THE present volume of the works of St. John of the Cross contains the explanation of the “Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ.” The two earlier works, the “Ascent of Mount Carmel” and the “Dark Night of the Soul,” dealt with the cleansing of the soul, the unremittant war against even the smallest imperfections standing in the way of union with God; imperfections which must be removed, partly by strict self-discipline, partly by the direct intervention of God, Who, searching “the reins and hearts” by means of heavy interior and exterior trials, purges away whatever is displeasing to Him. Although some stanzas refer to this preliminary state, the chief object of the “Spiritual Canticle” is to picture under the Biblical simile of Espousals and Matrimony the blessedness of a soul that has arrived at union with God.
The Canticle was composed during the long imprisonment St. John underwent at Toledo from the beginning of December 1577 till the middle of August of the following year. Being one of the principal supporters of the Reform of St. Teresa, he was also one of the victims of the war waged against her work by the Superiors of the old branch of the Order. St. John’s prison was a narrow, stifling cell, with no window, but only a small loophole through which a ray of light entered for a short time of the day, just long enough to enable him to say his office, but affording little facility for reading or writing. However, St. John stood in no need of books. Having for many years meditated on every word of Holy Scripture, the Word of God was deeply written in his heart, supplying abundant food for conversation with God during the whole period of his imprisonment. From time to time he poured forth his soul in poetry; afterwards he communicated his verses to friends.
One of these poetical works, the fruit of his imprisonment, was the “Spiritual Canticle,” which, as the reader will notice, is an abridged paraphrase of the Canticle of Canticles, the Song of Solomon, wherein under the image of passionate love are described the mystical sufferings and longings of a soul enamored with God.
From the earliest times the Fathers and Doctors of the Church had recognized
the mystical character of the Canticle, and the Church had largely utilized it in
her liturgy. But as there is nothing so holy but that it may be abused, the Canticle
almost more than any other portion of Holy Scripture, had been misinterpreted by
a false Mysticism, such as was rampant in the middle of the sixteenth century. It
had come to pass, said the learned and saintly Augustinian, Fray Luis de Leon, that
that which was given as a medicine was turned into poison,
Again, one of the confessors of St. Teresa, commonly thought to have been the Dominican, Fray Diego de Yanguas, on learning that the Saint had written a book on the Canticle, ordered her to throw it into the fire, so that we now only possess a few fragments of her work, which, unknown to St. Teresa, had been copied by a nun.
It will now be understood that St. John’s poetical paraphrase of the Canticle
must have been welcome to many contemplative souls who desired to kindle their devotion
with the words of Solomon, but were unable to read them in Latin. Yet the text alone,
without explanation, would have helped them little; and as no one was better qualified
than the author to throw light on the mysteries hidden under oriental imagery, the
Venerable Ann of Jesus, Prioress of the Carmelite convent at Granada, requested
St. John to write a commentary on his verses.
St. John at last consented, and wrote the work now before us. The following letter, which has lately come to light, gives some valuable information of its composition. The writer, Magdalen of the Holy Spirit, nun of Veas, where she was professed on August 6, 1577, was intimately acquainted with the Saint.
“When the holy father escaped from prison, he took with him a book of poetry
he had written while there, containing the verses commencing ‘In the beginning was
the Word,’ and those others: ‘I know the fountain well which flows and runs, though
it is night,’ and the canticle, ‘Where have you hidden yourself?’ as far as ‘O nymphs
of Judea’ (stanza XVIII.). The remaining verses he composed later on while rector
of the college of Baeza (15791 – 81), while some of the explanations were written
at Veas at the request of the nuns, and others at Granada. The Saint wrote this
book in prison and afterwards left it at Veas, where it was handed to me to make
some copies of it. Later on it was taken away from my cell, and I never knew who
took it. I was much struck with the vividness and the beauty and subtlety of the
words. One day I asked the Saint whether God had given him these words which so
admirably explain those mysteries, and He answered: ‘Child, sometimes God gave them
to me, and at other times I sought them myself.’”
The autograph of St. John’s work which is preserved at Jaén bears the following title:
“Explanation of Stanzas treating of the exercise of love between the soul and Jesus Christ its Spouse, dealing with and commenting on certain points and effects of prayer; written at the request of Mother Ann of Jesus, prioress of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of St. Joseph’s convent, Granada, 1584.”
As might be expected, the author dedicated the book to Ann of Jesus, at whose request he had written it. Thus, he began his Prologue with the following words: “Inasmuch as this canticle, Reverend Mother (Religiosa Madre), seems to have been written,” etc. A little further on he said: “The stanzas that follow, having been written under the influence of that love which proceeds from the overflowing mystical intelligence, cannot be fully explained. Indeed, I do not purpose any such thing, for my sole purpose is to throw some general light over them, since Your Reverence has asked me to do so, and since this, in my opinion too, is the better course.” And again: “I shall, however, pass over the more ordinary (effects of prayer), and treat briefly of the more extraordinary to which they are subject who, by the mercy of God, have advanced beyond the state of beginners. This I do for two reasons: the first is that much is already written concerning beginners; and the second is that I am addressing myself to Your Reverence at your own bidding; for you have received from Our Lord the grace of being led on from the elementary state and led inwards to the bosom of His divine love.” He continues thus: “I therefore trust, though I may discuss some points of scholastic theology relating to the interior commerce of the soul with God, that I am not using such language altogether in vain, and that it will be found profitable for pure spirituality. For though Your Reverence is ignorant of scholastic theology, you are by no means ignorant of mystical theology, the science of love, etc.”
From these passages it appears quite clearly that the Saint wrote the book for
Venerable Ann of Jesus and the nuns of her convent. With the exception of an edition
published at Brussels in 1627, these personal allusions have disappeared from both
the Spanish text and the translations,
The following is the division of the work: Stanzas I. to IV. are introductory; V. to XII. refer to the contemplative life in its earlier stages; XIII. to XXI., dealing with what the Saint calls the Espousals, appertain to the Unitive way, where the soul is frequently, but not habitually, admitted to a transient union with God; and XXII. to the end describe what he calls Matrimony, the highest perfection a soul can attain this side of the grave. The reader will find an epitome of the whole system of mystical theology in the explanation of Stanza XXVI.
This work differs in many respects from the “Ascent” and the “Dark Night.” Whereas
these are strictly systematic, preceding on the line of relentless logic, the “Spiritual
Canticle,” as a poetical work ought to do, soars high above the divisions and distinctions
of the scholastic method. With a boldness akin to that of his Patron Saint, the
Evangelist, St. John rises to the highest heights, touching on a subject that should
only be handled by a Saint, and which the reader, were he a Saint himself, will
do well to treat cautiously: the partaking by the human soul of the Divine Nature,
or, as St. John calls it, the Deification of the soul (Stanza XXVI. sqq.),
These are regions where the ordinary mind threatens to turn; but St. John, with
the knowledge of what he himself had experienced, not once but many times, what
he had observed in others, and what, above all, he had read of in Holy Scripture,
does not shrink from lifting the veil more completely than probably any Catholic
writer on mystical theology has done. To pass in silence the last wonders of God’s
love for fear of being misunderstood, would have been tantamount to ignoring the
very end for which souls are led along the way of perfection; to reveal these mysteries
in human language, and say all that can be said with not a word too much, not an
uncertain or misleading line in the picture: this could only have been accomplished
by one whom the Church has already declared to have been taught by God Himself
(divinitus instructus), and whose books She tells us are filled with heavenly
wisdom (coelesti sapientia refertos). It is hoped that sooner or later She
will proclaim him (what many grave authorities think him to be) a Doctor of the
Church, namely, the Doctor of Mystical theology.
As has already been noticed in the Introduction to the “Ascent,” the whole of the teaching of St. John is directly derived from Holy Scripture and from the psychological principles of St. Thomas Aquinas. There is no trace to be found of an influence of the Mystics of the Middle Age, with whose writings St. John does not appear to have been acquainted. But throughout this treatise there are many obvious allusions to the writings of St. Teresa, nor will the reader fail to notice the encouraging remark about the publication of her works (stanza xiii, sect. 8). The fact is that the same Venerable Ann of Jesus who was responsible for the composition of St. John’s treatise was at the same time making preparations for the edition of St. Teresa’s works which a few years later appeared at Salamanca under the editorship of Fray Luis de Leon, already mentioned.
Those of his readers who have been struck with, not to say frightened by, the exactions of St. John in the “Ascent” and the “Dark Night,” where he demands complete renunciation of every kind of satisfaction and pleasure, however legitimate in themselves, and an entire mortification of the senses as well as the faculties and powers of the soul, and who have been wondering at his self-abnegation which caused him not only to accept, but even to court contempt, will find here the clue to this almost inhuman attitude. In his response to the question of Our Lord, “What shall I give you for all you have done and suffered for Me?” “Lord, to suffer and be despised for You” — he was not animated by grim misanthropy or stoic indifference, but he had learned that in proportion as the human heart is emptied of Self, after having been emptied of all created things, it is open to the influx of Divine grace. This he fully proves in the “Spiritual Canticle.” To be made “partaker of the Divine Nature,” as St. Peter says, human nature must undergo a radical transformation. Those who earnestly study the teaching of St. John in his earlier treatises and endeavor to put his recommendations into practice, will see in this and the next volume an unexpected perspective opening before their eyes, and they will begin to understand how it is that the sufferings of this time — whether voluntary or involuntary — are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that shall be revealed in us.
Mr. Lewis’s masterly translation of the works of St. John of the Cross appeared in 1864 under the auspices of Cardinal Wiseman. In the second edition, of 1889, he made numerous changes, without, however, leaving a record of the principles that guided him. Sometimes, indeed, the revised edition is terser than the first, but just as often the old one seems clearer. It is more difficult to understand the reasons that led him to alter very extensively the text of quotations from Holy Scripture. In the first edition he had nearly always strictly adhered to the Douay version, which is the one in official use in the Catholic Church in English-speaking countries. It may not always be as perfect as one would wish it to be, but it must be acknowledged that the wholesale alteration in Mr. Lewis’s second edition is, to say the least, puzzling. Even the Stanzas have undergone many changes in the second edition, and it will be noticed that there are some variants in their text as set forth at the beginning of the book, and as repeated at the heading of each chapter.
The present edition, allowing for some slight corrections, is a reprint of that of 1889.
Benedict Zimmerman, Prior, O.C.D.
St. Lukes, Wincanton, Somerset,
Feast of St. Simon Stock,
May 16, 1909.
INASMUCH as this canticle seems to have been written with some fervor of love of
God, whose wisdom and love are, as is said in the book of Wisdom,
2. Assuredly no one can do it; not even they themselves who experience it. That is the reason why they use figures of special comparisons and similitudes; they hide somewhat of that which they feel and in the abundance of the Spirit utter secret mysteries rather than express themselves in clear words.
3. And if these similitudes are not received in the simplicity of a loving mind, and in the sense in which they are uttered, they will seem to be effusions of folly rather than the language of reason; as anyone may see in the divine Canticle of Solomon, and in others of the sacred books, wherein the Holy Spirit, because ordinary and common speech could not convey His meaning, uttered His mysteries in strange terms and similitudes. It follows from this, that after all that the holy doctors have said, and may say, no words of theirs can explain it; nor can words do it; and so, in general, all that is said falls far short of the meaning.
4. The stanzas that follow having been written under influence of that love which proceeds from the overflowing mystical intelligence, cannot be fully explained. Indeed I do not purpose any such thing, for my sole object is to throw some general light over them, which in my opinion is the better course. It is better to leave the outpourings of love in their own fullness, that everyone may apply them according to the measure of his spirit and power, than to pare them down to one particular sense which is not suited to the taste of everyone. And though I do put forth a particular explanation, still others are not to be bound by it. The mystical wisdom — that is, the love, of which these stanzas speak — does not require to be distinctly understood in order to produce the effect of love and tenderness in the soul, for it is in this respect like faith, by which we love God without a clear comprehension of Him.
5. I shall therefore be very concise, though now and then unable to avoid some prolixity where the subject requires it, and when the opportunity is offered of discussing and explaining certain points and effects of prayer: many of which being referred to in these stanzas, I must discuss some of them. I shall, however, pass over the more ordinary ones, and treat briefly of the more extraordinary to which they are subject who, by the mercy of God, have advanced beyond the state of beginners. This I do for two reasons: the first is, that much is already written concerning beginners; and the second is, that I am addressing those who have received from our Lord the grace of being led on from the elementary state and are led inwards to the bosom of His divine love.
6. I therefore trust, though I may discuss some points of scholastic theology relating to the interior commerce of the soul with God, that I am not using such language altogether in vain, and that it will be found profitable for pure spirituality. For though some may be altogether ignorant of scholastic theology by which the divine verities are explained, yet they are not ignorant of mystical theology, the science of love, by which those verities are not only learned, but at the same time are relished also.
7. And in order that what I am going to say may be the better received, I submit myself to higher judgments, and unreservedly to that of our holy mother the Church, intending to say nothing in reliance on my own personal experience, or on what I have observed in other spiritual persons, nor on what I have heard them say — though I intend to profit by all this — unless I can confirm it with the sanction of the divine writings, at least on those points which are most difficult of comprehension.
8. The method I propose to follow in the matter is this: first of all, to cite the words of the text and then to give that explanation of them which belongs to the subject before me. I shall now transcribe all the stanzas and place them at the beginning of this treatise. In the next place, I shall take each of them separately, and explain them line by line, each line in its proper place before the explanation.
THESE stanzas describe the career of a soul from its first entrance on the service of God till it comes to the final state of perfection — the spiritual marriage. They refer accordingly to the three states or ways of the spiritual training — the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways, some properties and effects of which they explain.
The first stanzas relate to beginners — to the purgative way. The second to the advanced — to the state of spiritual betrothal; that is, the illuminative way. The next to the unitive way — that of the perfect, the spiritual Marriage. The unitive way, that of the perfect, follows the illuminative, which is that of the advanced.
The last stanzas treat of the beatific state, which only the already perfect soul aims at.
THE soul, considering the obligations of its state, seeing that “the days of man
are short;”
IN this first stanza the soul, enamored of the Word, the Son of God, the Bridegroom, desiring to be united to Him in the clear and substantial vision, sets before Him the anxieties of its love, complaining of His absence. And this the more so because, now pierced and wounded with love, for which it had abandoned all things, even itself, it has still to endure the absence of the Beloved, Who has not released it from its mortal flesh, that it might have the fruition of Him in the glory of eternity. Hence it cries out,
2. It is as if the soul said, “Show me, O You the Word, my Bridegroom, the place
where You are hidden.” It asks for the revelation of the divine Essence; for the
place where the Son of God is hidden is, according to St. John, “the bosom of the
Father,”
3. Neither sublime communications nor sensible presence furnish any certain proof
of His gracious presence; nor is the absence thereof, and aridity, any proof of
His absence from the soul. “If He come to me, I shall not see Him; if He depart,
I shall not understand.”
4. The chief object of the soul in these words is not to ask only for that affective
and sensible devotion, wherein there is no certainty or evidence of the possession
of the Bridegroom in this life; but principally for that clear presence and vision
of His Essence, of which it longs to be assured and satisfied in the next. This,
too, was the object of the bride who, in the divine song desiring to be united to
the Divinity of the Bridegroom Word, prayed to the Father, saying, “Show me where
You feed, where You lie in the midday.”
5. This pasture, then, is the Bridegroom Word, where the Father feeds in infinite glory. He is also the bed of flowers whereupon He reposes with infinite delight of love, profoundly hidden from all mortal vision and every created thing. This is the meaning of the bride-soul when she says,
6. That the thirsty soul may find the Bridegroom, and be one with Him in the union of love in this life — so far as that is possible — and quench its thirst with that drink which it is possible to drink of at His hands in this life, it will be as well — since that is what the Soul asks of Him — that we should answer for Him, and point out the special spot where He is hidden, that He may be found there in that perfection and sweetness of which this life is capable, and that the soul may not begin to loiter uselessly in the footsteps of its companions.
7. We must remember that the Word, the Son of God, together with the Father and
the Holy Spirit, is hidden in essence and in presence, in the inmost being of the
soul. That soul, therefore, that will find Him, must go out from all things in will
and affection, and enter into the profoundest self-recollection, and all things
must be to it as if they existed not. Hence, St. Augustine says: “I found You not
without, O Lord; I sought You without in vain, for You are within,”
8. O you soul, then, most beautiful of creatures, who so long to know the place
where your Beloved is, that you may seek Him, and be united to Him, you know now
that you are yourself that very tabernacle where He dwells, the secret chamber of
His retreat where He is hidden. Rejoice, therefore, and exult, because all your
good and all your hope is so near you as to be within you; or, to speak more accurately,
that you can not be without it, “for lo, the kingdom of God is within you.”
9. What more can you desire, what more can you seek without, seeing that within you have your riches, your delight, your satisfaction, your fullness and your kingdom; that is, your Beloved, Whom you desire and seek? Rejoice, then, and be glad in Him with interior recollection, seeing that you have Him so near. Then love Him, then desire Him, then adore Him, and go not to seek Him out of yourself, for that will be but distraction and weariness, and you shall not find Him; because there is no fruition of Him more certain, more ready, or more intimate than that which is within.
