Mi sarebbe stato più facile dubitare della mia esistenza, che dell’esistenza della verità. La quale si scorge comprendendola attraverso il creato (Conf. 7, 10, 16).