O Dio, o sommo bene, or come fai
The Restless Search for God
The soul laments its inability to find God despite seeking Him in all things and experiencing the pain of divine absence.
O God, O highest good—how do you do this: that I seek only you, and I never find you? Alas! If I seek this thing or that, I'm seeking you in them, my sweet Lord: through you everything is good and beautiful, and as something good it stirs my longing; you are everywhere, in every place, O God—and yet I never find you anywhere.1 To find you, my sad soul wastes away; by day I'm tormented, and at night I find no rest; alas! The more I seek, the further my sweet, longed-for rest retreats: ah! Tell me, my Lord, where it has hidden; I am already weary; Lord, tell me at last.2 If I set out to look for You, Lord, in riches, in honor, or in pleasure, the more I seek You, the less I find You; and so this empty craving, worn out, never rests.✦ You have set my heart on fire with Your love; then You fled, and I never see You.
The Vanity of Earthly Seeking
The soul realizes that its senses and worldly desires are misdirected, leading to a cycle of frustration rather than the true blessed life.
Sight, turned toward a thousand different things, looks at you and doesn't see you, and you are radiant; the ear, too, listens to all kinds of voices, and your sound is everywhere, and it doesn't hear you: every sense seeks the sweetness common to all people, and never finds it. Ah! Why do you still look for a blessed life, sad soul, in so many troubles and pains? Keep seeking what you're seeking; but this good does not dwell in the place where you look for it. You seek a blessed life from which death comes, and life where life has never been.3
The Transformation of Desire
The soul prays for the silencing of worldly distractions and the death of the self, so that it may finally perceive the true, invisible light of God.
Let every light of my vain eyes go out, so that I may see you, true and friendly light; deafen my ears, so that I may hear the longed-for voice that says to me: “Come to me, you who are burdened or worn with toil, and I will restore you: the time has truly come at last.” —4 Let this miserable life of mine die in me, so that I may live in you, O true life; let death multiply without end—in you alone let life be, for you are life; I die as much as I leave you and look to myself; turned toward you, I will never die.5 Then the eye will see invisible light, and the ear will hear a sound that has no voice: light and sound that only the mind can sense; nor does excess offend it or harm such a sense. With feet standing still, the soul will run swiftly to that good that is always, forever, with it.6 Then I will see, O sweet and beautiful Lord, that this good or that one does not satisfy me; but when both this and that are taken away from the good, the good that remains becomes the sweet God; let whoever seeks the good feel this true and only sweetness: it never fails.7
The Eternal Spring of Love
The soul recognizes that only God can quench its thirst, and it begs Jesus to heal the very wound of love He has inflicted.
The running water of this stream or that never quenches our eternal thirst; it only piles more wood onto the wretched fire. Only the eternal, living spring satisfies us.✦ O holy water, if I reach your spring, I’ll drink, and I’ll never thirst again.8 This longing shouldn't be in vain; our ardor moves toward you as well.9 Kindly stretch out both your hands: O my Jesus, you are infinite love. Since you have sweetly wounded the heart, heal that wound yourself—the wound you make.10 —11
Read the original Latin
O Dio, o sommo bene, or come fai, che te sol cerco e non ti truovo mai?
Lasso! s’io cerco questa cosa o quella, te cerco in esse, o dolce Signor mio: ogni cosa per te è buona e bella, e muove, come buona, il mio disio; tu se’ per tutto in ogni luogo, o Dio, e in alcun luogo non ti truovo mai.
Per trovar te la trista alma si strugge; il dí m’affliggo e la notte non poso; lasso! quanto piú cerco, piú si fugge il dolce e disiato mio riposo: deh! dimmi, Signor mio, dove s’è ascoso: stanco giá son; Signor, dimmelo omai.
Se a cercar di te, Signor, mi muovo in ricchezze, in onore od in diletto, quanto piú di te cerco, men ti truovo; onde stanco mai posa il vano affetto. Tu m’hai del tuo amore acceso il petto; poi se’ fuggito, e non ti veggo mai.
La vista, in mille varie cose vòlta, te guarda e non ti vede, e sei lucente; l’orecchio ancor diverse voci ascolta, e ’l tuo suono è per tutto, e non ti sente: la dolcezza comune ad ogni gente cerca ogni senso, e non la truova mai.