10. One difficulty alone remains: though He is within, yet He is hidden. But it is a great matter to know the place of His secret rest, that He may be sought there with certainty. The knowledge of this is that which you ask for here, O soul, when with loving affection you cry,
11. You will still urge and say, How is it, then, that I find Him not, nor feel
Him, if He is within my soul? It is because He is hidden, and because you hide not
yourself also that you may find Him and feel Him; for he that will seek that which
is hidden must enter secretly into the secret place where it is hidden, and when
he finds it, he is himself hidden like the object of his search. Seeing, then, that
the Bridegroom whom you love is “the treasure hidden in the field”
12. Courage, then, O soul most beautiful, you know now that your Beloved, Whom
you desire, dwells hidden within your breast; strive, therefore, to be truly hidden
with Him, and then you shall embrace Him, and be conscious of His presence with
loving affection. Consider also that He bids you, by the mouth of Isaiah, to come
to His secret hiding-place, saying, “Go, . . . enter into your chambers, shut your
doors upon you”; that is, all your faculties, so that no created thing shall enter:
“be hid a little for a moment,”
13. Though in this mortal life the soul will never reach to the interior secrets
as it will in the next, however much it may hide itself, still, if it will hide
itself with Moses, “in the hole of the rock” — which is a real imitation of the
perfect life of the Bridegroom, the Son of God — protected by the right hand of
God, it will merit the vision of the “back parts”;
14. You know then, O soul, how you are to demean yourself if you will find the
Bridegroom in His secret place. But if you will hear it again, hear this one word
full of substance and unapproachable truth: Seek Him in faith and love, without
seeking to satisfy yourself in anything, or to understand more than is expedient
for you to know; for faith and love are the two guides of the blind; they will lead
you, by a way you know not, to the secret chamber of God. Faith, the secret of which
I am speaking, is the foot that journeys onwards to God, and love is the guide that
directs its steps. And while the soul meditates on the mysterious secrets of the
faith, it will merit the revelation, on the part of love, of that which the faith
involves, namely, the Bridegroom Whom it longs for, in this life by spiritual grace,
and the divine union, as we said before,
15. But meanwhile, though the soul attains to union, the highest state possible in this life, yet inasmuch as He is still hidden from it in the bosom of the Father, as I have said, the soul longing for the fruition of Him in the life to come, ever cries, “Where have You hidden Yourself?”
16. You do well, then, O soul, in seeking Him always in His secret place; for you greatly magnify God, and draw near to Him, esteeming Him as far beyond and above all you can reach. Rest, therefore, neither wholly nor in part, on what your faculties can embrace; never seek to satisfy yourself with what you comprehend of God, but rather with what you comprehend not; and never rest on the love of, and delight in, that which you can understand and feel, but rather on that which is beyond your understanding and feeling: this is, as I have said, to seek Him by faith.
17. God is, as I said before,
18. The soul calls Him “my Beloved,” the more to move Him to listen to its cry,
for God, when loved, most readily listens to the prayer of him who loves Him. Thus
He speaks Himself: “If you abide in Me . . . you shall ask whatever thing you will,
and it shall be done to you.”
19. The words, “And left me to my sorrow,” tell us that the absence of the Beloved
is the cause of continual sadness in him who loves; for as such a one loves none
else, so, in the absence of the object beloved, nothing can console or relieve him.
This is, therefore, a test to discern the true lover of God. Is he satisfied with
anything less than God? Do I say satisfied? Yes, if a man possess all things, he
cannot be satisfied; the greater his possessions the less will be his satisfaction,
for the satisfaction of the heart is not found in possessions, but in detachment
from all things and in poverty of spirit. This being so, the perfection of love
in which we possess God, by a grace most intimate and special, lives in the soul
in this life when it has reached it, with a certain satisfaction, which however
is not full, for David, notwithstanding all his perfection, hoped for that in heaven
saying, “I shall be satisfied when Your glory shall appear.”
20. Thus, then, the peace and tranquillity and satisfaction of heart to which
the soul may attain in this life are not sufficient to relieve it from its groaning,
peaceful and painless though it be, while it hopes for that which is still wanting.
Groaning belongs to hope, as the Apostle says of himself and others, though perfect,
“Ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan
within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God.”
21. Here it is to be observed that in the Canticle of Canticles the bride compares
the Bridegroom to the roe and the hart on the mountains — “My Beloved is like a
roe and to a fawn of harts”
22. It is as if it had said, “It was not enough that I should feel the pain and grief which Your absence causes, and from which I am continually suffering, but You must, after wounding me with the arrow of Your love, and increasing my longing and desire to see You, run away from me with the swiftness of the hart, and not permit me to lay hold of You, even for a moment.”
23. For the clearer understanding of this we are to keep in mind that, beside the many kinds of God’s visits to the soul, in which He wounds it with love, there are commonly certain secret touches of love, which, like a fiery arrow, pierce and penetrate the soul, and burn it with the fire of love. These are properly called the wounds of love, and it is of these the soul is here speaking. These wounds so inflame the will, that the soul becomes so enveloped with the fire of love as to appear consumed thereby. They make it go forth out of itself, and be renewed, and enter on another life, as the phoenix from the fire.
24. David, speaking of this, says, “My heart has been inflamed, and my reins
have been changed; and I am brought to nothing, and I knew not.”
25. The soul says in effect, “You have abandoned me after wounding me, and You have left me dying of love; and then You have hidden Yourself as a hart swiftly running away.” This impression is most profound in the soul; for by the wound of love, made in the soul by God, the affections of the will lead most rapidly to the possession of the Beloved, whose touch it felt, and as rapidly also, His absence, and its inability to have the fruition of Him here as it desires. Thereupon succeed the groaning because of His absence; for these visitations of God are not like those which recreate and satisfy the soul, because they are rather for wounding than for healing — more for afflicting than for satisfying it, seeing that they tend rather to quicken the knowledge, and increase the longing, and consequently pain with the longing for the vision of God. They are called the spiritual wounds of love, most sweet to the soul and desirable; and, therefore, when it is thus wounded the soul would willingly die a thousand deaths, because these wounds make it go forth out of itself, and enter into God, which is the meaning of the words that follow:
26. There can be no remedy for the wounds of love but from Him who inflicted them. And so the wounded soul, urged by the vehemence of that burning which the wounds of love occasion, runs after the Beloved, crying to Him for relief. This spiritual running after God has a two-fold meaning. The first is a going forth from all created things, which is effected by hating and despising them; the second, a going forth out of oneself, by forgetting self, which is brought about by the love of God. For when the love of God touches the soul with that vividness of which we are here speaking, it so elevates it, that it goes forth not only out of itself by self-forgetfulness, but it is also drawn away from its own judgment, natural ways and inclinations, crying after God, “O my Bridegroom,” as if saying, “By this touch of Yours and wound of love have You drawn me away not only from all created things, but also from myself — for, in truth, soul and body seem now to part — and raised me up to Yourself, crying after You in detachment from all things that I might be attached to You:
27. As if saying, “When I sought Your presence, I found You not; and I was detached
from all things without being able to cling to You — borne painfully by the gales
of love without help in You or in myself.” This going forth of the soul in search
of the Beloved is the rising of the bride in the Canticle: “I will rise and go about
the city; in the streets and the high ways I will seek Him Whom my soul loves. I
have sought Him and have not found . . . they wounded me.”
28. This pain and sense of the absence of God is wont to be so oppressive in those who are going onwards to the state of perfection, that they would die if God did not interpose when the divine wounds are inflicted upon them. As they have the palate of the will wholesome, and the mind pure and disposed for God, and as they taste in some degree of the sweetness of divine love, which they supremely desire, so they also suffer supremely; for, having but a glimpse of an infinite good which they are not permitted to enjoy, that is to them an ineffable pain and torment.
THE soul would now employ intercessors and mediators between itself and the Beloved, praying them to make its sufferings and afflictions known. One in love, when he cannot converse personally with the object of his love, will do so in the best way he can. Thus the soul employs its affections, desires, and groanings as messengers well able to manifest the secret of its heart to the Beloved. Accordingly, it calls upon them to do this, saying:
2. The shepherds are the affections, and desires, and groanings of the soul, for they feed it with spiritual good things. A shepherd is one who feeds: and by means of such God communicates Himself to the soul and feeds it in the divine pastures; for without these groans and desires He communicates but slightly with it.
You who go forth in pure love; for all desires and affections do not reach God, but only those which proceed from sincere love.
3. The sheepcots are the heavenly hierarchies, the angelic choirs, by whose ministry,
from choir to choir, our prayers and sighs ascend to God; that is, to the hill,
“for He is the highest eminence, and because in Him, as on a hill, we observe and
behold all things, the higher and the lower sheepcots.” To Him our prayers ascend,
offered by angels, as I have said; so the angel said to Tobit “When you prayed with
tears, and buried the dead . . . I offered your prayer to the Lord.”
4. The shepherds also are the angels themselves, who not only carry our petitions to God, but also bring down the graces of God to our souls, feeding them like good shepherds, with the sweet communications and inspirations of God, Who employs them in that ministry. They also protect us and defend us against the wolves, which are the evil spirits. And thus, whether we understand the affections or the angels by the shepherds, the soul calls upon both to be its messengers to the Beloved, and thus addresses them all:
That is to say:
5. If, to my great happiness you shall come into His presence, so that He shall
see you and hear your words. God, indeed, knows all things, even the very thoughts
of the soul, as He said to Moses,
6. “Whom I love the most”: that is, whom I love more than all creatures. This is true of the soul when nothing can make it afraid to do and suffer all things in His service. And when the soul can also truly say that which follows, it is a sign that it loves Him above all things:
7. Here the soul speaks of three things that distress it: namely, languor, suffering,
and death; for the soul that truly loves God with a love in some degree perfect,
suffers in three ways in His absence, in its three powers ordinarily — the understanding,
the will, and the memory. In the understanding it languishes because it does not
see God, Who is the salvation of it, as the Psalmist says: “I am your salvation.”
8. Jeremiah also, in the Lamentations, speaks of these three things, praying
to God, and saying: “Remember my poverty . . . the wormwood and the gall.”
9. These three things which distress the soul are grounded on the three theological
virtues — faith, charity, and hope, which relate, in the order here assigned them,
to the three faculties of the soul — understanding, will, and memory. Observe here
that the soul does no more than represent its miseries and pain to the Beloved:
for he who loves wisely does not care to ask for that which he wants and desires,
being satisfied with hinting at his necessities, so that the beloved one may do
what shall to him seem good. Thus the Blessed Virgin at the marriage feast of Cana
asked not directly for wine, but only said to her Beloved Son, “They have no wine.”
10. There are three reasons for this. Our Lord knows what is expedient for us better than we do ourselves. Secondly, the Beloved is more compassionate towards us when He sees our necessities and our resignation. Thirdly, we are more secured against self-love and self-seeking when we represent our necessity, than when we ask for that which we think we need. It is in this way that the soul represents its three necessities; as if it said: “Tell my Beloved, that as I languish, and as He only is my salvation, to save me; that as I am suffering, and as He only is my joy, to give me joy; that as I am dying, and as He only is my life, to give me life.”
THE soul, observing that its sighs and prayers suffice not to find the Beloved, and that it has not been helped by the messengers it invoked in the first and second stanzas, will not, because its searching is real and its love great, leave undone anything itself can do. The soul that really loves God is not dilatory in its efforts to find the Son of God, its Beloved; and, even when it has done all it could it is still not satisfied, thinking it has done nothing. Accordingly, the soul is now, in this third stanza, actively seeking the Beloved, and saying how He is to be found; namely, in the practice of all virtue and in the spiritual exercises of the active and contemplative life; for this end it rejects all delights and all comforts; and all the power and wiles of its three enemies, the world, the devil, and the flesh, are unable to delay it or hinder it on the road.
2. Here the soul makes it known that to find God it is not enough to pray with the
heart and the tongue, or to have recourse to the help of others; we must also work
ourselves, according to our power. God values one effort of our own more than many
of others on our behalf; the soul, therefore, remembering the saying of the Beloved,
“Seek and you shall find,”
3. But until they go forth out of themselves to seek Him, however loudly they
may cry they will not find Him; for the bride in the Canticle sought Him in this
way, but she found Him not until she went out to seek Him: “In my little bed in
the nights I have sought Him Whom my soul loves: I have sought Him and have not
found Him. I will rise and will go about the city: by the streets and highways I
will seek Him Whom my soul loves.”
4. He, therefore, who seeks God, consulting his own ease and comfort, seeks Him
by night, and therefore finds Him not. But he who seeks Him in the practice of virtue
and of good works, casting aside the comforts of his own bed, seeks Him by day;
such a one shall find Him, for that which is not seen by night is visible by day.
The Bridegroom Himself teaches us this, saying, “Wisdom is clear and never fades
away, and is easily seen of them that love her, and is found of them that seek her.
She prevents them that covet her, that she first may show herself to them. He that
awakes early to seek her shall not labor; for he shall find her sitting at his doors.”
5. Mountains, which are lofty, signify virtues, partly on account of their height and partly on account of the toil and labor of ascending them; the soul says it will ascend to them in the practice of the contemplative life. Strands, which are low, signify mortifications, penances, and the spiritual exercises, and the soul will add to the active life that of contemplation; for both are necessary in seeking after God and in acquiring virtue. The soul says, in effect, “In searching after my Beloved I will practice great virtue, and abase myself by lowly mortifications and acts of humility, for the way to seek God is to do good works in Him, and to mortify the evil in ourselves, as it is said in the words that follow:
6. He that will seek after God must have his heart detached, resolute, and free from all evils, and from all goods which are not simply God; that is the meaning of these words. The words that follow describe the liberty and courage which the soul must possess in searching after God. Here it declares that it will gather no flowers by the way — the flowers are all the delights, satisfactions, and pleasures which this life offers, and which, if the soul sought or accepted, would hinder it on the road.
7. These flowers are of three kinds — temporal, sensual, and spiritual. All
of them occupy the heart, and stand in the way of the spiritual detachment required
in the way of Christ, if we regard them or rest in them. The soul, therefore, says,
that it will not stop to gather any of them, that it may seek after God. It seems
to say, I will not set my heart upon riches or the goods of this world; I will not
indulge in the satisfactions and ease of the flesh, neither will I consult the taste
and comforts of my spirit, in order that nothing may detain me in my search after
my Love on the toilsome mountains of virtue. This means that it accepts the counsel
of the prophet David to those who travel on this road: “If riches abound, set not
your heart upon them,”
8. From this we learn that not only temporal goods and bodily pleasures hinder us on the road to God, but spiritual delight and consolations also, if we attach ourselves to them or seek them; for these things are hindrances on the way of the cross of Christ, the Bridegroom. He, therefore, that will go onwards must not only not stop to gather flowers, but must also have the courage and resolution to say as follows:
Here we have the three enemies of the soul which make war against it, and make its way full of difficulties. The wild beasts are the world; the mighty, the devil; and the frontiers are the flesh.
9. The world is the wild beasts, because in the beginning of the heavenly journey the imagination pictures the world to the soul as wild beasts, threatening and fierce, principally in three ways. The first is, we must forfeit the world’s favor, lose friends, credit, reputation, and property; the second is not less cruel: we must suffer the perpetual deprivation of all the comforts and pleasures of the world; and the third is still worse: evil tongues will rise against us, mock us, and speak of us with contempt. This strikes some persons so vividly that it becomes most difficult for them, I do not say to persevere, but even to enter on this road at all.
10. But there are generous souls who have to encounter wild beasts of a more
interior and spiritual nature — trials, temptations, tribulations, and afflictions
of diverse kinds, through which they must pass. This is what God sends to those
whom He is raising upwards to high perfection, proving them and trying them as gold
in the fire; as David says: “Many are the tribulations of the just; and out of all
these our Lord will deliver them.”
11. Evil spirits, the second enemy of the soul, are called the mighty, because they
strive with all their might to seize on the passes of the spiritual road; and because
the temptations they suggest are harder to overcome, and the craft they employ more
difficult to detect, than all the seductions of the world and the flesh; and because,
also, they strengthen their own position by the help of the world and the flesh
in order to fight vigorously against the soul. Hence the Psalmist calls them mighty,
saying: “The mighty have sought after my soul.”
12. There is no human power that can be compared with the power of the devil,
and therefore the divine power alone can overcome him, and the divine light alone
can penetrate his devices. No soul therefore can overcome his might without prayer,
or detect his illusions without humility and mortification. Hence the exhortation
of St. Paul to the faithful: “Put on the armor of God, that you may stand against
the deceits of the devil: for our wrestling is not against flesh and blood.”
13. The soul says also that it will cross the frontiers: these are the natural
resistance and rebellion of the flesh against the spirit, for, as St. Paul says,
the “flesh lusts against the spirit,”
THE disposition requisite for entering on the spiritual journey, abstinence from
joys and pleasure, being now described; and the courage also with which to overcome
temptations and trials, wherein consists the practice of self-knowledge, which is
the first step of the soul to the knowledge of God. Now, in this stanza the soul
begins to advance through consideration and knowledge of creatures to the knowledge
of the Beloved their Creator. For the consideration of the creature, after the practice
of self-knowledge, is the first in order on the spiritual road to the knowledge
of God, Whose grandeur and magnificence they declare, as the Apostle says: “For
His invisible things from the creation of the world are seen, being understood by
these things that are made.”
