I have received your sprout, you who are to come!
I have received it in deepest need and lowliness.
I covered it in shabby patchwork and bedded down on poor words.
And mockery worshiped it, your child, your wondrous child, the child of one who is to come, who should announce
the father, a fruit that is older than the tree on which it grew.
In pain will you conceive and joyful is your birth.
Fear is your herald, doubt stands to your right, disappointment to your left.
We passed by in our ridiculousness and senselessness when we caught sight of you.
Our eyes were blinded and our knowledge foll silent when we received your radiance.
You new spark of an eternal fire, into which night were you born?’
You will wring truthful prayers from your believers, and they must speak of your glory in tongues that are
atrocious to them.
You will come over them in the hour of their disgrace, and will become known to them in what they hate,
fear, and abhor. Your voice, the rarest pleasing sound, will be heard amid the stammerings of wretches, rejects, and
those condemned as worthless.
Your realm will be touched by the hands of those who also worshiped before the most profound lowliness,
and whose longing drove them through
the mud tide of evil.
You will give your gifts to those who pray to you in terror and doubt, and your light will shine upon those
whose knees must bend before you unwillingly and who are filled with resentment.
Your life is with he who has overcome himself I and who has disowned his self-overcoming.
I also know that the salvation of mercy is given only to those who believe in the highest and faithlessly betray
themselves for thirty pieces
of silver.
Those who will dirty their pure hands and cheat on their best knowledge against error and take their virtues
from a murderer’s grave are invited to your great banquet.
The constellation of your birth is an ill and changing star.
These, oh child of what is to come, are the wonders that will bear testimony that you are a veritable God.”
Red Book Page 243.