VISIO QUARTA, cap. LXXXIX
The Shadow of Human Days
Human life is fleeting and uncertain, shadowed by blindness from original sin and dried up like hay.
My days have faded like a shadow, and I have withered like grass. This is plain to see: a person is blind from original sin when it comes to things past and things future. That is why, in knowledge, one has only a shadow of these things. Whoever has no certainty is like grass drying up, since all their works are uncertain to them.
Eternal Life, Firm and New
Though mortal days dissolve into oblivion, eternal life stands firm and ever renewed like summer's fruits.
All the days of a human life are swept into oblivion by failure—but eternal life is firm and new, just as summer brings forth new fruit every year.
The Uneven Earth, the Uneven Life
The earth's uneven surface with its hills and mountains symbolizes the struggles between virtues and vices in the human soul.
Because the earth, though round over its entire surface, isn't flat—on account of the swells of hills and mountains that it bears on every side as it rises—this signifies the uneven course of human life, on account of the various struggles of virtues and vices that are waged between the soul and the flesh.
Read the original Latin
« Dies mei sicut umbra declinaverunt, et ego sicut fenum arui. » Quod sic intellectui patet: Homo ex originali peccato in his quae praeterita et futura sunt, caecus est. Unde ea in scientia sua quasi umbram habet. Qui etiam per hoc quod nullam securitatem habet, ut fenum arescit, cum omnia opera sua ei incerta sint. Omnes enim dies hominis deficiendo in oblivionem ducuntur, sed aeterna vita stabilis et nova est, ut etiam aestas omni anno novos fructus profert.
Quod terra quidem in omni superficie sua rotunda, sed non plana, propter tumores collium et montium quos undique gestat existens, inaequalem humanae conversationis propter diversa virtutum et vitiorum quae inter animam et carnem geruntur certamina, tenorem significet.
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