Moralia in Job 467

Verse 7. Perhaps you will comprehend the footsteps of God, and will find the Almighty even unto perfection. 13. God's footsteps are His gifts by which we are summoned to the things above. God is not here seen manifestly. The power of contemplation. Neither the angelic nor the human mind fully beholds God's essence. What does he call the footsteps of God except the kindness of His visitation? By which surely we are summoned to advance to the things above, when we are touched by the breath of His Spirit, and, lifted beyond the straits of the flesh, we recognize through love the form of our Author to be contemplated, which we may follow.

For when the love of the spiritual homeland inflames our mind, it as it were points out the way to those who follow, and upon the heart laid beneath is imprinted, as it were, a certain footstep of God as He walks, so that by Him the way of life may be held by the right steps of thoughts. For Him whom we do not yet discern, it needs must remain that we track Him through the footsteps of His love, until at some time the mind may find, unto the form of contemplation, Him whom now, as though following behind His back, it explores through holy desires. The Psalmist well knew how to follow these footsteps of our Author when he said: My soul has clung after You (Ps. 63:9). Whom he also strove to find, even unto the vision of His loftiness, saying: My soul has thirsted for the living God;

when shall I come and appear before the face of God (Ps. 42:3)? For then indeed is the almighty God found with manifest thought, when, the corruption of our mortality being utterly trodden down, He is beheld by us, taken up, in the brightness of His divinity. But now the grace of the infused Spirit lifts the mind from carnal thought, and exalts it into contempt of transient things; and the mind despises among the lowest all that it was desiring, and grows fiery toward the desires above, and by the force of its contemplation is borne beyond the flesh, which by the weight of its corruption is still retained in the flesh. It strives to gaze upon the radiance of the uncircumscribed light, and cannot; which the soul, pressed by weakness, in no way penetrates, and yet, being repulsed, loves.

For already the Creator shows of Himself that whereby He may be loved, but withdraws the form of His vision from those who love. Beholding, therefore, His footsteps alone, we walk, we who follow through the signs of His gifts Him whom we do not yet see. Which footsteps surely cannot be comprehended, because whence, where, and in what ways the gifts of His Spirit come, are not known, Truth attesting, who says: The Spirit breathes where it wills, and you hear its voice, but you know not whence it comes and whither it goes (John 3:8).

But in the summit of retribution the Almighty can be found through the form of contemplation, yet not unto perfection, because although we at some time behold Him in His brightness, nevertheless we do not fully behold His essence. For the angelic or human mind, when it pants toward the uncircumscribed light, by that very fact, that it is a creature, straitens itself; and it is indeed stretched above itself by advancement, yet not even when dilated does it suffice to comprehend His splendour, who both by transcending and by upholding and by filling encloses all things. Whence it is further subjoined: