Martyrs of good hope, pray to God for us.
You who buried all hopes, that with one you might be rich.
Who waited at the end of many human hopes, and saw ashes.
Who saw many weeping eyes returning from the graveyard of their hopes.
Who heard many confessions of the foul odor of every earthly hope at its other end.
And who gave yourselves to be crucified for one chosen hope, which does not end in ashes, nor in a graveyard, nor in a foul odor.
We pray to you and bow before you: pray to God for us.
I saw a child that long chased after a bird of motley feathers and green beak, and when he caught it, the bird pecked him, and he began to weep.
I said: such are you with your hopes, O children of men, and such is your end.
Again I saw a child that long ran after a flock of springtime butterflies, and when one butterfly was within his reach he left it and ran off after another, which seemed to him more beautiful.
I said: such are the sons of men, and such is their running all their life long after many desires.
Truly, your race is wearying and useless. When your hour of death comes, you will not know how to say what you were running after. And you will enter the other world with empty hands and a bewildered heart.
The sons of heaven also have a wearying race, but not a useless one. And when their hour of death comes, they will know how to say what they were running after. And in the other world they will have full hands and a rested heart.
An eagle beneath the clouds sees a lamb in the field, and swoops down toward it, and asks the sparrows standing on the lamb's back: do you not see the lamb? — and they answer him: no, we do not see it. So it is also with the martyrs of good hope. From a great distance they catch sight of their food, and rush toward it, while the neighbors of that food walk upon it and do not see it.
Long is the race for good hope. But the hero resolves upon the race, and casts all deceptive hopes beneath his feet and treads upon them as upon dry leaves. Many, exceedingly many, are the hurdles on the way to his hope — and death is one of the hurdles. But he leaps over them all, leaps over death as well, and rushes after his hope.
Martyrs of good hope, you who wheel like a flock of white doves circling around the Heavenly Light, pray to God for us.