Before the First Light

St. Arsenius the Great with Psalm 63 (Grail)

The desert is still.

Not the stillness of absence, but the stillness of watchfulness.

Before the first light, Arsenius stands with his face toward the east. His hands are empty. His mouth is closed. His heart is awake.

He begins where the psalm begins, not with explanation but with hunger.

O God, you are my God, for you I long.

He does not rush the words. He lets them stand like stones set at the mouth of a well. Longing is not a feeling to be stirred up. It is a truth to be admitted. Arsenius knows this truth. He fled Rome not because he despised learning, but because learning could not satisfy thirst. The desert taught him to tell the truth before God.

For you my soul is thirsting.

He bows slightly. The word thirst is no metaphor here. He remembers days when the tongue stuck to the roof of the mouth, when the sun pressed down without mercy. The psalm does not flatter the soul. It exposes it.

My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.

Arsenius allows the body to speak. Knees stiff. Breath slow. The ache in the back from the night’s vigil. He does not silence these things. He offers them. The psalm gathers body and soul into a single cry. Prayer that ignores the body becomes imagination. Prayer that includes it becomes truth.

He stands longer.

So I gaze on you in the sanctuary, to see your strength and your glory.

The sanctuary is no longer marble and gold. It is this place of poverty. The heart made bare becomes the holy place. Arsenius does not look for visions. He looks for faithfulness. To stand before God without demand is already to behold His glory.

A breeze moves through the scrub. The lamp flickers.

For your love is better than life, my lips will speak your praise.

He pauses here. Better than life. Not better than comfort. Not better than reputation. Better than breath itself. Arsenius knows what it cost him to learn this line. Titles fell away. Influence vanished. The desert did not replace them with anything visible. Only love remained. And that was enough.

He whispers now.

So I will bless you all my life, in your name I will lift up my hands.

The hands rise. Empty. Trembling slightly. The psalm teaches him how to stand before God without bargaining. Praise is not payment. It is alignment. To bless God is to take one’s proper place.

The light grows faintly stronger.

My soul shall be filled as with a banquet, my mouth shall praise you with joy.

Arsenius smiles, almost imperceptibly. He has eaten little. He has slept less. Yet the soul knows a fullness the body cannot provide. Joy here is quiet, almost severe. It does not need expression. It needs guarding.

He sits on the ground.

On my bed I remember you. On you I muse through the night.

The night has been long. Thoughts came and went like shadows. Old memories knocked and were refused entry. The Name returned again and again, steady as breath. Remembrance is not nostalgia. It is fidelity.

For you have been my help; in the shadow of your wings I rejoice.

The desert is exposed, yet this line speaks of shelter. Arsenius has learned that protection is not the absence of danger but the presence of God. To live under His wings is to accept vulnerability without fear.

He presses his hand to the ground.

My soul clings to you; your right hand holds me fast.

This is the heart of the psalm. Not effort, but attachment. Not control, but being held. Arsenius knows how easily the soul clings to noise, to opinion, to its own judgments. Here it clings to God alone. And in that clinging discovers it is already grasped.

The sun breaks the horizon.

He ends without haste, without commentary. The psalm has done its work. It has gathered thirst, body, night, memory, and hope into a single orientation of the heart.

Arsenius returns to silence.

The desert receives him.

And the psalm continues, written now not on the tongue, but in the life that remains.