“Your heart is my tomb … Your soul is my garden….”
“There, in our innermost ‘I’, Jesus is present. Everything that goes on outside our heart and, as it were, at the door of our heart, serves only to help uncover the treasure concealed within. There is the Easter tomb, and there the new life:
‘Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?
The one you seek is in your possession, and you do not know it?
You have the true, the eternal joy, and yet you weep?
It is within your inmost being, and you look for it without?
You stand outside, weeping at the tomb.
Your heart is my tomb.
And I am not dead there, but I take my rest in your heart, living for ever.
Your soul is my garden.
You were right to suppose that I was the gardener.
I am the New Adam.
I till and mind my paradise.
Your tears, your love and your longing are all my work.
In your inmost being you possess me,
although you do not know it, and so you look for me without.
Outwardly, therefore, I will appear to you,
and so make you return to yourself,
that in your inmost being you may find the one
whom you seek outside.”
(An unknow monk of the 13th century, P.L. 184, 766)
– André Louf, Teach Us to Pray 38-39 –
