O life, life! How can you endure being separated from your Life? In so much solitude, with what are you occupied? What are you doing, since all your works are imperfect and faulty? What consoles you, O my soul, in this stormy sea? I pity myself, and have greater pity for the time I lived without pity. O Lord, how gentle are Your ways! But who will walk them without fear? I fear to live without serving You; and when I set out to serve You, I find nothing that proves a satisfactory payment for anything of what I owe. It seems I want to be completely occupied in Your service, and when I consider well my own misery I see I can do nothing good, unless You give me this good.
2. O my God and my Mercy! What shall I do so as not to undo the great things You’ve done for me? Your works are holy, they are just, they are priceless and done with great wisdom, since You, Lord, are wisdom itself. If my intellect busies itself with this wisdom, my will complains. It wouldn’t want anything to hinder it from loving You, because the intellect cannot reach the sublime grandeurs of its God. And my will desires to enjoy Him, but it doesn’t see how it can since it is placed in a prison as painful as is this mortality. Everything hinders my will, although it was helped by the consideration of Your grandeurs, by which my countless miseries are better revealed.
3. Why have I said this, my God? To whom am I complaining? Who hears me but You, my Father and Creator? That You might hear of my sorrow, what need have I to speak, for I so clearly see that You are within me? This is foolish to me. But, alas, my God, how can I know for certain I’m not separated from You? O my life, how can you live with such little assurance of something so important? Who will desire you, since the gain one can acquire or hope for from you, that is, to please God in all, is so uncertain and full of dangers?