Angelus Silesius
1624-1677 17th century
Brevity as prayer: a few words that are enough to stand before God.
Who was Angelus Silesius?
Born Johannes Scheffler in Breslau to a Lutheran family, trained as a physician, he became a Catholic at twenty-nine and later a priest. In 1657 he published The Cherubinic Wanderer, some sixteen hundred rhymed couplets holding in two lines what others put in a treatise. He ended his days in a religious house in Breslau, having given away all he had to the poor.
In their own words
The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms; it takes no heed of itself, asks not whether it is seen.
Stop. Where are you running. Heaven is within you; if you seek God elsewhere, you will miss him always.
Man, become essential: for when the world passes away, the accident falls off, and the essence remains.
I know not what I am, I am not what I know: a thing and not a thing, a tiny point and a circle.