My friend Aelred

The Mirror of Charity, III, 3-6Enter into true Sabbath peace

When a man, breaking off from all exterior commotion, has recollected himself in the secret of his heart so as to shut his door on the noisy crowd of vanities…; when there is nothing more in him of restlessness or disorder, nothing that tears at him, nothing that racks him…, this is the happy celebration of a first Sabbath. But one can leave this interior chamber for the inn of one’s heart… to enter into the joyful and peaceful rest of the sweetness of fraternal love…Once it has been purified by these two forms of love [that of self and of one’s neighbour], the soul yearns all the more ardently, insofar as it is the more certain, for the joys of the divine embrace. Afire with great longing it passes beyond the veil of the flesh and, entering into the sanctuary (Heb 10,20), where Christ Jesus is spirit before its face, it is wholly absorbed by an inexpressible light and unaccustomed sweetness. Silence having fallen with regard to all that is material, sensible, changing, it gazes unswervingly on That which Is, That which is always the same, identical to itself, That which is One. Set free to understand that the Lord himself is God (Ps 45,11), without question it celebrates here the Sabbath of all Sabbaths in the sweet embrace of Charity itself.