Now and then, set aside for yourself a day on which, without hindrance, you can be at leisure to praise the Divine and to make amends for all the praise and thanksgiving you have neglected all the days of your life to render God for all the good he has done. And that will be a day of praising and thanksgiving and a day of jubilation, and you will celebrate the memory of the radiant praise with which you will be jubilant to the Lord for eternity, when you will be satisfied fully by the presence of the Lord and your soul will be filled with the glory of the Lord.
God, my God, because you are mine, I lack nothing. And because I am yours, I will glory in you, God my savior for eternity. In all my sadness, you prepare for me in you the banquet of homage. And where is my soul’s well-being if not in you, O God, my life? If the memory of your praise is so dulcet in this misery, what will it be like, my God, when in the splendor of your divinity, your glory appears?
O most blessed life of my soul, be my triumph and victory in all my temptations, my patience in all weakness, my consolation in all tribulation; my total intention, beginning, end and consummation in all thought, word and deed; my holiness in all life; my perseverance in steady waiting, to the very end of the good fight.
Gertrude of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises (CF 49, p. 93)
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