My Soul Pines For You

My soul pines for you,
My soul clings to you, and your right hand bears me up.

However this very exhaustion and pining away
have a strengthening effect upon the soul.
A thirsty person wants to spend all his time beside a fountain.
It seems as if his one desire is to be thoroughly drenched by it
so that by this means his thirst may be assuaged.
And so Lord, your right hand bears me up and strengthens me,
making a new person of me, and enabling me to say:
It is no longer I who live,
but Christ who lives in me.

(St. Ambrose, quoted in Lost in Wonder, p. 117)