Book One

"Great art Thou, O Lord, and worthy of praise in all things; great is Thy power, and immeasurable is Thy wisdom." And man, a particle of Thy creatures, wants to glorify Thee; a man who carries his mortality with him everywhere, carries with him the testimony of his sin and the testimony that Thou art "against the proud." And yet man, a particle of Thy creatures, wants to glorify Thee. Thou dost delight us with this doxology, for Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart knows no rest until it rests in Thee. Let me, O Lord, know and comprehend whether to begin by calling upon Thee or by glorifying Thee; whether it is necessary first to know Thee or to call upon Thee. But who will call upon Thee without knowing Thee? It is not to Thee that he who does not know can call upon Thee, but to someone else. Or is it necessary to "call upon Thee" in order to know Thee? "How shall they call upon Him in Whom they have not believed? And how can they believe Thee without a preacher? And those who seek Him will praise the Lord." Those who seek will find Him, and those who find Him will praise Him. I will seek Thee, O Lord, calling upon Thee, and I will call upon Thee, believing in Thee, for in Thee it has been preached to us. My faith cries out to Thee, O Lord, which Thou hast given me, which Thou hast breathed into me through Thy incarnate Son, through the ministry of Thy Confessor.

But how shall I call upon my God, to God and my Lord? When I call upon Him, I will call Him into myself. Where is the place in me where my Lord would come? Where will the Lord come in me, the Lord who created heaven and earth? O Lord my God! Is there anything in me that can contain You? Do the heavens and the earth, which Thou hast made, and in which Thou hast created me, contain Thee? But without You, there would be nothing that exists, so everything that exists contains You? But I also exist; why do I ask Thee to come to me: I would not be if Thou hadst not been in me. For I am not yet in hell, though Thou art there. And "if I go down to hell, you are there." I wouldn't be there, my God, I wouldn't be there at all, if You weren't in me. No, rather, I would not exist if I were not in You, "from Whom are all things, through Whom are all things, in Whom are all things." Truly so, Lord, truly so. Where shall I call Thee, if I am in Thee? And whence wilt thou come to me? Where, beyond earth and heaven, shall I go, that my Lord may come to me from thence to me? Who said, "Heaven and earth are full of Me"?

And so, do heaven and earth contain Thee, if Thou fillest them? Or do You fill them and something else remains in You, for they do not contain You? And where does this remnant of Yours pour out when heaven and earth are full? Or You don't need a container. To Thee, Who contains all things, for what Thou fillest Thou fillest by containing? It is not the vessels full of Thee that give Thee stability: let them be broken. You won't spill out. And when Thou pours out into us, it is not Thou who falls, but we are raised up by Thee; Thou art not scattered, but we are gathered together by Thee. And everything that You fill, You fill everything with Yourself. But surely everything is not able to contain Thee, it contains only a part of Thee, and all at once contain the same part? Or individual creatures – separate parts: the larger ones, the smaller smaller ones? So, is one part in You greater and the other less? Or are Thou whole everywhere, and nothing can contain Thee as a whole?

What then art thou, O my God? What if not the Lord God? "Who is the Lord besides the Lord? And who is God but our God?" The Highest, the Most Gracious, the Mighty, the Almighty, the Most Merciful, and the Most Just; the Most Distant and the Closest, the Most Beautiful and the Strongest, the Immovable and the Incomprehensible; Unchanging, Changing all things, eternally Young and eternally Old, Thou renews all things and makes the proud old, and they know it not; eternally in action, eternally at rest, gathering and not needing, carrying, filling and covering; create, nourish and improve; you seek, although you have everything. You love and do not worry; you are jealous and not anxious; you repent and do not grieve; you are angry and remain calm; you change your works, and do not change your counsel; you pick up what you find and never lose; you are never in need and rejoice in profit; You are never stingy and demand interest. It is given to you in abundance that you may be in debt, but does anyone have anything that is not yours? You pay your debts, but you owe no one; you pay off your debts without losing anything. What more can I say, my Lord, my Life, my Holy Joy? And what can we say about You? But woe to them. who are silent about Thee, for even the pure are dumb.