2. The soul, then, in this stanza addresses itself to creatures inquiring after
the Beloved. And we observe, as St. Augustine
3. The groves are the elements, earth, water, air, and fire. As the most pleasant groves are studded with plants and shrubs, so the elements are thick with creatures, and here are called thickets because of the number and variety of creatures in each. The earth contains innumerable varieties of animals and plants, the water of fish, the air of birds, and fire concurs with all in animating and sustaining them. Each kind of animal lives in its proper element, placed and planted there, as in its own grove and soil where it is born and nourished; and, in truth, God so ordered it when He made them; He commanded the earth to bring forth herbs and animals; the waters and the sea, fish; and the air He gave as a habitation to birds. The soul, therefore, considering that this is the effect of His commandment, cries out,
4. That which the soul considers now is this: the hand of God the Beloved only could have created and nurtured all these varieties and wonderful things. The soul says deliberately, “by the hand of the Beloved,” because God does many things by the hands of others, as of angels and men; but the work of creation has never been, and never is, the work of any other hand than His own. Thus the soul, considering the creation, is profoundly stirred up to love God the Beloved for it beholds all things to be the work of His hands, and goes on to say:
5. These are the heavens; for the things which He has created in the heavens are of incorruptible freshness, which neither perish nor wither with time, where the just are refreshed as in the green pastures. The present consideration includes all the varieties of the stars in their beauty, and the other works in the heavens.
6. The Church also applies the term “verdure” to heavenly things; for while praying
to God for the departing soul, it addresses it as follows: “May Christ, the Son
of the living God, give you a place in the ever-pleasant verdure of His paradise.”
7. The flowers are the angels and the holy souls who adorn and beautify that place, as costly and fine enamel on a vase of pure gold.
8. This inquiry is the consideration of the creature just spoken of, and is in effect: Tell me, what perfections has He created in you?
THIS is the answer of the creatures to the soul which, according to St. Augustine, in the same place, is the testimony which they furnish to the majesty and perfections of God, for which it asked in its meditation on created things. The meaning of this stanza is, in substance, as follows: God created all things with great ease and rapidity, and left in them some tokens of Himself, not only by creating them out of nothing, but also by endowing them with innumerable graces and qualities, making them beautiful in admirable order and unceasing mutual dependence. All this He wrought in wisdom, by which He created them, which is the Word, His only begotten Son. Then the soul says;
2. These graces are the innumerable multitude of His creatures. The term “thousand,” which the soul makes use of, denotes not their number, but the impossibility of numbering them. They are called grace because of the qualities with which He has endowed them. He is said to diffuse them because He fills the whole world with them.
3. To pass through the groves is to create the elements; here called groves, through which He is said to pass, diffusing a thousand graces, because He adorned them with creatures which are all beautiful. Moreover, He diffused among them a thousand graces, giving the power of generation and self-conservation. He is said to pass through, because the creatures are, as it were, traces of the passage of God, revealing His majesty, power, and wisdom, and His other divine attributes. He is said to pass in haste, because the creatures are the least of the works of God: He made them, as it were, in passing. His greatest works, wherein He is most visible and at rest, are the incarnation of the Word and the mysteries of the Christian faith, in comparison with which all His other works were works wrought in passing and in haste.
4. The son of God is, in the words of St. Paul, “the brightness of His glory and
the figure of His substance.”
NOTE
BUT beyond all this — speaking now of contemplation as it affects the soul and
makes an impression on it — in the vivid contemplation and knowledge of created
things the soul beholds such a multiplicity of graces, powers, and beauty with which
God has endowed them, that they seem to it to be clothed with admirable beauty and
supernatural virtue derived from the infinite supernatural beauty of the face of
God, whose beholding of them clothed the heavens and the earth with beauty and joy;
as it is written: “You open Your hand and fill with blessing every living creature.”
AS created things furnish to the soul traces of the Beloved, and exhibit the impress of His beauty and magnificence, the love of the soul increases, and consequently the pain of His absence: for the greater the soul’s knowledge of God the greater its desire to see Him, and its pain when it cannot; and as it sees there is no remedy for this pain except in the presence and vision of the Beloved, distrustful of every other remedy, it prays in this stanza for the fruition of His presence, saying: “Entertain me no more with any knowledge or communications or impressions of Your grandeur, for these do but increase my longing and the pain of Your absence; Your presence alone can satisfy my will and desire.” The will cannot be satisfied with anything less than the vision of God, and therefore the soul prays that He may be pleased to give Himself to it in truth, in perfect love.
2. That is, there is nothing in all the delights of the world, nothing in the satisfaction of the senses, nothing in the sweet taste of the spirit that can heal or content me, and therefore it adds:
3. No soul that really loves can be satisfied or content short of the fruition of God. For everything else, as I have just said, not only does not satisfy the soul, but rather increases the hunger and thirst of seeing Him as He us. Thus every glimpse of the Beloved, every knowledge and impression or communication from Him — these are the messengers suggestive of Him — increase and quicken the soul’s desire after Him, as crumbs of food in hunger stimulate the appetite. The soul, therefore, mourning over the misery of being entertained by matters of so little moment, cries out:
4. Now all our knowledge of God in this life, however great it may be, is not a perfectly true knowledge of Him, because it is partial and incomplete; but to know Him essentially is true knowledge, and that is it which the soul prays for here, not satisfied with any other kind. Hence it says:
5. That is, grant that I may no longer know You in this imperfect way by the messengers of knowledge and impressions, which are so distant from that which my soul desires; for these messengers, as You well know, O my Bridegroom, do but increase the pain of Your absence. They renew the wound which You have inflicted by the knowledge of You which they convey, and they seem to delay Your coming. Henceforth send me no more of these inadequate communications, for if I have been hitherto satisfied with them, it was owing to the slightness of my knowledge and of my love: now that my love has become great, I cannot satisfy myself with them; therefore, give me at once Yourself.
6. This, more clearly expressed, is as follows: “O Lord my Bridegroom, Who gave me Yourself partially before, give me Yourself wholly now. You who showed glimpses of Yourself before, show Yourself clearly now. You who communicated Yourself hitherto by the instrumentality of messengers — it was as if You mocked me — give Yourself by Yourself now. Sometimes when You visited me You gave me the pearl of Your possession, and, when I began to examine it, lo, it was gone, for You had hidden it Yourself: it was like a mockery. Give me then Yourself in truth, Your whole self, that I may have You wholly to myself wholly, and send me no messengers again.”
7. “I wish for You wholly, and Your messengers neither know You wholly, nor can they speak of You wholly, for there is nothing in earth or heaven that can furnish that knowledge to the soul which it longs for. They cannot tell me, therefore, what I wish. Instead, then, of these messengers, be You the messenger and the message.”
THE soul describes itself in the foregoing stanza as wounded, or sick with love of the Bridegroom, because of the knowledge of Him which the irrational creation supplies, and in the present, as wounded with love because of the other and higher knowledge which it derives from the rational creation, nobler than the former; that is, angels and men. This is not all, for the soul says also that it is dying of love, because of that marvelous immensity not wholly but partially revealed to it through the rational creation. This it calls “I know not what,” because it cannot be described, and because it is such that the soul dies of it.
2. It seems, from this, that there are three kinds of pain in the soul’s love
of the Beloved, corresponding to the three kinds of knowledge that can be had of
Him. The first is called a wound; not deep, but slight, like a wound which heals
quickly, because it comes from its knowledge of the creatures, which are the lowest
works of God. This wounding of the soul, called also sickness, is thus spoken of
by the bride in the Canticle: “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find
my Beloved, that you tell Him that I languish with love.”
3. The second is called a sore which enters deeper than a wound into the soul,
and is, therefore, of longer continuance, because it is as a wound festering, on
account of which the soul feels that it is really dying of love. This sore is the
effect of the knowledge of the works of God, the incarnation of the Word, and the
mysteries of the faith. These being the greatest works of God, and involving a greater
love than those of creation, produce a greater effect of love in the soul. If the
first kind of pain is as a wound, this must be like a festering, continuous sore.
Of this speaks the Bridegroom, addressing Himself to the bride, saying: “You have
wounded My heart, My sister, My bride; you have wounded My heart with one of your
eyes, and with one hair of your neck.”
4. The third kind of pain is like dying; it is as if the whole soul were festering
because of its wound. It is dying a living death until love, having slain it, shall
make it live the life of love, transforming it in love. This dying of love is affected
by a single touch of the knowledge of the Divinity; it is the “I know not what,”
of which the creatures, as in the stanza is said, are speaking indistinctly. This
touch is not continuous nor great, — for then soul and body would part — but soon
over, and thus the soul is dying of love, and dying the more when it sees that it
cannot die of love.
5. These two-fold pains of love — that is, the wound and the dying — are in the stanza said to be merely the rational creation. The wound, when it speaks of the unnumbered graces of the Beloved in the mysteries and wisdom of God taught by the faith. The dying, when it is said that the rational creation speaks indistinctly. This is a sense and knowledge of the Divinity sometimes revealed when the soul hears God spoken of. Therefore it says:
6. That is, the rational creation, angels and men; for these alone are they who serve God, understanding by that word intelligent service; that is to say, all they who serve God. Some serve Him by contemplation and fruition in heaven — these are the angels; others by loving and longing for Him on earth — these are men. And because the soul learns to know God more distinctly through the rational creation, whether by considering its superiority over the rest of creation, or by what it teaches us of God — the angels interiorly by secret inspirations, and men exteriorly by the truths of Scripture — it says:
7. That is, they speak of the wonders of Your grace and mercy in the Incarnation, and in the truths of the faith which they show forth and are ever telling more distinctly; for the more they say, the more do they reveal Your graces.
8. The more the angels inspire me, the more men teach me, the more do I love You; and thus all wound me more and more with love.
9. It is as if it said: “But beside the wound which the creatures inflict when they tell me of Your unnumbered graces, there is yet something which remains to be told, one thing unknown to be uttered, a most clear trace of the footsteps of God revealed to the soul, which it should follow, a most profound knowledge of God, which is ineffable, and therefore spoken of as ‘I know not what.’” If that which I comprehend inflicts the wound and festering sore of love, that which I cannot comprehend but yet feel profoundly, kills me.
10. This happens occasionally to souls advanced, whom God favors in what they hear, or see, or understand — and sometimes without these or other means — with a certain profound knowledge, in which they feel or apprehend the greatness and majesty of God. In this state they think so highly of God as to see clearly that they know Him not, and in their perception of His greatness they recognize that not to comprehend Him is the highest comprehension. And thus, one of the greatest favors of God, bestowed transiently on the soul in this life, is to enable it to see so distinctly, and to feel so profoundly, that it clearly understands it cannot comprehend Him at all. These souls are herein, in some degree, like the saints in heaven, where they who know Him most perfectly perceive most clearly that He is infinitely incomprehensible, for those who have the less clear vision, do not perceive so distinctly as the others, how greatly He transcends their vision. This is clear to none who have not had experience of it. But the experienced soul, comprehending that there is something further of which it is profoundly sensible, calls it, “I know not what.” As that cannot be understood, so neither can it be described, though it is felt, as I have said. Hence the soul says that the creatures speak indistinctly, because they cannot distinctly utter that which they would say: it is the speech of infants, who cannot explain distinctly or speak intelligibly that which they would convey to others.
11. The other creatures, also, are in some measure a revelation to the soul in this way, but not of an order so high, whenever it is the good pleasure of God to manifest to it their spiritual sense and significance; they are seemingly on the point of making us understand the perfections of God, and cannot compass it; it is as if one were about to explain a matter and the explanation is not given; and thus they stammer “I know not what.” The soul continues to complain, and addresses its own life, saying, in the stanza that follows:
THE soul, perceiving itself to be dying of love, as it has just said, and yet not dying so as to have the free enjoyment of its love, complains of the continuance of its bodily life, by which the spiritual life is delayed. Here the soul addresses itself to the life it is living upon earth, magnifying the sorrows of it. The meaning of the stanza therefore is as follows: “O life of my soul, how can you persevere in this life of the flesh, seeing that it is your death and the privation of the true spiritual life in God, in Whom you live in substance, love, and desire, more truly than in the body? And if this were not reason enough to depart, and free yourself from the body of this death, so as to live and enjoy the life of God, how can you still remain in a body so frail? Besides, these wounds of love made by the Beloved in the revelation of His majesty are by themselves alone sufficient to put an end to your life, for they are very deep; and thus all your feelings towards Him, and all you know of Him, are so many touches and wounds of love that kill,
2. We must keep in mind, for the better understanding of this, that the soul lives
there where it loves, rather than in the body which it animates. The soul does not
live by the body, but, on the contrary, gives it life, and lives by love in that
which it loves. For beside this life of love which it lives in God Who loves it,
the soul has its radical and natural life in God, like all created things, according
to the saying of St. Paul: “In Him we live, and move, and are;”
3. When the soul sees that its natural life is in God through the being He has given it, and its spiritual life also because of the love it bears Him, it breaks forth into lamentations, complaining that so frail a life in a mortal body should have the power to hinder it from the fruition of the true, real, and delicious life, which it lives in God by nature and by love. Earnestly, therefore, does the soul insist upon this: it tells us that it suffers between two contradictions — its natural life in the body, and its spiritual life in God; contrary the one to the other, because of their mutual repugnance. The soul living this double life is of necessity in great pain; for the painful life hinders the delicious, so that the natural life is as death, seeing that it deprives the soul of its spiritual life, wherein is its whole being and life by nature, and all its operations and feelings by love. The soul, therefore, to depict more vividly the hardships of this fragile life, says:
4. That is to say: “Besides, how can you continue in the body, seeing that the touches of love — these are the arrows — with which the Beloved pierces your heart, are alone sufficient to deprive you of life?” These touches of love make the soul and heart so fruitful of the knowledge and love of God, that they may well be called conceptions of God, as in the words that follow:
5. That is, of the majesty, beauty, wisdom, grace, and power, which you know to be His.
NOTE
AS the hart wounded with a poisoned arrow cannot be easy and at rest, but seeks relief on all sides, plunging into the waters here and again there, while the poison spreads notwithstanding all attempts at relief, till it reaches the heart, and occasions death; so the soul, pierced by the arrow of love, never ceases from seeking to alleviate its pains. Not only does it not succeed, but its pains increase, let it think, and say, and do what it may; and knowing this, and that there is no other remedy but the resignation of itself into the hands of Him Who wounded it, that He may relieve it, and effectually slay it through the violence of its love; it turns towards the Bridegroom, Who is the cause of all, and says:
HERE the soul returns to the Beloved, still complaining of its pain; for that impatient love which the soul now exhibits admits of no rest or cessation from pain; so it sets forth its griefs in all manner of ways until it finds relief. The soul seeing itself wounded and lonely, and as no one can heal it but the Beloved Who has wounded it, asks why He, having wounded its heart with that love which the knowledge of Him brings, does not heal it in the vision of His presence; and why He thus abandons the heart which He has stolen through the love Which inflames it, after having deprived the soul of all power over it. The soul has now no power over its heart — for he who loves has none — because it is surrendered to the Beloved, and yet He has not taken it to Himself in the pure and perfect transformation of love in glory.
2. The enamored soul is complaining not because it is wounded, for the deeper the wound the greater the joy, but because, being wounded, it is not healed by being wounded to death. The wounds of love are so deliciously sweet, that if they do not kill, they cannot satisfy the soul. They are so sweet that it desires to die of them, and hence it is that it says, “Why, after wounding this heart, have You not healed it?” That is, “Why have You struck it so sharply as to wound it so deeply, and yet not healed it by killing it utterly with love? As You are the cause of its pain in the affliction of love, be You also the cause of its health by a death from love; so the heart, wounded by the pain of Your absence, shall be healed in the delight and glory of Your Sweet presence.” Therefore it goes on:
3. Stealing is nothing else but the act of a robber in dispossessing the owner of his goods, and possessing them himself. Here the soul complains to the Beloved that He has robbed it of its heart lovingly, and taken it out of its power and possession, and then abandoned it, without taking it into His own power and possession as the thief does with the goods he steals, carrying them away with him. He who is in love is said to have lost his heart, or to have it stolen by the object of his love; because it is no longer in his own possession, but in the power of the object of his love, and so his heart is not his own, but the property of the person he loves.
4. This consideration will enable the soul to determine whether it loves God simply or not. If it loves Him it will have no heart for itself, nor for its own pleasure or profit, but for the honor, glory, and pleasure of God; because the more the heart is occupied with self, the less is it occupied with God. Whether God has really stolen the heart, the soul may ascertain by either of these two signs: Is it anxiously seeking after God? and has it no pleasure in anything but in Him, as the soul here says? The reason of this is that the heart cannot rest in peace without the possession of something; and when its affections are once placed, it has neither the possession of itself nor of anything else; neither does it perfectly possess what it loves. In this state its weariness is in proportion to its loss, until it shall enter into possession and be satisfied; for until then the soul is as an empty vessel waiting to be filled, as a hungry man eager for food, as a sick man sighing for health, and as a man suspended in the air.
