The Lord Under Our Roof

Who can speak of God's being, of how he is everywhere present though not invisible, of how he fills heaven and earth and every creature, according to the text:  "Do I not fill heaven and earth?  says the Lord"; and elsewhere, as the prophet says:  "The Spirit of God has filled the whole world"; and again:  "Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool"?  God, then, is everywhere, utterly immense, and everywhere close at hand, according to his own testimony about himself:  "I am a God who draws near, he says, and not a distant God."

Therefore, it is not a God dwelling far away from us that we seek, since if we are worthy we have him within us.  He dwells in us like the soul in the body, provided that we are his healthy members, that we are not dead through sin, that we are free from the taint of a depraved will.  Then he truly lives in us who said:  "And I will live in them and walk among them."  And if we are worthy to have him within us, then we are really brought to life by him as his living members, for as the apostle says:  "In him we live and move and have our being."

Who, I say, can investigate the sublimity of this unutterable and incomprehensible being?  Who can examine the depths of God?  Who would dare to treat of the eternal source of the universe?  Who could boast of knowing the infinite God who fills and surrounds all things, who penetrates and surpasses all things, who embraces and eludes all things, whom no one has ever seen as he is?  Who he is and how great he is, he alone knows, but since he is our God, though we cannot see him, we must seek him, seek him continually.  We must always hold fast to God, to the deep, immense, hidden, sublime, and omnipotent God, and beseech him, by the merits and intercession of his saints, to shed at least a ray of his light upon our darkness to shine on us, dull and ignorant as we are, on the dark road of this world, and lead us to himself by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, belongs glory throughout all ages.  Amen.

Saint Columban

-Saint Columban (615) was born in Leinster, Ireland, and was the founder of several European monasteries.