Who will let me rest in You? Who will allow Thou to enter into my heart and make it drunk, so that I may forget all my evil and embrace my only good, Thee? What are You to me? Have pity on me and let me speak. What am I to Thee, that Thou commandest me to love Thee, and that Thou art angry if I do not do this, and that Thou threatest me with great misfortunes? Is it not a great misfortune not to love You? Woe is me! Tell me in Thy mercy, O Lord my God, what art Thou for me? "Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation." Speak so that I can hear. Behold the ears of my heart before Thee, O Lord: open them, and say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Do not hide Thy face from me: I will die, I will not die, but let me see him.

Strait is the house of my soul, that Thou mayest enter there: enlarge it. It is collapsing, renew it. There is something in it with which to offend Thy gaze: I confess, I know, but who will take it away? And to whom else but Thee shall I exclaim: "Cleanse me from my secret sins, O Lord, and deliver Thy servant from those who tempt." I believe and therefore I say: "Lord, Thou knowest." Have I not testified before Thee "against myself of my transgressions, O my God? And thou hast forgiven the iniquities of my heart." I do not argue with You, Who is the Truth, and I do not want to lie to myself, lest my iniquity lie to myself. No, I do not judge You, for "If You look upon iniquities, O Lord, Lord, who can stand?"

And yet, let me speak before You, O Merciful One, to me, "dust and ashes." Allow me to say: To Thy mercy, not to the man who will ridicule me, I appeal. What do I want to say, Lord my God? "Only that I don't know where I came from, to this—shall I say—dead life or living death?" I don't know. Thy mercy greeted me with consolation, as I heard it from my parents according to the flesh, through whom Thou didst create me in time; I don't remember it myself. My first consolation was milk, with which neither my mother nor my nurses filled their breasts; Through them Thou hast given me the nourishment necessary for the babe according to Thy institution and according to Thy riches, distributed to the depths of creation. Thou hast given me not to desire more than Thou hast given, but to my nurses the desire to give me what Thou hast given them. For them my good was good, which I received from them, but it did not come from them, but through them, for from Thee are all good, and from my Lord all my salvation. I understood this later, although Thou didst call upon me even then, with gifts from without and within me. Even then, I knew how to suck, calmed down from bodily pleasure, cried from bodily inconveniences – as long as that was all.

Then I began to laugh, first in my sleep, then in my wakefulness. This is how I was told about me, and I believe it, because I saw the same thing in other babies: I do not remember myself at that time. And so gradually I began to understand where I was; I wanted to explain my desires to those who would fulfill them, but I could not, because my desires were in me, and those around me were outside of me, and they could not enter my soul by any external sense. I floundered and shouted, expressing with the few signs I could and as far as I could, something like my desires, but these signs did not express my desires. And when they did not obey me, whether they did not understand me, or so as not to harm me, I was angry that the elders did not obey me, and the free did not serve as slaves, and I avenged myself by weeping. That infants are like this, I learned from those whom I could recognize, and that I was the same, they themselves, the unconscious, told me more about this than my conscious educators.

And behold, my infancy has long since died, and I live, O Lord, Thou Who livest always, in Whom nothing dies, for before the beginning of the ages, and above all things, of which it may be said "before," Thou art God and Lord of all Thy creation, Thou art the cause of all that is unstable, the principles of all things that change are unchangeable, the order of disorder and temporal is eternal, O Lord, Answer me, did my infancy come after some other age of mine that had died, or was it preceded only by the period which I spent in my mother's womb? Something has been reported to me about him, and I myself have seen pregnant women. And what happened before that. My joy, my Lord? Have I been anywhere, have I been anyone? There is no one to tell me about it: neither my father nor my mother could do it: there is no other person's experience here, no memories of their own. Do you laugh at my asking this, and command me to praise you and confess you because I know?