5. “Why do You not carry away the heart which Your love has stolen, to fill it, to heal it, and to satiate it giving it perfect rest in Yourself?”
6. The loving soul, for the sake of greater conformity with the Beloved, cannot
cease to desire the recompense and reward of its love for the sake of which it serves
the Beloved, otherwise it could not be true love, for the recompense of love is
nothing else, and the soul seeks nothing else, but greater love, until it reaches
the perfection of love; for the sole reward of love is love, as we learn from the
prophet Job, who, speaking of his own distress, which is that of the soul now referred
to, says: “As a servant longs for the shade, as the hireling looks for the end of
his work; so I also have had empty months, and have numbered to myself wearisome
nights. If I sleep, I say, When shall I arise? and again, I shall look for the evening,
and shall be filled with sorrows even till darkness.”
7. Thus, then, the soul on fire with the love of God longs for the perfection and consummation of its love, that it may be completely refreshed. As the servant wearied by the heat of the day longs for the cooling shade, and as the hireling looks for the end of his work, so the soul for the end of its own. Observe, Job does not say that the hireling looks for the end of his labor, but only for the end of his work. He teaches us that the soul which loves looks not for the end of its labor, but for the end of its work; because its work is to love, and it is the end of this work, which is love, that it hopes for, namely, the perfect love of God. Until it attains to this, the words of Job will be always true of it — its months will be empty, and its nights wearisome and tedious. It is clear, then, that the soul which loves God seeks and looks for no other reward of its services than to love God perfectly.
NOTE
THE soul, having reached this degree of love, resembles a sick man exceedingly wearied, whose appetite is gone, and to whom his food is loathsome, and all things annoyance and trouble. Amidst all things that present themselves to his thoughts, or feelings, or sight, his only wish and desire is health; and everything that does not contribute to it is weariness and oppressive. The soul, therefore, in pain because of its love of God, has three peculiarities. Under all circumstances, and in all affairs, the thought of its health — that is, the Beloved — is ever present to it; and though it is obliged to attend to them because it cannot help it, its heart is ever with Him. The second peculiarity, namely, a loss of pleasure in everything, arises from the first. The third also, a consequence of the second, is that all things become wearisome, and all affairs full of vexation and annoyance.
2. The reason is that the palate of the will having touched and tasted of the
food of the love of God, the will instantly, under all circumstances, regardless
of every other consideration, seeks the fruition of the Beloved. It is with the
soul now as it was with Mary Magdalene, when in her burning love she sought Him
in the garden. She, thinking Him to be the gardener, spoke to Him without further
reflection, saying: “If you have taken Him hence, tell me where you have laid Him,
and I will take Him away.”
3. The bride in the Canticle shows us that she had these three peculiarities
when seeking the Bridegroom. “I sought Him and found Him not; the keepers that go
about the city found me, they struck me and wounded me: the keepers of the walls
took away my cloak.”
HERE the soul continues to beseech the Beloved to put an end to its anxieties and distress — none other than He can do so — and that in such a way that its eyes may behold Him; for He alone is the light by which they see, and there is none other but He on whom it will look.
2. The desire of love has this property, that everything said or done which does not become that which the will loves, wearies and annoys it, and makes it peevish when it sees itself disappointed in its desires. This and its weary longing after the vision of God is here called “troubles.” These troubles nothing can remove except the possession of the Beloved; hence the soul prays Him to quench them with His presence, to cool their feverishness, as the cooling water him who is wearied by the heat. The soul makes use of the expression “quench,” to denote its sufferings from the fire of love.
3. The soul, in order to move and persuade the Beloved to grant its petition, says, “As none other but You can satisfy my needs, You quench my troubles.” Remember here that God is then close at hand, to comfort the soul and to satisfy its wants, when it has and seeks no satisfaction or comfort out of Him. The soul that finds no pleasure out of God cannot be long unvisited by the Beloved.
4. Let me see You face to face with the eyes of the soul,
5. God is the supernatural light of the soul, without which it abides in darkness.
And now, in the excess of its affection, it calls Him the light of its eyes, as
an earthly lover, to express his affection, calls the object of his love the light
of his eyes. The soul says in effect in the foregoing terms, “Since my eyes have
no other light, either of nature or of love, but You, let them behold You, Who in
every way are their light.” David was regretting this light when he said in his
trouble, “The light of my eyes, and the same is not with me;”
6. The soul seeks to constrain the Bridegroom to let it see the light of its eyes, not only because it would be in darkness without it, but also because it will not look upon anything but on Him. For as that soul is justly deprived of this divine light if it fixes the eyes of the will on any other light, proceeding from anything that is not God, for then its vision is confined to that object; so also the soul, by a certain fitness, deserves the divine light, if it shuts its eyes against all objects whatever, to open them only for the vision of God.
NOTE
BUT the loving Bridegroom of souls cannot bear to see them suffer long in the
isolation of which I am speaking, for, as He says by the mouth of Zachariah, “He
that shall touch you, touches the apple of My eye;”
2. In that presence He shows certain profound glimpses of His divinity and beauty, whereby He still increases the soul’s anxious desire to behold Him. For as men throw water on the coals of the forge to cause intenser heat, so our Lord in His dealings with certain souls, in the intermission of their love, makes some revelations of His majesty, to quicken their fervor, and to prepare them more and more for those graces which He will give them afterwards. Thus the soul, in that obscure presence of God, beholding and feeling the supreme good and beauty hidden there, is dying in desire of the vision, saying in the stanza that follows:
THE soul, anxious to be possessed by God, Who is so great, Whose love has wounded and stolen its heart, and unable to suffer more, beseeches Him directly, in this stanza, to reveal His beauty — that is, the divine Essence — and to slay it in that vision, separating it from the body, in which it can neither see nor possess Him as it desires. And further, setting before Him the distress and sorrow of heart, in which it continues, suffering it because of its love, and unable to find any other remedy than the glorious vision of the divine essence, cries out: “Reveal Your presence.”
2. To understand this clearly we must remember that there are three ways in which
God is present in the soul. The first is His presence in essence, not in holy souls
only, but in wretched and sinful souls as well, and also in all created things;
for it is by this presence that He gives life and being, and were it once withdrawn
all things would return to nothing.
3. The second is His presence by grace, whereby He dwells in the soul, pleased and satisfied with it. This presence is not in all souls; for those who fall into mortal sin lose it, and no soul can know in a natural way whether it has it or not. The third is His presence by spiritual affection. God is wont to show His presence in many devout souls in diverse ways, in refreshment, joy, and gladness; yet this, like the others, is all secret, for He does not show Himself as He is, because the condition of our mortal life does not admit of it. Thus this prayer of the soul may be understood of any one of them.
4. Inasmuch as it is certain that God is ever present in the soul, at least in the first way, the soul does not say, “Be present”; but, “Reveal and manifest Your hidden presence, whether natural, spiritual, or affective, in such a way that I may behold You in Your divine essence and beauty.” The soul prays Him that as He by His essential presence gives it its natural being, and perfects it by His presence of grace, so also He would glorify it by the manifestation of His glory. But as the soul is now loving God with fervent affections, the presence, for the revelation of which it prays the Beloved to manifest, is to be understood chiefly of the affective presence of the Beloved. Such is the nature of this presence that the soul felt there was an infinite being hidden there, out of which God communicated to it certain obscure visions of His own divine beauty. Such was the effect of these visions that the soul longed and fainted away with the desire of that which is hidden in that presence.
5. This is in harmony with the experience of David, when he said: “My soul longs
and faints for the courts of our Lord.”
6. Moses, on Mount Sinai in the presence of God, saw such glimpses of the majesty
and beauty of His hidden Divinity, that, unable to endure it, he prayed twice for
the vision of His glory saying: “Whereas You have said: I know you by name, and
you have found grace in my sight. If, therefore, I have found grace in Your sight,
show me Your face, that I may know You and may find grace before Your eyes;”
7. That is, “Since the vision of You and Your beauty is so full of delight that I cannot endure, but must die in the act of beholding them, let the vision and Your beauty kill me.”
8. Two visions are said to be fatal to man, because he cannot bear them and live. One, that of the basilisk, at the sight of which men are said to die at once. The other is the vision of God; but there is a great difference between them. The former kills by poison, the other with infinite health and bliss. It is, therefore, nothing strange for the soul to desire to die by beholding the beauty of God in order to enjoy Him for ever. If the soul had but one single glimpse of the majesty and beauty of God, not only would it desire to die once in order to see Him for ever, as it desires now, but would most joyfully undergo a thousand most bitter deaths to see Him even for a moment, and having seen Him would suffer as many deaths again to see Him for another moment.
9. It is necessary to observe for the better explanation of this line, that the soul is now speaking conditionally, when it prays that the vision and beauty may slay it; it assumes that the vision must be preceded by death, for if it were possible before death, the soul would not pray for death, because the desire of death is a natural imperfection. The soul, therefore, takes it for granted that this corruptible life cannot coexist with the incorruptible life of God, and says:
10. St. Paul teaches this doctrine to the Corinthians when he says: “We would not
be spoiled, but overclothed, that that which is mortal may be swallowed up of life,”
11. Here arises this question, Why did the people of Israel of old dread and
avoid the vision of God, that they might not die, as it appears they did from the
words of Manoah to his wife, “We shall die because we have seen God,”
12. In those days men could not see God, though dying in the state of grace, because Christ had not come. It was therefore more profitable for them to live in the flesh, increasing in merit, and enjoying their natural life, than to be in Limbo, incapable of meriting, suffering in the darkness and in the spiritual absence of God. They therefore considered it a great grace and blessing to live long upon earth.
13. The second answer is founded on considerations drawn from the love of God.
They in those days, not being so confirmed in love, nor so near to God by love,
were afraid of the vision: but, now, under the law of grace, when, on the death
of the body, the soul may behold God, it is more profitable to live but a short
time, and then to die in order to see Him. And even if the vision were withheld,
the soul that really loves God will not be afraid to die at the sight of Him; for
true love accepts with perfect resignation, and in the same spirit, and even with
joy, whatever comes to it from the hands of the Beloved, whether prosperity or adversity
— yes, and even chastisements such as He shall be pleased to send, for, as St.
John says, “perfect charity casts out fear.”
14. Thus, then, there is no bitterness in death to the soul that loves, when it brings with it all the sweetness and delights of love; there is no sadness in the remembrance of it when it opens the door to all joy; nor can it be painful and oppressive, when it is the end of all unhappiness and sorrow, and the beginning of all good. Yes, the soul looks upon it as a friend and its bride, and exults in the recollection of it as the day of espousals; it yearns for the day and hour of death more than the kings of the earth for principalities and kingdoms.
15. It was of this kind of death that the wise man said, “O death, your judgment
is good to the needy man.”
16. The soul knows well that in the instant of that vision it will be itself absorbed
and transformed into that beauty, and be made beautiful like it, enriched, and abounding
in beauty as that beauty itself. This is why David said, “Precious in the sight
of the Lord is the death of His saints,”
17. The reason why the malady of love admits of no other remedy than the presence and countenance of the Beloved is that the malady of love differs from every other sickness, and therefore requires a different remedy. In other diseases, according to sound philosophy, contraries are cured by contraries; but love is not cured but by that which is in harmony with itself. The reason is that the health of the soul consists in the love of God; and so when that love is not perfect, its health is not perfect, and the soul is therefore sick, for sickness is nothing else but a failure of health. Thus, that soul which loves not at all is dead; but when it loves a little, however little that may be, it is then alive, though exceedingly weak and sick because it loves God so little. But the more its love increases, the greater will be its health, and when its love is perfect, then, too, its health also is perfect. Love is not perfect until the lovers become so on an equality as to be mutually transformed into one another; then love is wholly perfect.
18. And because the soul is now conscious of a certain adumbration of love, which
is the malady of which it here speaks, yearning to be made like to Him of whom it
is a shadow, that is the Bridegroom, the Word, the Son of God, Who, as St. Paul
says, is the “splendor of His glory, and the figure of His substance;”
19. Another explanation of these words is this: he who feels this malady of love — that is, a failure of it — has an evidence in himself that he has some love, because he ascertains what is deficient in him by that which he possesses. But he who is not conscious of this malady has evidence therein that he has no love at all, or that he has already attained to perfect love.
NOTE
THE soul now conscious of a vehement longing after God, like a stone rushing to its center, and like wax which has begun to receive the impression of the seal which it cannot perfectly represent, and knowing, moreover, that it is like a picture lightly sketched, crying for the artist to finish his work, and having its faith so clear as to trace most distinctly certain divine glimpses of the majesty of God, knows not what else to do but to turn inward to that faith — as involving and veiling the face and beauty of the Beloved — from which it has received those impressions and pledges of love, and which it thus addresses:
THE soul vehemently desiring to be united to the Bridegroom, and seeing that there
is no help or succor in created things, turns towards the faith, as to that which
gives it the most vivid vision of the Beloved, and adopts it as the means to that
end. And, indeed, there is no other way of attaining to true union, to the spiritual
betrothal of God, according to the words of Hosea: “I will betrothe you to Me in
faith.”
2. Faith is called crystal for two reasons: because it is of Christ the Bridegroom;
because it has the property of crystal, pure in its truths, a limpid well clear
of error, and of natural forms. It is a well because the waters of all spiritual
goodness flow from it into the soul. Christ our Lord, speaking to the woman of Samaria,
calls faith a well, saying, “The water that I will give him shall become in him
a well of water springing up into life everlasting.”
3. The articles and definitions of the faith are called silvered surfaces. In order
to understand these words and those that follow, we must know that faith is compared
to silver because of the propositions it teaches us, the truth and substance it
involves being compared to gold. This very substance which we now believe, hidden
behind the silver veil of faith, we shall clearly behold and enjoy hereafter; the
gold of faith shall be made manifest. Hence the Psalmist, speaking of this, says:
“If you sleep amidst the lots, the wings of the dove are laid over with silver,
and the hinder parts of the back in the paleness of gold.”
4. As the faith gives and communicates to us God Himself, but hidden beneath
the silver of faith, yet it reveals Him none the less. So if a man gives us a vessel
made of gold, but covered with silver, he gives us in reality a vessel of gold,
though the gold is covered over. Thus, when the bride in the Canticle was longing
for the fruition of God, He promised it to her so far as the state of this life
admitted of it, saying: “We will make you chains of gold inlaid with silver.”
5. By the eyes are understood, as I have said, the rays and truths of God, which are set before us hidden and informal in the definitions of the faith. Thus the words say in substance: “Oh that you would formally and explicitly reveal to me those hidden truths which You teach implicitly and obscurely in the definitions of the faith; according to my earnest desire.” Those truths are called eyes, because of the special presence of the Beloved, of which the soul is conscious, believing Him to be perpetually regarding it; and so it says:
6. The soul here says that these truths are outlined in the heart — that is, in
the understanding and the will. It is through the understanding that these truths
are infused into the soul by faith. They are said to be outlined because the knowledge
of them is not perfect. As a sketch is not a perfect picture, so the knowledge that
comes by faith is not a perfect understanding. The truths, therefore, infused into
the soul by faith are as it were in outline, and when the clear vision shall be
granted, then they will be as a perfect and finished picture, according to the words
of the Apostle: “When that shall come which is perfect, that shall be made void
which is in part.”
7. Besides this outline which comes by faith, there is another by love in the soul that loves — that is, in the will — in which the face of the Beloved is so deeply and vividly pictured, when the union of love occurs, that it may be truly said the Beloved lives in the loving soul, and the loving soul in the Beloved. Love produces such a resemblance by the transformation of those who love that one may be said to be the other, and both but one. The reason is, that in the union and transformation of love one gives himself up to the other as his possession, and each resigns, abandons, and exchanges himself for the other, and both become but one in the transformation wrought by love.
8. This is the meaning of St. Paul when he said, “I live, now, not I, but Christ
lives in me.”
9. Now, this may take place in this life, as in the case of St. Paul, but not
perfectly and completely, though the soul should attain to such a transformation
of love as shall be spiritual marriage, which is the highest state it can reach
in this life; because all this is but an outline of love compared with the perfect
image of transformation in glory. Yet, when this outline of transformation is attained
in this life, it is a grand blessing, because the Beloved is so greatly pleased
therewith. He desires, therefore, that the bride should have Him thus delineated
in her soul, and says to her, “Put Me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon
your arm.”
10. Such is the state of the soul at that time. I speak but little of it, not willing to leave it altogether untouched, though no language can describe it.
11. The very substance of soul and body seems to be dried up by thirst after
this living well of God, for the thirst resembles that of David when he cried out,
“As the hart longs for the fountains of waters, so my soul longs for You, O God.
My soul has thirsted after the strong living God; when shall I come and appear before
the face of God?”
12. To this we may apply those words in the Canticle: “Love is strong as death,
jealousy is hard as hell.”
