Sacred Signs: The Paten

This liturgical meditation is take from Guardini's book, Sacred Signs. It was morning. I had climbed a height and was turning back. Deep below lay the lake, and all round in the early light stood the mountains, great and silent. All was pure – the sky high above, the trees with their nobly formed fresh branches. And in myself, all my being was full of clear joyous force, so that I felt as if innumerable, invisible fountains were springing silently forth and all mounting into the bright wide heavens. Then I understood how a man’s heart may overflow, as he stands lifting up his face, and, with outstretched hands, as if holding a paten up to endless Goodness, to the Father of Light, to God Who is Love – and offers to Him all that is around and in the world below, welling up, and brightening in the overflowing silence. It must be to him as if all things rose up clear and holy from the paten in his hands.