The Heart as an Ark of the Covenant

If, then, you want to reach the true knowledge of the Scriptures, you must first strive to gain a steadfast humility of heart, which will carry you by the perfection of love not to the knowledge that puffs up, but to the knowledge that enlightens. For it is impossible for an impure mind to gain the gift of spiritual knowledge. So with all possible care avoid this danger: that through your zeal for reading there may arise in you, not the light of knowledge, nor the lasting glory that is promised through the light that comes from learning, but only the instruments of your own destruction, from empty arrogance. Next, you must by all means strive to get rid of all anxiety and worldly thoughts, and give yourself over steadily, or rather continually, to sacred reading, until continual meditation fills your heart and shapes you, so to speak, after its own likeness. In a way it makes of your heart an ark of the testimony. That ark holds within it the two tablets of stone, that is, the constant assurance of the two testaments. It holds a golden jar, that is, a pure and undefiled memory, which by constant holding keeps safe the manna stored in it, that is, the lasting and heavenly sweetness of the spiritual sense and the bread of angels. It holds, moreover, the rod of Aaron, that is, the saving banner of Jesus Christ, our true High Priest, which always buds with the freshness of undying memory. For this is the rod which, after it had been cut from the root of Jesse, died and flourished again with a stronger life. All these are guarded by two cherubim, that is, the fullness of historical and spiritual knowledge. For the cherubim mean a multitude of knowledge. They continually protect the mercy seat of God, that is, the peace of your heart, and overshadow it against all the attacks of spiritual wickedness. And so your soul will be carried forward not only to the ark of the divine covenant, but also to the priestly kingdom. Because of its unbroken love of purity, it will be, as it were, absorbed in spiritual studies, and will fulfill the command given to the priests, laid down by the giver of the Law as follows: “And he shall not go out of the sanctuary, so that he does not defile the sanctuary of God,” that is, his heart, in which the Lord promised that he would always dwell, saying: “I will dwell in them and walk among them.” Therefore the whole series of the Holy Scriptures should be carefully committed to memory and repeated without ceasing. For this continual meditation will bring us a double fruit. First, while the attention of the mind is taken up with reading and preparing the lessons, it cannot possibly be taken captive in any snares of bad thoughts. Next, things we went over and repeated often, which we could not understand while we were trying to commit them to memory, because the mind was taken up at the time, we can see more clearly afterward, when we are free from the distraction of all activities and sights, and especially when we reflect on them in silence in our meditation by night. So when we are at rest, and as it were sunk in the heaviness of sleep, the understanding of the most hidden meanings is revealed to us, of which we had not the faintest idea in our waking hours. [a]