Deh! perché cerchi, anima trista, ancora beata vita in tanti affanni e pene? Cerca quel cerchi pur; ma non dimora nel luogo, ove tu cerchi, questo bene; beata vita, onde la morte viene, cerchi; e vita, ove vita non fu mai.
Delli occhi vani ogni luce sia spenta, perch’io vegga te, vera luce amica: assorda i miei orecchi, acciò ch’io senta la disiata voce che mi dica: — Venite a me, chi ha peso o fatica, ch’io vi ristori: egli è ben tempo omai. —
Muoia in me questa mia misera vita, acciò che viva, o vera vita, in te; la morte in multitudine infinita, in te sol vita sia, che vita se’; muoio, quanto te lascio e guardo me; converso a te, io non morrò giamai.
Allor l’occhio vedrá luce invisibile, l’orecchio udirá suon ch’è sanza voce: luce e suon, che alla mente è sol sensibile; né ’l troppo offende o a tal senso nuoce: stando i piè fermi, correrá veloce l’alma a quel ben che seco è sempre mai.
Allor vedrò, o Signor dolce e bello, che questo bene o quel non mi contenta; ma, levando dal bene e questo e quello, quel ben che resta il dolce Dio diventa; questa vera dolcezza e sola senta chi cerca il ben: questo non manca mai.
La nostra eterna sete mai non spegne l’acqua corrente di questo o quel rivo, ma giugne al tristo foco ognor piú legne: sol ne contenta il fonte eterno e vivo. O acqua santa, se al tuo fonte arrivo, berò, e sete non arò piú mai.
Tanto desio non dovria esser vano; a te si muove pure il nostro ardore. Porgi benigno l’una e l’altra mano: o Gesú mio: tu se’ infinito amore. Poi che hai piagato dolcemente il core, sana tu quella piaga che tu fai. —
Scripture echoes
- ↩Song.3.1-Song.3.2 — On my bed, night after night, I sought the one my soul loves; I sought him, but I did not find him. Song.3.2 — I will rise now and go about the city, through the streets and through the squares; I will seek the one my soul loves. I sought him, but I did not find him.
- ↩John.4.13-John.4.14 — Jesus answered her, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again." John.4.14 — but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst forever; rather, the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life
Notes
- 1 ↩Italian 'per te' can mean 'through you,' 'because of you,' or 'for your sake'; rendered 'through you' as the goodness and beauty of creatures derive from God.
- 2 ↩Italian 'dove s'è ascoso' is third-person reflexive; the nearest grammatical subject is 'il dolce e disiato mio riposo' (my sweet, longed-for rest), itself a figure for God. Rendered as 'where it has hidden' to keep that grammar; the address is still to the Lord, and the next section makes the flight of God explicit ('poi se' fuggito').
- 3 ↩Italian pur intensifies the imperative: go on seeking / seek as you will, not a mild 'also'.
- 4 ↩Source unit is only the closing dash of the quoted divine speech begun in s1; no additional lexical content.
- 5 ↩Compressed Italian phrase: taken as a wish that death (of the self / of the many worldly things) increase without limit, set against life found only in God. Alternate reading: death belongs to the endless throng, life to God alone.
- 6 ↩Italian 'luce e suon, che alla mente è sol sensibile' names interior senses: light and sound perceived only by the mind, not the bodily organs.
- 7 ↩levando dal bene e questo e quello: abstracting away particular finite goods so that what remains of the good is God himself, not discarding goodness as such.
- 8 ↩"acqua santa" is rendered as holy water in the mystical living-water sense, not as liturgical holy water.
- 9 ↩Italian pure can mean 'also/as well' or 'purely'; here rendered as the connective 'as well,' which best fits the clause's force (desire is not futile because ardor already turns to God).
- 10 ↩Mystical love-wound: God both pierces the heart with desire and is the only healer of that wound. Emphatic Italian sana tu is kept as 'heal ... yourself.'
- 11 ↩Source sentence is only an em dash (—), likely a stanza or section break marker rather than verbal content.
Spiritual Lauds companion
Never lose the rhythm again
Chosen Portion delivers your morning, midday and night office to your phone — the Hours, without the bells.
Chosen Portion is a modern Book of Hours: it turns the fixed-hour structure this collection preserves into scheduled, tappable daily prayer on your phone.
- Three daily prayer moments scheduled around your real calendar, not a monastery's
- Psalms and historic prayers sequenced for you — no page-flipping or decision fatigue
- A visible streak of completed offices, so the rhythm compounds instead of collapsing