Monday, January 6 : Symeon the New Theologian

Your light surrounds me, it gives me life, O my Christ, for your vision is the source of life, your sight is resurrection. To tell the operations of your light is what I cannot do, and yet, what I have known in reality and what I know, my God, is that, even in sickness, Master, even in afflictions and sorrows, whether I am held in bonds, in hunger, in prison, whether I am prey to a thousand sufferings, O my Christ, your light, by shining, dissipates all this like darkness, and it is rest and the enjoyment of your light that the divine Spirit suddenly establishes for me. (…) For just as at sunset, night falls and darkness, and all the wild beasts come out to seek their food, so, O my God, when your light ceases to cover me, immediately the darkness of this life and the sea of ​​thoughts envelop me, the beasts of passions devour me, and all thoughts riddle me with their darts. But when you again take pity on me, when you have mercy, when you lend an ear to my plaintive groans, when you listen to my lamentations and receive my tears, when you deign to cast your eyes on my humiliation, laden with inexpiable sins, O my Christ, you make yourself visible from afar, like a star that rises, you growyourself little by little – not that by yourself, by this, you change yourself, but it is the spirit of your servant that you enlarge so that he can see. Gradually, you make yourself more visible, like the sun, because, as the darkness flees and disappears, it is you that I believe I see arriving, you the everywhere present, and when you envelop me entirely, as in the past, Savior, when you cover me entirely, you surround me entirely, I am freed from my troubles, freed from the darkness.
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team