论祈祷与静观生活

prayer. Then one night Reginald heard voices in the Saint's cell, and whilst he wondered what this might mean at that hour, S. Thomas came to him and said: "Reginald, get up, light a candle, and take the book in which you have been writing upon Isaias and make ready to write once more." Then Reginald wrote whilst the Saint dictated as though he were reading out of a book, with such facility did he speak. And then, at Reginald's insistent petition, he said to him: "My son, you have seen the affliction under which I have been of late owing to this passage of Isaias which I have just been expounding, and you know how I besought God with tears that I might understand it. God, then, this very night had pity upon me, and sent His Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul whom I had prayed to intercede for me, and they have most fully explained it all!"[13] How gladly would one know what passage of Isaias it was which was thus Divinely interpreted! And so this truly marvellous life went on till the end drew near. Day by day he ascended the steps of the altar, his face bathed in tears; day by day he returned to his work more and more illumined regarding the _Mysterium Fidei_, and with his soul still more closely knit to its Maker. His ecstasies became more frequent, and in one of these he was told that the close of his life was at hand. For it was at San Severino, not far from Salerno, that he fell into so prolonged an ecstasy that his sister who was present appealed to Reginald to know what had happened to her brother. Even Reginald was astonished. "He is frequently rapt in spirit," he said, "but never before have I seen him thus abstracted!" "Then," says William of Tocco, "Master Reginald went to him, and, plucking him by the cloak, roused him from this deep sleep of contemplation.…