NOTE
THE source of the grievous sufferings of the soul at this time is the consciousness
of its own emptiness of God — while it is drawing nearer and nearer to Him — and
also, the thick darkness with the spiritual fire, which dry and purify it, that,
its purification ended, it may be united with God. For when God sends not forth
a ray of supernatural light into the soul, He is to it intolerable darkness when
He is even near to it in spirit, for the supernatural light by its very brightness
obscures the mere natural light. David referred to this when he said: “Cloud and
mist round about Him . . . a fire shall go before Him.”
AMID those fervent affections of love, such as the soul has shown in the preceding stanzas, the Beloved is wont to visit His bride, tenderly, lovingly, and with great strength of love; for ordinarily the graces and visits of God are great in proportion to the greatness of those fervors and longings of love which have gone before. And, as the soul has so anxiously longed for the divine eyes — as in the foregoing stanza — the Beloved reveals to it some glimpses of His majesty and Godhead, according to its desires. These divine rays strike the soul so profoundly and so vividly that it is rapt into an ecstasy which in the beginning is attended with great suffering and natural fear. Hence the soul, unable to bear the ecstasies in a body so frail, cries out, “Turn away your eyes from me.”
2. That is, “Your divine eyes, for they make me fly away out of myself to the heights of contemplation, and my natural force cannot bear it.” This the soul says because it thinks it has escaped from the burden of the flesh, which was the object of its desires; it therefore prays the Beloved to turn away His eyes; that is, not to show them in the body where it cannot bear and enjoy them as it would, but to show them to it in its flight from the body. The Bridegroom at once denies the request and hinders the flight, saying, “Return, My Dove! for the communications I make to you now are not those of the state of glory wherein you desire to be; but return to Me, for I am He Whom you, wounded with love, are seeking, and I, too, as the hart, wounded with your love, begin to show Myself to you on the heights of contemplation, and am refreshed and delighted by the love which your contemplation involves.” The soul then says to the Bridegroom:
3. The soul, because of its intense longing after the divine eyes — that is, the Godhead — receives interiorly from the Beloved such communications and knowledge of God as compel it to cry out, “Turn them away, O my Beloved!” For such is the wretchedness of our mortal nature, that we cannot bear — even when it is offered to us — but at the cost of our life, that which is the very life of the soul, and the object of its earnest desires, namely, the knowledge of the Beloved. Thus the soul is compelled to say, with regard to the eyes so earnestly, so anxiously sought for, and in so many ways — when they become visible — “Turn them away.”
4. So great, at times, is the suffering of the soul during these ecstatic visitations
— and there is no other pain which so wrenches the very bones, and which so oppresses
our natural forces — that, were it not for the special interference of God, death
would ensue. And, in truth, such is it to the soul, the subject of these visitations,
for it feels as if it were released from the body and a stranger to the flesh. Such
graces cannot be perfectly received in the body, because the spirit of man is lifted
up to the communion of the Spirit of God, Who visits the soul, and must therefore
of necessity be in some measure a stranger to the body. Hence it is that the flesh
has to suffer, and consequently the soul in it, by reason of their union in one
person. The great agony of the soul, therefore, in these visitations, and the great
fear that overwhelms it when God deals with it in the supernatural way,
5. But it is not to be supposed, however, that the soul really wishes Him to
turn away His eyes; for this is nothing else but the expression of natural awe,
as I said before.
6. It is as if it said, “I am taking my flight out of the body, that You may show
them when I shall have left it; they being the cause of my flight out of the body.”
For the better understanding of the nature of this flight we should consider that
which I said just now.
7. This is the reason why the body remains insensible in raptures and ecstasies, and unconscious of the most painful inflictions. These are not like the swoons and faintings of the natural life, which cease when pain begins. They who have not arrived at perfection are liable to these visitations, for they happen to those who are walking in the way of proficients. They who are already perfect receive these visitations in peace and in the sweetness of love: ecstasies cease, for they were only graces to prepare them for this greater grace.
8. This is a fitting place for discussing the difference between raptures, ecstasies,
other elevations and subtle flights of the spirit, to which spiritual persons are
liable; but, as I intend to do nothing more than explain briefly this canticle,
as I undertook in the prologue, I leave the subject for those who are better qualified
than I am. I do this the more readily, because our mother, the blessed Teresa of
Jesus, has written admirably on this matter,
9. The soul was joyfully quitting the body in its spiritual flight, thinking that its natural life was over, and that it was about to enter into the everlasting fruition of the Bridegroom, and remain with Him without a veil between them. He, however, restrains it in its flight, saying:
10. It is as if He said, “O My Dove, in your high and rapid flight of contemplation, in the love with which you are inflamed, in the simplicity of your regard” — these are three characteristics of the dove — “return from that flight in which you aim at the true fruition of Myself — the time is not yet come for knowledge so high — return, and submit yourself to that lower degree of it which I communicate in this your rapture.”
11. The Bridegroom likens Himself to a hart, for by the hart here He means Himself. The hart by nature climbs up to high places, and when wounded hastens to seek relief in the cooling waters. If he hears his consort moan and sees that she is wounded, he runs to her at once, comforts, and caresses her. So the Bridegroom now; for, seeing the bride wounded with His love, He, too, hearing her moaning, is wounded Himself with her love; for with lovers the wound of one is the wound of the other, and they have the same feelings in common. The Bridegroom, therefore, says in effect: “Return, my bride, to Me; for as you are wounded with the love of Me, I too, like the hart, am wounded by love for you. I am like the hart, looming on the top of the hill.” Therefore He says:
12. That is, “on the heights of contemplation, to which you have ascended in your flight.” Contemplation is a lofty eminence where God, in this life, begins to communicate Himself to the soul, and to show Himself, but not distinctly. Hence it is said, “Looms on the hill,” because He does not appear clearly. However profound the knowledge of Himself which God may grant to the soul in this life, it is, after all, but an indistinct vision. We now come to the third property of the hart, the subject of the line that follows:
13. The flight is contemplation in the ecstasy spoken of before,
14. We must observe here that the Bridegroom does not say that He comes at the flight, but at the air of the flight, because properly speaking God does not communicate Himself to the soul because of that flight, which is, as I have said, the knowledge it has of God, but because of the love which is the fruit of that knowledge. For as love is the union of the Father and the Son, so is it also of God and the soul.
15. Hence it is that notwithstanding the most profound knowledge of God, and
contemplation itself, together with the knowledge of all mysteries, the soul without
love is worth nothing, and can do nothing, as the Apostle says, towards its union
with God.
16. As the air cools and refreshes him who is wearied with the heat, so the air of love refreshes and comforts him who burns with the fire of love. The fire of love has this property, the air which cools and refreshes it is an increase of the fire itself. To him who loves, love is a flame that burns with the desire of burning more and more, like the flame of material fire. The consummation of this desire of burning more and more, with the love of the bride, which is the air of her flight, is here called refreshment. The Bridegroom says in substance, “I burn more and more because of the ardor of your flight, for love kindles love.”
17. God does not establish His grace and love in the soul but in proportion to
the good will of that soul’s love. He, therefore, that truly loves God must strive
that his love fail not; for so, if we may thus speak, will he move God to show him
greater love, and to take greater delight in his soul. In order to attain to such
a degree of love, he must practice those things of which the Apostle speaks, saying:
“Charity is patient, is benign: charity envies not, deals not perversely; is not
puffed up, is not ambitious, seeks not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinks
not evil, rejoices not upon iniquity, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
NOTE
WHEN the dove — that is the soul — was flying on the gale of love over the
waters of the deluge of the weariness and longing of its love, “not finding where
her foot might rest,”
BEFORE I begin to explain these stanzas, I must observe, in order that they and those which follow may be better understood, that this spiritual flight signifies a certain high estate and union of love, to which, after many spiritual exercises, God is wont to elevate the soul: it is called the spiritual betrothal of the Word, the Son of God. In the beginning, when this occurs the first time, God reveals to it great things of Himself, makes it beautiful in majesty and grandeur, adorns it with graces and gifts, and endows it with honor, and with the knowledge of Himself, as a bride is adorned on the day of her betrothal. On this happy day the soul not only ceases from its anxieties and loving complaints, but is, moreover, adorned with all grace, entering into a state of peace and delight, and of the sweetness of love, as it appears from these stanzas, in which it does nothing else but recount and praise the magnificence of the Beloved, which it recognizes in Him, and enjoys in the union of the betrothal.
2. In the stanzas that follow, the soul speaks no more of its anxieties and sufferings, as before, but of the sweet and peaceful intercourse of love with the Beloved; for now all its troubles are over. These two stanzas, which I am about to explain, contain all that God is wont at this time to bestow upon the soul; but we are not to suppose that all souls, thus far advanced, receive all that is here described, either in the same way or in the same degree of knowledge and of consciousness. Some souls receive more, others less; some in one way, some in another; and yet all may be in the state of spiritual betrothal. But in this stanza the highest possible is spoken of, because that embraces all.
EXPLANATION
3. As in the ark of Noah there were many chambers for the different kinds of
animals, as the Sacred Writings tell us, and “all food that may be eaten,”
4. In this divine union the soul has a vision and foretaste of abundant and inestimable riches, and finds there all the repose and refreshment it desired; it attains to the secrets of God, and to a strange knowledge of Him, which is the food of those who know Him most; it is conscious of the awful power of God beyond all other power and might, tastes of the wonderful sweetness and delight of the Spirit, finds its true rest and divine light, drinks deeply of the wisdom of God, which shines forth in the harmony of the creatures and works of God; it feels itself filled with all good, emptied, and delivered from all evil, and, above all, rejoices consciously in the inestimable banquet of love which confirms it in love. This is the substance of these two stanzas.
5. The bride here says that her Beloved in Himself and to her is all the objects
she enumerates; for in the ecstatic communications of God the soul feels and understands
the truth of the saying of St. Francis: “God is mine and all things are mine.” And
because God is all, and the soul, and the good of all, the communication in this
ecstasy is explained by the consideration that the goodness of the creatures referred
to in these stanzas is a reflection of His goodness, as will appear from every line
thereof. All that is here set forth is in God eminently in an infinite way, or rather,
every one of these grandeurs is God, and all of them together are God. Inasmuch
as the soul is one with God, it feels all things to be God according to the words
of St. John: “What was made, in Him was life.”
6. But we are not to understand this consciousness of the soul as if it saw the creatures in God as we see material objects in the light, but that it feels all things to be God in this fruition of Him; neither are we to imagine that the soul sees God essentially and clearly because it has so deep a sense of Him; for this is only a strong and abundant communication from Him, a glimmering light of what He is in Himself, by which the soul discerns this goodness of all things, as I proceed to explain.
7. Mountains are high fertile, extensive, beautiful, lovely, flowery, and odorous. These mountains my Beloved is to me.
8. Solitary valleys are tranquil, pleasant, cooling, shady, abounding in sweet waters, and by the variety of trees growing in them, and by the melody of the birds that frequent them, enliven and delight the senses; their solitude and silence procure us a refreshing rest. These valleys my Beloved is to me.
9. Strange islands are girt by the sea; they are also, because of the sea, distant and unknown to the commerce of men. They produce things very different from those with which we are conversant, in strange ways, and with qualities hitherto unknown, so as to surprise those who behold them, and fill them with wonder. Thus, then, by reason of the great and marvelous wonders, and the strange things that come to our knowledge, far beyond the common notions of men, which the soul beholds in God, it calls Him the strange islands. We say of a man that he is strange for one of two reasons: either because he withdraws himself from the society of his fellows, or because he is singular or distinguished in his life and conduct. For these two reasons together God is called strange by the soul. He is not only all that is strange in undiscovered islands, but His ways, judgments, and works are also strange, new, and marvelous to men.
10. It is nothing wonderful that God should be strange to men who have never seen Him, seeing that He is also strange to the holy angels and the souls who see Him; for they neither can nor shall ever see Him perfectly. Yes, even to the day of the last judgment they will see in Him so much that is new in His deep judgments, in His acts of mercy and justice, as to excite their wonder more and more. Thus God is the strange islands not to men only, but to the angels also; only to Himself is He neither strange nor new.
11. Torrents have three properties. 1. They overflow all that is in their course. 2. They fill all hollows. 3. They overpower all other sounds by their own. And hence the soul, feeling most sweetly that these three properties belong to God, says, “My Beloved is the roaring torrents.”
12. As to the first property of which the soul is conscious, it feels itself
to be so overwhelmed with the torrent of the Spirit of God, and so violently overpowered
by it, that all the waters in the world seem to it to have surrounded it, and to
have drowned all its former actions and passions. Though all this is violent, yet
there is nothing painful in it, for these rivers are rivers of peace, as it is written,
God, speaking through Isaiah, saying, “I will decline upon her, as it were, a flood
of peace, and as a torrent overflowing glory.”
13. This voice, or this murmuring sound of the waters, is an overflowing so abundant
as to fill the soul with good, and a power so mighty seizing upon it as to seem
not only the sound of many waters, but a most loud roaring of thunder. But the voice
is a spiritual voice, unattended by material sounds or the pain and torment of them,
but rather with majesty, power, might, delight, and glory: it is, as it were, a
voice, an infinite interior sound which endows the soul with power and might. The
Apostles heard in spirit this voice when the Holy Spirit descended upon them in
the sound “as of a mighty wind,”
14. So also when our Lord Jesus prayed to the Father because of His distress
and the rage of His enemies, He heard an interior voice from heaven, comforting
Him in His Sacred Humanity. The sound, solemn and grave, was heard exteriorly by
the Jews, some of whom said that it thundered: others said, “An angel has spoken
to Him.”
15. This voice was heard by St. John, saying in the Revelation, “I heard
a voice from heaven as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunder.”
And, lest it should be supposed that a voice so strong was distressing and harsh,
he adds immediately, “The voice which I heard was as the voice of harpers harping
on their harps.”
16. Two things are to be considered here — gales and whisper. The amorous gales are the virtues and graces of the Beloved, which, because of its union with the Bridegroom, play around the soul, and, most lovingly sent forth, touch it in their own substance. The whisper of the gales is a most sublime and sweet knowledge of God and of His attributes, which overflows into the understanding from the contact of the attributes of God with the substance of the soul. This is the highest delight of which the soul is capable in this life.
17. That we may understand this the better, we must keep in mind that as in a gale two things are observable — the touch of it, and the whisper or sound — so there are two things observable also in the communications of the Bridegroom — the sense of delight, and the understanding of it. As the touch of the air is felt in the sense of touch, and the whisper of it heard in the ear, so also the contact of the perfections of the Beloved is felt and enjoyed in the touch of the soul — that is, in the substance thereof, through the instrumentality of the will; and the knowledge of the attributes of God felt in the hearing of the soul — that is, in the understanding.
18. The gale is said to blow amorously when it strikes deliciously, satisfying his desire who is longing for the refreshing which it ministers; for it then revives and soothes the sense of touch, and while the sense of touch is thus soothed, that of hearing also rejoices and delights in the sound and whisper of the gale more than the touch in the contact of the air, because the sense of hearing is more spiritual, or, to speak with greater correctness, is more nearly connected with the spiritual than is that of touch, and the delight thereof is more spiritual than is that of the touch. So also, inasmuch as this touch of God greatly satisfies and comforts the substance of the soul, sweetly fulfilling its longing to be received into union; this union, or touch, is called amorous gales, because, as I said before, the perfections of the Beloved are by it communicated to the soul lovingly and sweetly, and through it the whisper of knowledge to the understanding. It is called whisper, because, as the whisper of the air penetrates subtly into the organ of hearing, so this most subtle and delicate knowledge enters with marvelous sweetness and delight into the inmost substance of the soul, which is the highest of all delights.
19. The reason is that substantial knowledge is now communicated intelligibly,
and stripped of all accidents and images, to the understanding, which philosophers
call passive or passible, because inactive without any natural efforts of its own
during this communication. This is the highest delight of the soul, because it is
in the understanding, which is the seat of fruition, as theologians teach, and fruition
is the vision of God. Some theologians think, inasmuch as this whisper signifies
the substantial intelligence, that our father Elijah had a vision of God in the
delicate whisper of the air, which he heard on the mount at the mouth of the cave.
The Holy Scripture calls it “the whistling of a gentle wind,”
20. This divine whisper which enters in by the ear of the soul is not only substantial
knowledge, but a manifestation also of the truths of the Divinity, and a revelation
of the secret mysteries thereof. For in general, in the Holy Scriptures, every communication
of God said to enter in by the ear is a manifestation of pure truths to the understanding,
or a revelation of the secrets of God. These are revelations on purely spiritual
visions, and are communicated directly to the soul without the intervention of the
senses, and thus, what God communicates through the spiritual ear is most profound
and most certain. When St. Paul would express the greatness of the revelations made
to him, he did not say, “I saw or I perceived secret words,” but “I heard secret
words which it is not granted to man to utter.”
21. The prophet Job, speaking to God, when He revealed Himself to him, teaches
the same doctrine, saying, “With the hearing of the ear I have heard You, but now
my eye sees You.”
