I let the words sound in my ears:

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

Taste and see. That is the most loving and the most serious invitation I have received in my life: to taste and see the Lord’s goodness. It goes beyond study and knowledge, beyond reasoning and discourse, beyond learned books and Holy Scriptures. It is personal and direct, concrete and intimate. It speaks of contact, presence, experience. Not just “read and reflect” or “listen and understand” or “meditate and contemplate”, but “taste and see”. Open your eyes and stretch out your hand, awaken your senses and sharpen your feelings, bring out the most intimate power of your soul in spontaneous reaction and personal depth, the power to sense, to feel, to “taste” what is good and beautiful and true. And let it play joyfully and lovingly on the ultimate goodness and beauty and truth, the goodness, beauty and truth of the Lord himself.

To “taste” is a mystical word. And now it is mine by right. I am a mystic by vocation. I am called to taste and see. No shyness will keep me back, no false humility will make me withdraw. I am grateful and courageous, and want to respond to the divine invitation with all my being and with all my joy. I will open myself to the intimate delights of the presence of God in my soul. I will treasure the secret exchange of trust and love beyond words and beyond description. I will enjoy without measure the final communion of my soul with its Creator. He knows how to make his presence felt and how to take in his close embrace the souls he has created. It is for me to accept and to surrender in grateful wonder and silent bliss, to welcome the touch of God upon my soul.

I know that in order to awaken my spiritual senses, I have to still my intellect. Too much reasoning blinds intuition, and human cleverness hinders divine wisdom. Let me learn to be quiet, to be humble, to be simple. Let me transcend for a while all that I have studied and all that I have learned, let me stand before God in the nakedness of my being and the humility of my ignorance. Only then will he fill my emptiness with his fullness, and redeem my nothingness with the totality of his being. To taste the sweetness of the divinity I must purify my senses from the encumbrance of past experience and inborn prejudice. The virgin slate before the new light. The soul before the Lord.

The object of the sense of taste is the fruits of the earth... or the fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22). Divine harvest in human hearts. And that harvest we are called to reap and taste and enjoy and assimilate. So that joy may burst into our lives as the crops of the season ripen on the fields of men. And the praise of the Lord may resound till the ends of the earth. 

“I will bless the Lord continually;
his praise shall be always on my lips.
O glorify the Lord with me,