Chapter V
"God, of Your Goodness, give me Thyself; - only in You I have all"
IN this same time our Lord shewed me a spiritual sight of His homely loving. I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us: He is our clothing that for love wraps us, clasps us, and all encloses us for tender love, that He may never leave us; being to us everything that is good, as to my understanding. Also in this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked on it with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall last for that God loves it. And so everything has the Being by the love of God.
In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third, that God keeps it. But what is to me truly the Maker, the Keeper, and the Lover, - I cannot tell; for till I am Substantially joined to Him, I may never have rest nor very bliss: that is to say, till I be so fastened to Him, that there is right nothing that is made betwixt my God and me.
It needs us to have knowing of the littleness of creatures and to hold as nothing everything that is made, for to love and have God that is unmade. For this is the cause why we be not all in ease of heart and soul: that we seek here rest in those things that are so little, wherein is no rest, and know not our God that is All-mighty, All-wise, All-good. For He is the Very Rest. God wills to be known, and it pleases Him that we rest in Him; for all that is beneath Him suffices not us. And this is the cause why that no soul is rested till it is made nothing as to all things that are made. When it is willingly made nothing, for love, to have Him that is all, then is it able to receive spiritual rest.
Also our Lord God shewed that it is great pleasure to Him that a helpless soul come to Him simply and plainly and homely. For this is the natural yearnings of the soul, by the touching of the Holy Spirit (as by the understanding that I have in this Shewing): God, of Your Goodness, give me Thyself: for You are enough to me, and I may nothing ask that is less that may be worship to You; and if I ask anything that is less, ever I lack, - but only in You I have all.
And these words are lovely to the soul, and near touch they the will of God and His Goodness. For His Goodness comprehends all His creatures and all His blessed works, and passes without end. For He is the endlessness, and He has made us only to Himself, and restored us by His blessed Passion, and keeps us in His blessed love; and all this of His Goodness.