22. Still, we are not to think that what the soul perceives, though pure truth,
can be the perfect and clear fruition of Heaven. For though it is free from accidents,
as I said before,
23. There is a passage in the book of Job which greatly confirms what I have
said of rapture and betrothal, and, because I consider it to be much to the purpose,
I will give it here, though it may delay us a little, and explain those portions
of it which belong to my subject. The explanation shall be short, and when I shall
have made it, I shall go on to explain the other stanza. The passage is as follows:
“To me there was spoken a secret word,” said Eliphaz the Themanite, “and, as it
were, my ear by stealth received the veins of its whisper. In the horror of a vision
by night, when deep sleep is wont to hold men, fear held me and trembling, and all
my bones were made sore afraid: and when the spirit passed before me the hair of
my flesh stood upright. There stood one whose countenance I knew not, an image before
my eyes, and I heard the voice, as it were, of a gentle wind.”
24. This passage contains almost all I said about rapture in the thirteenth stanza,
where the bride says: “Turn them away, O my Beloved.” The “word spoken in secret”
to Eliphaz is that secret communication which by reason of its greatness the soul
was not able to endure, and, therefore, cried out: “Turn them away, O my Beloved.”
Eliphaz says that his “ear as it were by stealth received the veins of its whisper.”
By that is meant the pure substance which the understanding receives, for the “veins”
here denote the interior substance. The whisper is that communication and touch
of the virtues whereby the said substance is communicated to the understanding.
It is called a whisper because of its great gentleness. And the soul calls it the
amorous gales because it is lovingly communicated. It is said to be received as
it were by stealth, for as that which is stolen is alienated, so this secret is
alien to man, speaking in the order of nature, because that which he received does
not appertain to him naturally, and thus it was not lawful for him to receive it;
neither was it lawful for St. Paul to repeat what he heard. For this reason the
prophet says twice, “My secret to myself, my secret to myself.”
25. When Eliphaz speaks of the horror of the vision by night, and of the fear
and trembling that seized upon him, he refers to the awe and dread that comes upon
the soul naturally in rapture, because in its natural strength it is unable, as
I said before,
26. “All my bones were affrighted”; that is, were shaken and disturbed. By this
he meant a certain dislocation of the bones which takes place when the soul falls
into an ecstasy. This is clearly expressed by Daniel when he saw the angel, saying,
“O my lord, at the sight of you my joints are loosed.”
27. “There stood One” — that is God, Who reveals Himself after this manner — “Whose countenance knew not”: in these communications or visions, however high they may be, the soul neither knows nor beholds the face and being of God. “An image before my eyes”; that is, the knowledge of the secret words was most deep, as it were the image and face of God; but still this is not the essential vision of God. “I heard the voice, as it were, of a gentle wind”; this is the whisper of the amorous gales — that is, of the Beloved of the soul.
28. But it is not to be supposed that these visits of God are always attended by such terrors and distress of nature: that happens to them only who are entering the state of illumination and perfection, and in this kind of communication; for in others they come with great sweetness.
“THE tranquil night.” In this spiritual sleep in the bosom of the Beloved the soul is in possession and fruition of all the calm, repose, and quiet of a peaceful night, and receives at the same time in God a certain dim, unfathomable divine intelligence. This is the reason why it says that the Beloved is to it the tranquil night.
2. “At the approaches of the dawn.” This tranquil night is not like a night of darkness, but rather like the night when the sunrise is drawing nigh. This tranquillity and repose in God is not all darkness to the soul, as the dark night is, but rather tranquillity and repose in the divine light and in a new knowledge of God, whereby the mind, most sweetly tranquil, is raised to a divine light.
3. This divine light is here very appropriately called the approaches of the dawn, that is, the twilight; for as the twilight of the morn disperses the darkness of the night and reveals the light of day, so the mind, tranquil and reposing in God, is raised up from the darkness of natural knowledge to the morning light of the supernatural knowledge of God; not clear, indeed, as I have said, but dim, like the night at the approaches of the dawn. For as it is then neither wholly night nor wholly day, but, as they say, twilight, so this solitude and divine repose is neither perfectly illumined by the divine light nor yet perfectly alien from it.
4. In this tranquillity the understanding is lifted up in a strange way above
its natural comprehension to the divine light: it is like a man who, after a profound
sleep, opens his eyes to unexpected light. This knowledge is referred to by David
when he says, “I have watched, and am become as the lonely sparrow on the housetop”;
i. It frequents in general high places; and the spirit, in this state, rises to the highest contemplation.
ii. It is ever turning its face in the direction of the wind, and the spirit turns its affections thither whence comes the spirit of love, which is God.
iii. It is in general solitary, abstaining from the companionship of others, and flying away when any approach it: so the spirit, in contemplation, is far away from all worldly thoughts, lonely in its avoidance of them; neither does it consent to anything except to this solitude in God.
iv. It sings most sweetly, and so also does the spirit at this time sing to God; for the praises which it offers up proceed from the sweetest love, most pleasing to itself, and most precious in the sight of God.
v. It is of no definite color; so also is the perfect spirit, which in this ecstasy is not only without any tinge of sensual affection or self-love, but also without any particular consideration of the things of heaven or earth; neither can it give any account whatever of them, because it has entered into the abyss of the knowledge of God.
5. In this silence and tranquillity of the night, and in this knowledge of the divine light, the soul discerns a marvelous arrangement and disposition of God’s wisdom in the diversities of His creatures and operations. All these, and each one of them, have a certain correspondence with God, whereby each, by a voice peculiar to itself, proclaims what there is in itself of God, so as to form a concert of sublimest melody, transcending all the harmonies of the world. This is the silent music, because it is knowledge tranquil and calm, without audible voice; and thus the sweetness of music and the repose of silence are enjoyed in it. The soul says that the Beloved is silent music, because this harmony of spiritual music is in Him understood and felt. He is not this only, He is also —
6. This is almost the same as the silent music. For though the music is inaudible
to the senses and the natural powers, it is a solitude most full of sound to the
spiritual powers. These powers being in solitude, emptied of all forms and natural
apprehensions, may well receive in spirit, like a resounding voice, the spiritual
impression of the majesty of God in Himself and in His creatures; as it happened
to St. John, who heard in spirit as it were “the voice of harpers harping on their
harps.”
7. In the same way, in this tranquil contemplation, the soul beholds all creatures,
not only the highest, but the lowest also, each one according to the gift of God
to it, sending forth the voice of its witness to what God is. It beholds each one
magnifying Him in its own way, and possessing Him according to its particular capacity;
and thus all these voices together unite in one strain in praise of God’s greatness,
wisdom, and marvelous knowledge. This is the meaning of those words of the Holy
Spirit in the Book of Wisdom: “The Spirit of our Lord has replenished the whole
world, and that which contains all things has the knowledge of the voice.”
8. Lovers find recreation, satisfaction, and love in feasts. And because the Beloved in this sweet communication produces these three effects in the soul, He is here said to be the supper that revives, and enkindles love. In Holy Scripture supper signifies the divine vision, for as supper is the conclusion of the day’s labors, and the beginning of the night’s repose, so the soul in this tranquil knowledge is made to feel that its trials are over, the possession of good begun, and its love of God increased. Hence, then, the Beloved is to the soul the supper that revives, in being the end of its trials, and that enkindles love, in being the beginning of the fruition of all good.
9. That we may see more clearly how the Bridegroom is the supper of the soul,
we must refer to those words of the Beloved in the Revelation: “Behold, I stand
at the door and knock. If any man shall hear My voice, and open to Me the gate,
I will enter into him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.”
10. But before I proceed to explain the stanzas which follow, I must observe
that, in the state of betrothal, wherein the soul enjoys this tranquillity, and
wherein it receives all that it can receive in this life, we are not to suppose
its tranquillity to be perfect, but that the higher part of it is tranquil; for
the sensual part, except in the state of spiritual marriage, never loses all its
imperfect habits, and its powers are never wholly subdued, as I shall show hereafter.
NOTE
THE bride now in possession of the virtues in their perfection, whereby she is ordinarily rejoicing in peace when the Beloved visits her, is now and then in the fruition of the fragrance and sweetness of those virtues in the highest degree, because the Beloved touches them within her, just as the sweetness and beauty of the lilies and other flowers when in their bloom are perceived when we handle them. For in many of these visits the soul discerns within itself all its virtues which God has given it; He shedding light upon them. The soul now, with marvelous joy and sweetness of love, binds them together and presents them to the Beloved as a nosegay of beautiful flowers, and the Beloved in accepting them — for He truly accepts them then — accepts thereby a great service. All this takes place within the soul, feeling that the Beloved is within it as on His own couch, for the soul presents itself with the virtues which is the greatest service it can render Him, and thus this is one of the greatest joys which in its interior conversation with God the soul is wont to receive in presents of this kind made to the Beloved.
2. The devil, beholding this prosperity of the soul, and in his great malice envying all the good he sees in it, now uses all his power, and has recourse to all his devices, in order to thwart it, if possible, even in the slightest degree. He thinks it of more consequence to keep back the soul, even for an instant, from this abundance, bliss, and delight, than to make others fall into many and mortal sins. Other souls have little or nothing to lose, while this soul has much, having gained many and great treasures; for the loss of one grain of refined gold is greater than the loss of many of the baser metals.
3. The devil here has recourse to the sensual appetites, though now they can
give him generally but little or no help because they are mortified, and because
he cannot turn them to any great account in distracting the imagination. Sometimes
he stirs up many movements in the sensitive part of the soul, and causes other vexations,
spiritual as well as sensual, from which the soul is unable to deliver itself until
our Lord shall send His angel, as it is written, “The angel of the Lord shall put
in himself about them that fear Him, and shall deliver them;”
THE soul, anxious that this interior delight of love, which is the flowers of the vineyard, should not be interrupted, either by envious and malicious devils, or the raging desires of sensuality, or the various comings and goings of the imagination, or any other consciousness or presence of created things, calls upon the angels to seize and hinder all these from interrupting its practice of interior love, in the joy and sweetness of which the soul and the Son of God communicate and delight in the virtues and graces.
2. The vineyard is the plantation in this holy soul of all the virtues which minister
to it the wine of sweet taste. The vineyard of the soul is then flourishing when
it is united in will to the Bridegroom, and delights itself in Him in all the virtues.
Sometimes, as I have just said, the memory and the fancy are assailed by various
forms and imaginings, and diverse motions and desires trouble the sensual part.
The great variety and diversity of these made David say, when he felt the inconvenience
and the trouble of them as he was drinking of the sweet wine of the spirit, thirsting
greatly after God: “For You my soul has thirsted, for You my flesh, O how many ways.”
3. Here the soul calls the whole troop of desires and stirrings of sense, foxes,
because of the great resemblance between them at this time. As foxes pretend to
be asleep that they may pounce upon their prey when it comes in their way, so all
the desires and powers of sense in the soul are asleep until the flowers of virtue
grow, flourish, and bloom. Then the desires and powers of sense awake to resist
the Spirit and domineer. “The flesh lusts against the spirit,”
4. The evil spirits now molest the soul in two ways. They vehemently excite the desires, and employ them with other imaginations to assail the peaceful and flourishing kingdom of the soul. Then — and this is much worse — when they do not succeed in stirring up the desires, they assail the soul with bodily pains and noises in order to distract it. And, what is still more serious, they fight with spiritual horror and dread, and sometimes with fearful torments, which, at this time, if God permits them, they can most effectually bring about, for inasmuch as the soul is now spiritually detached, so as to perform its spiritual exercises, the devil being himself a spirit presents himself before it with great ease.
5. At other times the evil spirit assails the soul with other horrors, before
it begins to have the fruition of the sweet flowers, when God is beginning to draw
it forth out of the house of sense that it may enter on the interior exercises in
the garden of the Bridegroom, for he knows well that once entered into this state
of recollection it is there so protected that, notwithstanding all he can do, he
cannot hurt it. Very often, too, when the devil goes forth to meet the soul, the
soul becomes quickly recollected in the secret depths of its interior, where it
finds great sweetness and protection; then those terrors of Satan are so far off
that they not only produce no fear, but are even the occasion of peace and joy.
The bride, in the Canticle, speaks of these terrors, saying, “My soul troubled me
for the chariots of Aminadab.”
6. The bride also says what the soul says here, namely: “Catch us the little
foxes that destroy the vineyards; for our vineyard has flourished.”
7. The reason why the vineyard is said to be flourishing and not bearing fruit is this: the soul in this life has the fruition of virtues, however perfect they may be, only in their flower, because the fruit of them is reserved for the life to come.
8. Now, at this time, while the soul is rejoicing in the flourishing of the vineyard, and delighting itself in the bosom of the Beloved, all its virtues are perfect, exhibiting themselves to the soul, and sending forth great sweetness and delight. The soul feels them to be in itself and in God so as to seem to be one vineyard most flourishing and pleasing belonging to both, wherein they feed and delight. Then the soul binds all its virtues together, makes acts of love in each of them separately, and in all together, and then offers them all to the Beloved, with great tenderness of love and sweetness, and in this the Beloved helps it, for without His help and favor it cannot make this union and oblation of virtue to the Beloved. Hence it says, “We make a nosegay” — that is “the Beloved and myself.”
9. This union of the virtues is called a nosegay; for as a nosegay is cone-like in form, and a cone is strong, containing and embracing many pieces firmly joined together, so this cone-like nosegay of the virtues which the soul makes for the Beloved is the uniform perfection of the soul which firmly and solidly contains and embraces many perfections, great virtues, and rich endowments; for all the perfections and virtues of the soul unite together to form but one. And while this perfection is being accomplished, and when accomplished, offered to the Beloved on the part of the soul, it becomes necessary to catch the foxes that they may not hinder this mutual interior communication. The soul prays not only that this nosegay may be carefully made, but also adds, “And let no one appear on the hill.”
10. This divine interior exercise requires solitude and detachment from all things, whether in the lower part of the soul, which is that of sense, or in the higher, which is the rational. These two divisions comprise all the faculties and senses of man, and are here called the hill; because all our natural notions and desires being in them, as quarry on a hill, the devil lies in wait among these notions and desires, in order that he may injure the soul.
11. That is, let no representation or image of any object whatever, appertaining to any of these faculties or senses, appear in the presence of the soul and the Bridegroom: in other words, let the spiritual powers of the soul, memory, understanding, and will, be divested of all notions, particular inclinations, or considerations whatsoever; and let all the senses and faculties of the body, interior as well as exterior, the imagination, the fancy, the sight and hearing, and the rest, be divested of all occasions of distractions, of all forms, images, and representations, and of all other natural operations.
12. The soul speaks in this way because it is necessary for the perfect fruition of this communication of God, that all the senses and powers, both interior and exterior, should be disencumbered and emptied of their proper objects and operations; for the more active they are, the greater will be the hindrance which they will occasion. The soul having attained to a certain interior union of love, the spiritual faculties of it are no longer active, and still less those of the body; for now that the union of love is actually wrought in love, the faculties of the soul cease from their exertions, because now that the goal is reached all employment of means is at an end. What the soul at this time has to do is to wait lovingly upon God, and this waiting is love in a continuation of unitive love. Let no one, therefore, appear on the hill, but the will only waiting on the Beloved in the offering up of self and of all the virtues in the way described.
NOTE
FOR the clearer understanding of the following stanza, we must keep in mind that the absence of the Beloved, from which the soul suffers in the state of spiritual betrothal, is an exceedingly great affliction, and at times greater than all other trials whatever. The reason is this: the love of the soul for God is now so vehement and deep that the pain of His absence is vehement and deep also. This pain is increased also by the annoyance which comes from intercourse with creatures, which is very great; for the soul, under the pressure of its quickened desire of union with God, finds all other conversation most painful and difficult to endure. It is like a stone in its flight to the place whither it is rapidly tending; every obstacle it meets with occasions a violent shock. And as the soul has tasted of the sweetness of the Beloved’s visits, which are more desirable than gold and all that is beautiful, it therefore dreads even a momentary absence, and addresses itself as follows to aridities, and to the Spirit of the Bridegroom: —
BESIDE the causes mentioned in the foregoing stanza, spiritual dryness also hinders the fruition of this interior sweetness of which I have been speaking, and afraid of it the soul had recourse to two expedients, to which it refers in the present stanza. The first is to shut the door against it by unceasing prayer and devotion. The second, to invoke the Holy Spirit; it is He Who drives away dryness from the soul, maintains and increases its love of the Bridegroom — that He may establish in it the practice of virtue, and all this to the end that the Son of God, its Bridegroom, may rejoice and delight in it more and more, for its only aim is to please the Beloved.
2. The north wind is exceedingly cold; it dries up and parches flowers and plants, and at the least, when it blows, causes them to draw in and shrink. So, dryness of spirit and the sensible absence of the Beloved, because they produce the same effect on the soul, exhausting the sweetness and fragrance of virtue, are here called the killing north wind; for all the virtues and affective devotions of the soul are then dead. Hence the soul addresses itself to it, saying, “Killing north wind, cease.” These words mean that the soul applies itself to spiritual exercise, in order to escape aridity. But the communications of God are now so interior that by no exertion of its faculties can the soul attain to them if the Spirit of the Bridegroom do not cause these movements of love. The soul, therefore, addresses Him, saying:
3. The south wind is another wind commonly called the south-west wind. It is soft, and brings rain; it makes the grass and plants grow, flowers to blossom and scatter their perfume abroad; in short, it is the very opposite in its effects of the north wind. By it is meant here the Holy Spirit, Who awakens love; for when this divine Breath breathes on the soul, it so inflames and refreshes it, so quickens the will, and stirs up the desires, which were before low and asleep as to the love of God, that we may well say of it that it quickens the love between Him and the soul. The prayer of the soul to the Holy Spirit is thus expressed, “Blow through my garden.”
