Vigils Reading – St Elizabeth Ann Seton

O SOUL OF MY SOUL

By St Elizabeth Ann Seton

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How often have I felt my soul awakened by your Light and warmed by the

fire of your Love – then I approach you – I find you – but Alas instantly after, I

lose you; often I think myself received – then fear I am rejected – and in this

continual change of interior dispositions I walk in darkness and often go astray

– I desire and know not how to desire, I love, and know not how to love, nor how

to find what I love.

Thus my soul loses itself without ceasing to hope in you – It knows by its

own experience that it desires much, and is unable to do anything – you see its

trouble O lord – and in that happy moment when fatigued with so many

vicissitudes it falls at last into entire diffidence of itself then you open its eyes

and it sees the true way to Peace and Life – it knows you were nearer than it

imagined – you instruct it all at once without Voice or Words, it thinks only of

what possesses it, abandoning all things else it then possesses you – It sees

without knowing what it sees, it hears, and is ignorant of what it hears, it knows

only Who he is to whom it is attentive, it contents itself with loving HIM, it loves

Him continually more and more – Words cannot express, nor the mind

comprehend what it receives from you O MY GOD even in this place of

Banishment.

How happy is that moment O divine Jesus! How pure is that Light, how

ineffable is that communion of your Blessings! You know O Lord how precious

that gift is, and your Creature that receives it knows also – Ah! if it were faithful,

if it never departed from you – if it knew how to preserve the Grace it had

received, how happy would it be! And yet this is but a drop of that infinite Ocean

of Blessings which you are one day to communicate to it.

O Soul of my Soul – what is my Soul and What Good can it have without

possessing you – Life of my Life! What is my Life when I live not in you – Is it

possible that my Heart is capable of possessing you – of enjoying you all alone –

of extending and dilating itself in you – can your creature thus be elevated above

itself to repose in your Breast, and after that depart from you? Bury itself in the

Earth? Ah Lord I know not what I ought to say to You: but hear the voice of your

love and of my misery; live always in me, and let me live perpetually in You and

for You as I live only by You.

Enlighten me, O Divine Light! Conduct me, O supreme Truth! Raise me

again, O uncreated Life! Separate me from every thing that displeases you.

Suffer me to remain at your Feet!