Olsok Vespers
St Olav, amidst the tasks that absorbed his attention here in this world, ‘rested devotedly in the soul’s free contemplation of heavenly things’. The saints teach us the importance of fixing our gaze right there. They do so with the mixture of giftedness, limitation and eccentricity that characterises human beings in all periods of history. Sigrid Undset remarks that, while customs and cultural norms are subject to continuous mutations (in this respect they are rather like a virus), ‘the hearts of men do not change at all, throughout all ages’. They are pregnant with a longing imprinted on their essence, created as they are in the image of God, a longing that points towards a single, unchangeable goal.
