Search the Scriptures. For you are not mistaken in thinking that you find life in them, you who seek nothing else in them but Christ, to whom the Scriptures bear witness. Blessed indeed are they who search his testimonies, seek them out with all their heart. Your testimonies are wonderful, Lord, therefore my soul has searched them. There is need for searching not only in order to draw out the mystical sense but also to taste the moral sense. Therefore you who walk about in the gardens of the Scriptures do not pass by heedlessly and idly, but searching each and every word like busy bees gathering honey from flowers, reap the Spirit from the words. ‘For my Spirit’, says Jesus, `is sweeter than honey and my inheritance surpasses the honeycomb’. So, proving by experience that hidden manna is savory, you will break forth into those words of David: ‘How sweet to my mouth are your words, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to my palate’.
From these gardens the Bridegroom will lead you, if I be not mistaken, into others where rest is more hidden and enjoyment more blessed and beauty more wonderful. When you are absorbed in his praises with accents of exultation and thanksgiving, he will take you into his wonderful tenting place, into the very house of God, into the unapproachable light in which he dwells, where he feeds, where he lies down at midday. For if the devotion of those who sing psalms or pray has something of that loving curiosity of the disciples who asked: ‘Rabbi, where do you dwell?’ they deserve, I think, to hear: `Come and see’. ‘They went’, we read, and saw and stayed with him that day’.
Guerric of Igny