4. This garden is the soul itself. For as the soul said of itself before, that it was a flourishing vineyard, because the flowers of virtue which are in it give forth the wine of sweetness, so here it says of itself that it is a garden, because the flowers of perfection and the virtues are planted in it, flourish, and grow.
5. Observe, too, that the expression is “blow through my garden,” not blow in it. There is a great difference between God’s breathing into the soul and through it. To breathe into the soul is to infuse into it graces, gifts, and virtues; to breathe through it is, on the part of God, to touch and move its virtues and perfections now possessed, renewing them and stirring them in such a way that they send forth their marvelous fragrance and sweetness. Thus aromatic spices, when shaken or touched, give forth the abundant odors which are not otherwise so distinctly perceived. The soul is not always in the conscious fruition of its acquired and infused virtues, because, in this life, they are like flowers in seed, or in bud, or like aromatic spices covered over, the perfume of which is not perceived till they are exposed and shaken.
6. But God sometimes is so merciful to the bride-soul, as — the Holy Spirit breathing meanwhile through the flourishing garden — to open these buds of virtue and expose the aromatic herbs of the soul’s gifts, perfections, and riches, to manifest to it its interior treasures and to reveal to it all its beauty. It is then marvelous to behold, and sweet to feel, the abundance of the gifts now revealed in the soul, and the beauty of the flowers of virtue now flourishing in it. No language can describe the fragrance which every one of them diffuses, each according to its kind. This state of the soul is referred to in the words, “Let its odors flow.”
7. So abundant are these odors at times, that the soul seems enveloped in delight
and bathed in inestimable bliss. Not only is it conscious itself of them, but they
even overflow it, so that those who know how to discern these things can perceive
them. The soul in this state seems to them as a delectable garden, full of the joys
and riches of God. This is observable in holy souls, not only when the flowers open,
but almost always; for they have a certain air of grandeur and dignity which inspires
the beholders with awe and reverence, because of the supernatural effects of their
close and familiar conversation with God. We have an illustration of this in the
life of Moses, the sight of whose face the people could not bear, by reason of the
glory that rested upon it — the effect of his speaking to God face to face.
8. While the Holy Spirit is breathing through the garden — this is His visitation
of the soul — the Bridegroom Son of God communicates Himself to it in a profound
way, enamored of it. It is for this that He sends the Holy Spirit before Him —
as He sent the Apostles
9. The bride now gains the fruition of all her virtues in their sweetest exercise.
She gains the fruition of her Beloved in them, because it is through them that He
converses with her in most intimate love, and grants her favors greater than any
of the past. She gains, too, that her Beloved delights more in her because of the
actual exercise of virtue, which is what pleases her most, namely, that her Beloved
should be pleased with her. She gains also the permanent continuance of the sweet
fragrance which remains in the soul while the Bridegroom is present, and the bride
entertains Him with the sweetness of her virtues, as it is written: “While the King
was at His repose,” that is, in the soul, “my spikenard sent forth its odor.”
10. It is therefore very much to be desired that every soul should pray the Holy
Spirit to blow through its garden, that the divine odors of God may flow. And as
this is so necessary, so blissful and profitable to the soul, the bride desires
it, and prays for it, in the words of the Canticle, saying, “Arise, north wind,
and come, south wind; blow through my garden, and let the aromatic spices thereof
flow.”
11. The delight which the Son of God finds now in the soul is described as pasture.
This word expresses most forcibly the truth, because pasture not only gladdens,
but also sustains. Thus the Son of God delights in the soul, in the delights thereof,
and is sustained in them — that is, He abides within it as in a place which pleases
Him exceedingly, because the place itself really delights in Him. This, I believe,
is the meaning of those words recorded in the proverbs of Solomon: “My delights
were to be with the children of men;”
12. Observe, here, that it is not said that the Beloved shall feed on the flowers, but that He shall feed among the flowers. For, as the communications of the Beloved are in the soul itself, through the adornment of the virtues, it follows that what He feeds on is the soul which He transformed into Himself, now that it is prepared and adorned with these flowers of virtues, graces, and perfections, which are the things whereby, and among which, He feeds. These, by the power of the Holy Spirit, are sending forth in the soul the odors of sweetness to the Son of God, that He may feed there the more in the love thereof; for this is the love of the Bridegroom, to be united to the soul amid the fragrance of the flowers.
13. The bride in the Canticle has observed this, for she had experience of it, saying: “My Beloved is gone down into His garden, to the bed of aromatic spices,
to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. I to my Beloved, and my Beloved
to me, Who feeds among the lilies.”
NOTE
IN the state of spiritual espousals the soul contemplating its great riches and excellence, but unable to enter into the possession and fruition of them as it desires, because it is still in the flesh, often suffers exceedingly, and then more particularly when its knowledge of them becomes more profound. It then sees itself in the body, like a prince in prison, subject to all misery, whose authority is disregarded, whose territories and wealth are confiscated, and who of his former substance receives but a miserable dole. How greatly he suffers anyone may see, especially when his household is no longer obedient, and his slaves and servants, forgetting all respect, plunder him of the scanty provisions of his table. Thus is it with the soul in the body, for when God mercifully admits it to a foretaste of the good things which He has prepared for it, the wicked servants of desire in the sensual part, now a slave of disorderly motions, now other rebellious movements, rise up against it in order to rob it of its good.
2. The soul feels itself as if it were in the land of enemies, tyrannized over
by the stranger, like the dead among the dead. Its feelings are those which the
prophet Baruch gave vent to when he described the misery of Jacob’s captivity: “How
happens it, O Israel, that you are in your enemies’ land? You have grown old in
a strange country, you are defiled with the dead: you are counted with them that
go down into hell.”
IT is the bride that speaks; for seeing herself, as to the higher part of the soul, adorned with the rich endowments of her Beloved, and seeing Him delighting in her, she desires to preserve herself in security, and in the continued fruition of them. Seeing also that hindrances will arise, as in fact they do, from the sensual part of the soul, which will disturb so great a good, she bids the operations and motions of the soul’s lower nature to cease, in the senses and faculties of it, and sensuality not to overstep its boundaries to trouble and disquiet the higher and spiritual portion of the soul: not to hinder even for a moment the sweetness she enjoys. The motions of the lower part, and their powers, if they show themselves during the enjoyment of the spirit, are so much more troublesome and disturbing, the more active they are.
2. The lower, that is the sensual part of the soul, is called Judea. It is called Judea because it is weak, and carnal, and blind, like the Jewish people. All the imaginations, fancies, motions, and inclinations of the lower part of the soul are called nymphs, for as nymphs with their beauty and attractions entice men to love them, so the operations and motions of sensuality softly and earnestly strive to entice the will from the rational part, in order to withdraw it from that which is interior, and to fix it on that which is exterior, to which they are prone themselves. They also strive to influence the understanding to join with them in their low views, and to bring down reason to the level of sense by the attractions of the latter. The soul, therefore, says in effect: “O sensual operations and motions.”
3. The flowers, as I have said, are the virtues of the soul, and the rose-trees are its powers, memory, understanding, and will, which produce and nurture the flowers of divine conceptions, acts of love and the virtues, while the amber sends forth its perfume in the virtues and powers of the soul.
4. The amber is the divine spirit of the Bridegroom Who dwells in the soul. To send forth the perfume among the flowers and the rose-trees, is to diffuse and communicate Himself most sweetly in the powers and virtues of the soul, thereby filling it with the perfume of divine sweetness. Meanwhile, then, when the Divine Spirit is filling my soul with spiritual sweetness,
5. In the suburbs of Judea, which is the inferior or sensual part of the soul. The suburbs are the interior senses, namely, memory, fancy, and imagination, where forms and images of things collect, by the help of which sensuality stirs up concupiscence and desires. These forms are the nymphs, and while they are quiet and tranquil the desires are also asleep. They enter into the suburbs of the interior senses by the gates of the outward senses, of sight, hearing, smell, etc. We can thus give the name of suburbs to all the powers and interior or exterior senses of the sensual part of the soul, because they are outside the walls of the city.
6. That part of the soul which may be called the city is that which is most interior, the rational part, which is capable of conversation with God, the operations of which are contrary to those of sensuality. But there is a natural intercourse between those who dwell in the suburbs of the sensual part — that is, the nymphs — and those who dwell in the higher part, which is the city itself; and, therefore, what takes place in the lower part is ordinarily felt in the higher, and consequently compels attention to itself and disturbs the spiritual operation which is conversant with God. Hence the soul bids the nymphs tarry in the suburbs — that is, to remain at rest in the exterior and interior senses of the sensual part,
7. Let not even your first movements touch the higher part, for the first movements of the soul are the entrance and thresholds of it. When the first movements have passed into the reason, they have crossed the threshold, but when they remain as first movements only they are then said merely to touch the threshold, or to cry at the gate, which is the case when reason and sense contend over an unreasonable act. The soul here not only bids these not to touch it, but also charges all considerations whatever which do not minister to its repose and the good it enjoys to keep far away.
NOTE
THE soul in this state is become so great an enemy of the lower part, and its
operations, that it would have God communicate nothing to it when He communicates
with the higher. If He will communicate with the lower, it must be in a slight degree,
or the soul, because of its natural weakness, will be unable to endure it without
fainting, and consequently the spirit cannot rejoice in peace, because it is then
troubled. “For,” as the wise man says, “the body that is corrupted burdens the soul.”
HERE the bride presents four petitions to the Bridegroom. She prays that He would be pleased to converse with her most interiorly in the secret chamber of the soul. The second, that He would invest and inform her faculties with the glory and excellence of His Divinity. The third, that He would converse with her so profoundly as to surpass all knowledge and expression, and in such a way that the exterior and sensual part may not perceive it. The fourth, that He would love the many virtues and graces which He has implanted in her, adorned with which she is ascending upwards to God in the highest knowledge of the Divinity, and in transports of love most strange and singular, surpassing those of ordinary experience.
2. “O my Bridegroom, most beloved, hide Yourself in the inmost depths of my soul, communicating Yourself to it in secret, and manifesting Your hidden wonders which no mortal eyes may see.
3. The face of God is His divinity. The mountains are the powers of the soul, memory,
understanding, and will. Thus the meaning of these words is: Enlighten my understanding
with Your Divinity, and give it the divine intelligence, fill my will with divine
love, and my memory with divine possession of glory. The bride here prays for all
that may be prayed for; for she is not content with that knowledge of God once granted
to Moses
4. That is, do not speak as before, when Your conversation with me was known to
the outward senses, for it was once such as to be comprehended by them; it was not
so profound but they could fathom it. Now let Your conversation with me be so deep
and so substantial, and so interior, as to be above the reach of the senses; for
the substance of the spirit is incommunicable to sense, and the communication made
through the senses, especially in this life, cannot be purely spiritual, because
the senses are not capable of it. The soul, therefore, longing for that substantial
and essential communication of God, of which sense cannot be cognizant, prays the
Bridegroom not to speak: that is to say, let the deep secret of the spiritual union
be such as to escape the notice of the senses, like the secret which St. Paul heard,
and which it is not lawful for a man to speak.
5. The regard of God is love and grace. The companions here are the many virtues of the soul, its gifts, perfections, and other spiritual graces with which God has endowed it; pledges, tokens, and presents of its betrothal. Thus the meaning of the words seems to be this: “Turn Your face to the interior of my soul, O my Beloved; be enamored of the treasures which You have laid up there, so that, enamored of them, You may hide Yourself among them and there dwell; for in truth, though they are Yours, they are mine also, because You have given them.”
6. That is, “Of my soul tending towards You through strange knowledge of You, by strange ways” — strange to sense and to the ordinary perceptions of nature. It is as if the bride said, by way of constraining Him to yield: “Seeing that my soul is tending towards You through knowledge which is spiritual, strange, unknown to sense, also communicate Yourself to it so interiorly and so profoundly that the senses may not observe it.”
NOTE
IN order to the attainment of a state of perfection so high as this of the spiritual
marriage, the soul that aims at it must not only be purified and cleansed from all
the imperfections, rebellions, and imperfect habits of the inferior part, which
is now — the old man being put away — subject and obedient to the higher, but
it must also have great courage and most exalted love for so strong and close an
embrace of God. For in this state the soul not only attains to exceeding pureness
and beauty, but also acquires a terrible strength by reason of that strict and close
bond which in this union binds it to God. The soul, therefore, in order to reach
this state must have purity, strength, and adequate love. The Holy Spirit, the author
of this spiritual union, desirous that the soul should attain thus far in order
to merit it, addresses Himself to the Father and the Son, saying: “Our sister is
little, and has no breasts. What shall we do to our sister in the day when she is
to be spoken to? If she is a wall, let us build upon it bulwarks of silver; if she
is a door, let us join it together with boards of cedar.”
2. The “bulwarks of silver” are the strong heroic virtues comprised in the faith, which is signified by silver, and these heroic virtues are those of the spiritual marriage, which are built upon the soul, signified by the wall, relying on the strength of which, the peaceful Bridegroom reposes undisturbed by any infirmities. The “boards of cedar” are the affections and accessories of this deep love which is signified by the cedar-tree, and this is the love of the spiritual marriage. In order “to join it together,” that is, to adorn the bride, it is necessary she should be the door for the Bridegroom to enter through, keeping the door of the will open in a perfect and true consent of love, which is the consent of the betrothal given previous to the spiritual marriage. The breasts of the bride are also this perfect love which she must have in order to appear in the presence of Christ her Bridegroom for the perfection of such a state.
3. It is written in the Canticle that the bride in her longing for this presence immediately replied, saying: “I am a wall: and my breasts are as a tower” — that is, “My soul is strong, and my love most deep” — that He may not fail her on that ground. The bride, too, had expressed as much in the preceding stanzas, out of the fullness of her longing for the perfect union and transformation, and particularly in the last, wherein she set before the Bridegroom all the virtues, graces, and good dispositions with which she was adorned by Him, and that with the object of making Him the prisoner of her love.
4. Now the Bridegroom, to bring this matter to a close, replies in the two stanzas that follow, which describe Him as perfectly purifying the soul, strengthening and disposing it, both as to its sensual and spiritual part, for this state, and charging all resistance and rebellion, both of the flesh and of the devil, to cease, saying:
HERE the Son of God, the Bridegroom, leads the bride into the enjoyment of peace and tranquillity in the conformity of her lower to her higher nature, purging away all her imperfections, subjecting the natural powers of the soul to reason, and mortifying all her desires, as it is expressed in these two stanzas, the meaning of which is as follows. In the first place the Bridegroom adjures and commands all vain distractions of the fancy and imagination from henceforth to cease, and controls the irascible and concupiscible faculties which were previously the sources of so much affliction. He brings, so far as it is possible in this life, the three powers of memory, understanding, and will to the perfection of their objects, and then adjures and commands the four passions of the soul, joy, hope, grief, and fear, to be still, and bids them from henceforth be moderate and calm.
2. All these passions and faculties are comprehended under the expressions employed in the first stanza, the operations of which, full of trouble, the Bridegroom subdues by that great sweetness, joy, and courage which the bride enjoys in the spiritual surrender of Himself to her which God makes at this time; under the influence of which, because God transforms the soul effectually in Himself, all the faculties, desires, and movements of the soul lose their natural imperfection and become divine.
3. These are the distractions of the imagination, light and rapid in their flight from one subject to another. When the will is tranquilly enjoying the sweet conversation of the Beloved, these distractions produce weariness, and in their swift flight quench its joy. The Bridegroom adjures them by the soft lyres. That is, now that the sweetness of the soul is so abundant and so continuous that they cannot interfere with it, as they did before when it had not reached this state, He adjures them, and bids them cease from their disquieting violence. The same explanation is to be given of the rest of the stanza.
4. By the lions is meant the raging violence of the irascible faculty, which in its acts is bold and daring as a lion. The “fawns and bounding does” are the concupiscible faculty — that is, the power of desire, the qualities of which are two, timidity and rashness. Timidity betrays itself when things do not turn out according to our wishes, for then the mind retires within itself discouraged, and in this respect the soul resembles the fawns. For as fawns have the concupiscible faculty stronger than many other animals, so are they more retiring and more timid. Rashness betrays itself when we have our own way, for the mind is then neither retiring nor timid, but desires boldly, and gratifies all its inclinations. This quality of rashness is compared to the does, who so eagerly seek what they desire that they not only run, but even leap after it; hence they are described as bounding does.
5. Thus the Bridegroom, in adjuring the lions, restrains the violence and controls the fury of rage; in adjuring the fawns, He strengthens the concupiscible faculty against timidity and irresolution; and in adjuring the does He satisfies and subdues the desires which were restless before, leaping, like deer, from one object to another, to satisfy that concupiscence which is now satisfied by the soft lyres, the sweetness of which it enjoys, and by the siren strains, in the delight of which it revels.
