Vigils Reading – St Gregory the Great

THE UNENCOMPASSED LIGHT

By St Gregory the Great1

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There is in contemplation a great effort of the mind, when it raises itself

up to heavenly things, when it fixes its attention on spiritual things, when it tries

to pass over all that is outwardly seen, when it narrows itself that it may be

enlarged. And sometimes indeed it prevails and soars above the resisting

darkness of its blindness, so that it attains to somewhat of the unencompassed

Light by stealth and scantily; but for all that, to itself straightaway beaten back

it returns, and out of that light into which panting it had passed, into the

darkness of its blindness sighing it returns.

In the wrestling of Jacob with the Angel, the Angel symbolizes the Lord,

and Jacob, who contends with the Angel, represents the soul of each perfect

one, who exercises contemplation. Such a soul, when it strives to contemplate

God, as if placed in a wrestle, now comes uppermost, because by understanding

and feeling it tastes somewhat of the unencompassed Light; and now falls

underneath, because in the very tasting it faints away. Therefore, so to say, the

Angel is worsted when by the innermost intellect God is apprehended.

Almighty God, when He is now known through desire and intellect, dries

up in us every fleshly pleasure; and whereas before we seemed to be both

seeking God and cleaving to the world, after the perception of the sweetness of

God, the love of the world grows feeble in us, and the love of God alone waxes

strong; and while there increases in us the strength of inmost love, without

doubt the strength of the flesh is weakened.

The sweetness of contemplation is worthy of love exceedingly, for it

carries away the soul above itself, it opens out things heavenly, and shows that7

things earthly are to be despised; it reveals things spiritual to the eyes of the

mind, and hides things bodily.

But we must know that so long as we live in this mortal flesh no one so

advances in power of contemplation as to fix the mind’s eyes as yet on the

unencompassed ray itself of Light. For the Almighty God is not yet seen in this

brightness, but the soul beholds something beneath it, by which refreshed it

may progress, and hereafter attain to the glory of the sight of Him. When the

mind has made progress in contemplation it does not yet contemplate that

which God, but that which is under Him. But in that contemplation already the

taste of interior quiet is experienced.