Twenty-First Meditation

(Ascent of Mount Carmel, book II: chapter 25-27)

"Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood." (44)


The Light Of Truth

Pure knowledge, too sublime to speak,
Infused by rays of heaven's light,
Reflects the Lord like Tabor's peak:
His Presence pure; His Glory bright.

Bits of truth, like shards of stained glass,
When deftly soldered by the mind,
Can form a theory which could pass
For truth -- still, this knowledge is blind.

Revelations and prophecies
Are shards of truth common in prayer.
She distrusts them as fallacies,
And strives to sift them with great care.

The whole of Truth words cannot hold;
In prayer, Truth is infused, not told..

44. 1 Corinthians 13:8-12


(c) Paul Buis, 2003