I confess Thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, giving Thee praise for the beginning of my life and for my infancy, of which I do not remember. You allowed a person to guess about himself from others, to believe a lot about himself, relying even on the testimony of ordinary women. Yes, I was and lived then, and already at the end of infancy I was looking for signs with which I could communicate to others what I felt. Where does such a creature come from, if not from You, Lord? Is there a master who creates himself? Does the spring flow in another place, from which being and life flow to us? No, Thou art the creator of us, O Lord, Thou for Whom there is no difference between being and life, for Thou art perfect Being and perfect Life. Thou art perfect, and Thou dost not change: with Thee the present day does not pass, and yet it passes away with Thee, because with Thee all things; nothing could pass away if you did not contain everything. And since "Thy years do not run out," Thy years are today. How many of our days and the days of our fathers have passed through Yours today; from Him they received their form and somehow came into being, and others will pass through it, receive their form and somehow come into being. "You are always the same": everything tomorrow and what follows it, everything yesterday and what is behind it, You will turn into today, You have turned into today. What do I care if someone doesn't understand this? Let him also rejoice, saying, "What is this?" Let him rejoice, and prefer to find Thee without finding, than finding Thee, not to find Thee.

Hear, O Lord! Woe to the sins of men. And man says this, and Thou hast compassion on him, for Thou hast created him, but hast not created sin in him. Who will remind me of the sin of my infancy? For no one is clean from sin before You, not even a babe, whose life on earth is only one day. Who will remind me? Some little thing in whom I will see something that I do not remember in myself?

So, what was my sin then? By the fact that, crying, he reached for his chest? If I do this now, and with my mouth agape, reach not only for my breast, but for food suitable for my age, then I will in all fairness be ridiculed and chosen. And then, therefore, I deserved to be scolded, but since I could not understand the one who was scolding, it was neither customary nor reasonable to reproach me. As we age, we eradicate and discard such habits. I have not seen a knowledgeable person who, while cleaning up a plant, would throw out good branches. Was it good, however, even for one's age, to weep to seek even that which would be given to harm? Is it cruel to be indignant at people who are not subject to control, free and elderly, including one's parents, to try to the best of one's ability to beat reasonable people who do not obey at the first demand because they did not obey orders that would be disastrous to obey? Infants are innocent because of their bodily weakness, and not because of their souls. I saw and observed the jealous baby: he did not yet speak, but pale, looked bitterly at his foster-brother. Who does not know such examples? Mothers and wet nurses say that they atone for it, I don't know by what means. Perhaps it is innocence, too, with a spring of milk that is abundant and abundant, not to endure a comrade who is utterly helpless, living on this food alone? All these phenomena are meekly tolerated, not because they are insignificant or unimportant, but because they will pass with years. And You confirm this by saying that the same thing cannot be seen calmly at an older age.

O Lord my God, it was Thou who gave the infant life and body, which, as we see, Thou didst endow with feelings, Thou didst firmly bind its limbs, Thou didst adorn it, and Thou didst imbue it with the striving inherent in every living creature for the fullness and preservation of life. Thou commandest me to praise Thee for this, "to confess Thee, and to sing Thy name, O Most High," for Thou wouldst be almighty and good if Thou didst do only this, which no one but Thee could do; The only One from Whom all measure comes, the Most Beautiful, Who makes all things beautiful and orders all things according to His law. This age, Lord, of which I do not remember that I lived, in relation to which I rely on others, and in which, as I guess from other infants, I somehow acted, I do not want, in spite of my very fair conjectures, to include in this life of mine, which I live in this world. As far as the fullness of my forgetfulness is concerned, this period is equal to that which I spent in my mother's womb. And if "I was conceived in iniquity, and in sins my mother fed me in her womb," where, O my God, where am I, O Lord, Thy servant, where or when have I been innocent? No, I'm missing that time; and what have I to do with him, when I cannot find any trace of him?