6. But the Bridegroom does not adjure anger and concupiscence themselves, because these passions never cease from the soul — but their vexations and disorderly acts, signified by the “lions, fawns, and bounding does,” for it is necessary that these disorderly acts should cease in this state.
7. These are the vicious and disorderly actions of the three faculties of the soul — memory, understanding, and will. These actions are disorderly and vicious when they are in extremes, or, if not in extreme, tending to one extreme or other. Thus the mountains signify those actions which are vicious in excess, mountains being high; the valleys, being low, signify those which are vicious in the extreme of defect. Strands, which are neither high nor low, but, inasmuch as they are not perfectly level, tend to one extreme or other, signify those acts of the three powers of the soul which depart slightly in either direction from the true mean and equality of justice. These actions, though not disorderly in the extreme, as they would be if they amounted to mortal sin, are nevertheless disorderly in part, tending towards venial sin or imperfection, however slight that tendency may be, in the understanding, memory, and will. He adjures also all these actions which depart from the true mean, and bids them cease before the soft lyres and the siren strains, which so effectually charm the powers of the soul as to occupy them completely in their true and proper functions, so that they avoid not only all extremes, but also the slightest tendency to them.
8. These are the affections of the four passions, grief, hope, joy, and fear. The
waters are the affections of grief which afflict the soul, for they rush into it
like water. “Save me, O God,” says the Psalmist, “for the waters have come in even
to my soul.”
9. The “terrors that keep watch by night” are the affections of fear, which in
spiritual persons who have not attained to the state of spiritual marriage are usually
exceedingly strong. They come sometimes from God when He is going to bestow certain
great graces upon souls, as I said before;
10. These are called terrors of the night, because they are the work of evil spirits, and because Satan labors, by the help thereof, to involve the soul in darkness, and to obscure the divine light wherein it rejoices. These terrors are called watchers, because they awaken the soul and rouse it from its sweet interior slumber, and also because Satan, their author, is ever on the watch to produce them. These terrors strike the soul of persons who are already spiritual, passively, and come either from God or the evil spirit. I do not refer to temporal or natural terrors, because spiritual men are not subject to these, as they are to those of which I am speaking.
11. The Beloved adjures the affections of these four passions, compels them to cease and to be at rest, because He supplies the bride now with force, and courage, and satisfaction, by the soft lyres of His sweetness and the siren strains of His delight, so that not only they shall not domineer over the soul, but shall not occasion it any distaste whatever. Such is the grandeur and stability of the soul in this state, that, although formerly the waters of grief overwhelmed it, because of its own or other men’s sins — which is what spiritual persons most feel — the consideration of them now excites neither pain nor annoyance; even the sensible feeling of compassion no longer exists, though the effects of it continue in perfection. The weaknesses of its virtues are no longer in the soul, for they are now constant, strong, and perfect. As the angels perfectly appreciate all sorrowful things without the sense of pain, and perform acts of mercy without the sentiment of pity, so the soul in this transformation of love. God, however, dispenses sometimes, on certain occasions, with the soul in this matter, allowing it to feel and suffer, that it may become more fervent in love, and grow in merit, or for some other reasons, as He dispensed with His Virgin Mother, St. Paul, and others. This, however, is not the ordinary condition of this state.
12. Neither do the desires of hope afflict the soul now, because, satisfied in its union with God, so far as it is possible in this life, it has nothing of this world to hope for, and nothing spiritual to desire, seeing that it feels itself to be full of the riches of God, though it may grow in charity, and thus, whether living or dying, it is conformed to the will of God, saying with the sense and spirit, “Your will be done,” free from the violence of inclination and desires; and accordingly even its longing for the beatific vision is without pain.
13. The affections of joy, also, which were wont to move the soul with more or
less vehemence, are not sensibly diminished; neither does their abundance occasion
any surprise. The joy of the soul is now so abundant that it is like the sea, which
is not diminished by the rivers that flow out of it, nor increased by those that
empty themselves into it; for the soul is now that fountain of which our Lord said
that it is “springing up into life everlasting.”
14. I have said that the soul receives nothing new or unusual in this state of transformation; it seems to lose all accidental joy, which is not withheld even from the glorified. That is, accidental joys and sweetness are indeed no strangers to this soul; indeed, those which it ordinarily has cannot be numbered; yet, for all this, as to the substantial communication of the spirit, there is no increase of joy, for that which may occur anew the soul possesses already, and thus what the soul has already within itself is greater than anything that comes anew. Hence, then, whenever any subject of joy and gladness, whether exterior or spiritually interior, presents itself to the soul, the soul immediately starts rejoicing in the riches it possesses already within itself, and the joy it has in them is far greater than any which these new accessions minister, because, in a certain sense, God is become its possession, Who, though He delights in all things, yet in nothing so much as in Himself, seeing that He has all good eminently in Himself. Thus all accessions of joy serve to remind the soul that its real joy is in its interior possessions, rather than in these accidental causes, because, as I have said, the former are greater than the latter.
15. It is very natural for the soul, even when a particular matter gives it pleasure, that, possessing another of greater worth and gladness, it should remember it at once and take its pleasure in it. The accidental character of these spiritual accessions, and the new impressions they make on the soul, may be said to be as nothing in comparison with that substantial source which it has within itself: for the soul which has attained to the perfect transformation, and is full-grown, grows no more in this state by means of these spiritual accessions, as those souls do who have not yet advanced so far. It is a marvelous thing that the soul, while it receives no accessions of delight, should still seem to do so and also to have been in possession of them. The reason is that it is always tasting them anew, because they are ever renewed; and thus it seems to be continually the recipient of new accessions, while it has no need of them whatever.
16. But if we speak of that light of glory which in this, the soul’s embrace,
God sometimes produces within it, and which is a certain spiritual communion wherein
He causes it to behold and enjoy at the same time the abyss of delight and riches
which He has laid up within it, there is no language to express any degree of it.
As the sun when it shines upon the sea illumines its great depths, and reveals the
pearls, and gold, and precious stones therein, so the divine sun of the Bridegroom,
turning towards the bride, reveals in a way the riches of her soul, so that even
the angels behold her with amazement and say: “Who is she that comes forth as the
morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as the army of a camp
set in array.”
17. Finally, the terrors that keep watch by night do not come close to her, because
of her pureness, courage, and confident trust in God; the evil spirits cannot shroud
her in darkness, nor alarm her with terrors, nor disturb her with their violent
assaults. Thus nothing can approach her, nothing can molest her, for she has escaped
from all created things and entered into God, to the fruition of perfect peace,
sweetness, and delight, so far as that is possible in this life. It is to this state
that the words of Solomon are applicable: “A secure mind is as it were a continual
feast.”
18. The soft lyres are the sweetness which the Bridegroom communicates to the soul in this state, and by which He makes all its troubles to cease. As the music of lyres fills the soul with sweetness and delight, carries it rapturously out of itself, so that it forgets all its weariness and grief, so in like manner this sweetness so absorbs the soul that nothing painful can reach it. The Bridegroom says, in substance: “By that sweetness which I give you, let all your bitterness cease.” The siren strains are the ordinary joys of the soul. These are called siren strains because, as it is said, the music of the sirens is so sweet and delicious that he who hears it is so rapt and so carried out of himself that he forgets everything. In the same way the soul is so absorbed in, and refreshed by, the delight of this union that it becomes, as it were, charmed against all the vexations and troubles that may assail it; it is to these the next words of the stanza refer:
19. This is the troubles and anxieties which flow from unruly acts and affections. As anger is a certain violence which disturbs peace, overlapping its bounds, so also all these affections in their motions transgress the bounds of the peace and tranquillity of the soul, disturbing it whenever they touch it. Hence the Bridegroom says:
20. The wall is the territory of peace and the fortress of virtue and perfections,
which are the defenses and protection of the soul. The soul is the garden wherein
the Beloved feeds among the flowers, defended and guarded for Him alone. Hence it
is called in the Canticle “a garden enclosed.”
21. “That the bride may sleep in greater security.” That is, that she is delighting
herself with more sweetness in the tranquillity and sweetness she has in the Beloved.
That is to say, that now no door is shut against the soul, and that it is in its
power to abandon itself whenever it wills to this sweet sleep of love, according
to the words of the Bridegroom in the Canticle, “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the roes and the harts of the fields, that you raise not up nor make the beloved
to awake till herself will.”
NOTE
THE Bridegroom was so anxious to rescue His bride from the power of the flesh
and the devil and to set her free, that, having done so, He rejoices over her like
the good shepherd who, having found the sheep that was lost, laid it upon his shoulders
rejoicing; like the woman who, having found the money she had lost, after lighting
a candle and sweeping the house, called “together her friends and neighbors, saying,
Rejoice with me.”
THE bride having done what she could in order that the foxes may be caught, the north wind cease, the nymphs, hindrances to the desired joy of the state of spiritual marriage, forgo their troublesome importunities, and having also invoked and obtained the favorable wind of the Holy Spirit, which is the right disposition and means for the perfection of this state, it remains for me now to speak of it in the stanza in which the Bridegroom calls the soul His bride, and speaks of two things: 1. He says that the soul, having gone forth victoriously, has entered the delectable state of spiritual marriage, which they had both so earnestly desired. 2. He enumerates the properties of that state, into the fruition of which the soul has entered, namely, perfect repose, and the resting of the neck on the arms of the Beloved.
2. For the better understanding of the arrangement of these stanzas, and of the way by which the soul advances till it reaches the state of spiritual marriage, which is the very highest, and of which, by the grace of God, I am now about to treat, we must keep in mind that the soul, before it enters it, must be tried in tribulations, in sharp mortifications, and in meditation on spiritual things. This is the subject of this canticle till we come to the fifth stanza, beginning with the words, “A thousand graces diffusing.” Then the soul enters on the contemplative life, passing through those ways and straits of love which are described in the course of the canticle, till we come to the thirteenth, beginning with “Turn them away, O my Beloved!” This is the moment of the spiritual betrothal; and then the soul advances by the unitive way, the recipient of many and very great communications, jewels and gifts from the Bridegroom as to one betrothed, and grows into perfect love, as appears from the stanzas which follow that beginning with “Turn them away, O my Beloved!” (the moment of betrothal), to the present, beginning with the words:
3. The spiritual marriage of the soul and the Son of God now remains to be accomplished.
This is, beyond all comparison, a far higher state than that of betrothal, because
it is a complete transformation into the Beloved; whereby they surrender each to
the other the entire possession of themselves in the perfect union of love, wherein
the soul becomes divine, and, by participation, God, so far as it is in this life.
I believe that no soul ever attains to this state without being confirmed in grace,
for the faithfulness of both is confirmed; that of God being confirmed in the soul.
Hence it follows, that this is the very highest state possible in this life. As
by natural marriage there are “two in one flesh,”
4. It is of this state that the Bridegroom is now speaking, saying, “The bride has entered”; that is, out of all temporal and natural things, out of all spiritual affections, ways, and methods, having left on one side, and forgotten, all temptations, trials, sorrows, anxieties and cares, transformed in this embrace.
5. That is, the soul is transformed in God, Who is here called the pleasant garden because of the delicious and sweet repose which the soul finds in Him. But the soul does not enter the garden of perfect transformation, the glory and the joy of the spiritual marriage, without passing first through the spiritual betrothal, the mutual faithful love of the betrothed. When the soul has lived for some time as the bride of the Son, in perfect and sweet love, God calls it and leads it into His flourishing garden for the celebration of the spiritual marriage. Then the two natures are so united, what is divine is so communicated to what is human, that, without undergoing any essential change, each seems to be God — yet not perfectly so in this life, though still in a manner which can neither be described nor conceived.
6. We learn this truth very clearly from the Bridegroom Himself in the Canticle,
where He invites the soul, now His bride, to enter this state, saying: “I am come
into my garden, O My sister, My bride: I have gathered My myrrh with My aromatic
spices.”
7. The whole aim and desire of the soul and of God, in all this, is the accomplishment
and perfection of this state, and the soul is therefore never weary till it reaches
it; because it finds there a much greater abundance and fullness in God, a more
secure and lasting peace, and a sweetness incomparably more perfect than in the
spiritual betrothal, seeing that it reposes between the arms of such a Bridegroom,
Whose spiritual embraces are so real that it, through them, lives the life of God.
Now is fulfilled what St. Paul referred to when he said: “I live; now not I, but
Christ lives in me.”
8. The neck is the soul’s strength, by means of which its union with the Beloved is wrought; for the soul could not endure so close an embrace if it had not been very strong. And as the soul has labored in this strength, practiced virtue, overcome vice, it is fitting that it should rest there from its labors, “her neck reclining on the sweet arms of the Beloved.”
9. This reclining of the neck on the arms of God is the union of the soul’s strength, or, rather, of the soul’s weakness, with the strength of God, in Whom our weakness, resting and transformed, puts on the strength of God Himself. The state of spiritual matrimony is therefore most fitly designated by the reclining of the neck on the sweet arms of the Beloved; seeing that God is the strength and sweetness of the soul, Who guards and defends it from all evil and gives it to taste of all good.
10. Hence the bride in the Canticle, longing for this state, says to the Bridegroom:
“Who shall give to me You my brother, sucking the breast of my mother, that I may
find You without, and kiss You, and now no man may despise me.”
11. This is the union of the nature of the soul, in solitude, cleansed from all
impurity, natural, temporal, and spiritual, with the Bridegroom alone, with His
nature, by love only — that of love which is the only love of the spiritual marriage,
wherein the soul, as it were, kisses God when none despises it nor makes it afraid.
For in this state the soul is no longer molested, either by the devil, or the flesh,
or the world, or the desires, seeing that here is fulfilled what is written in the
Canticle: “Winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared
in our land.”
NOTE
WHEN the soul has been raised to the high state of spiritual marriage, the Bridegroom reveals to it, as His faithful consort, His own marvelous secrets most readily and most frequently, for he who truly and sincerely loves hides nothing from the object of his affections. The chief matter of His communications are the sweet mysteries of His incarnation, the ways and means of redemption, which is one of the highest works of God, and so is to the soul one of the sweetest. Though He communicates many other mysteries, He speaks in the following stanza of His incarnation only, as being the chief; and thus addresses the soul in the words that follow:
THE Bridegroom tells the soul of the wondrous way of its redemption and betrothal
to Himself, by referring to the way in which the human race was lost. As it was
by the forbidden tree of paradise that our nature was corrupted in Adam and lost,
so it was by the tree of the Cross that it was redeemed and restored. The Bridegroom
there stretched forth the hand of His grace and mercy, in His death and passion,
“making void the law of commandments”
2. That is the wood of the Cross, where the Son of God was conqueror, and where He betrothed our human nature to Himself, and, by consequence, every soul of man. There, on the Cross, He gave us grace and pledges of His love.
3. “Help and grace, lifting you up out of your base and miserable condition to be My companion and My bride.”
4. “Your mother, human nature, was corrupted in her first parents beneath the forbidden
tree, and you were redeemed beneath the tree of the Cross. If your mother at that
tree sentenced you to die, I from the Cross have given you life.” It is thus that
God reveals the order and dispositions of His wisdom: eliciting good from evil,
and turning that which has its origin in evil to be an instrument of greater good.
This stanza is nearly word for word what the Bridegroom in the Canticle says to
the bride: “Under the apple-tree I raised you up: there your mother was corrupted;
there she was deflowered that bare you.”
5. It is not the betrothal of the Cross that I am speaking of now — that takes place, once for all, when God gives the first grace to the soul in baptism. I am speaking of the betrothal in the way of perfection, which is a progressive work. And though both are but one, yet there is a difference between them. The latter is effected in the way of the soul, and therefore slowly: the former in the way of God, and therefore at once.
6. The betrothal of which I am speaking is that of which God speaks Himself by
the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, saying: “You were cast out upon the face of the
earth in the abjection of your soul, in the day that you were born. And passing
by you, I saw that you were trodden under foot in your blood; and I said to you
when you were in your blood: Live: I said to you, I say; in your blood live. Multiplied
as the spring of the field have I made you; and you were multiplied and made great,
and you went in, and came to the ornaments of woman; your breasts swelled and your
hair budded: and you were naked and full of confusion. And I passed by you and saw
you, and behold, your time, the time of lovers; and I spread My garment over you
and covered your ignominy. And I swore to you; and I entered a covenant with you,
says the Lord God; and you were made Mine. And I washed you with water, and made
clean your blood from off you: and I anointed you with oil. And I clothed you with
diverse colors, and shod you with hyacinth, and I girded you with silk and clothed
you with fine garments. And I adorned you with ornaments, and put bracelets on your
hands, and a chain about your neck. And I put a jewel upon your forehead and rings
in your ears, and a crown of beauty on your head. And you were adorned with gold
and silver, and were clothed with silk, and embroidered work, and many colors: you
ate fine flour, and honey, and oil, and were made beautiful exceedingly, and advanced
to be a queen. And your name went forth among the nations because of your beauty.”
NOTE
AFTER the mutual surrender to each other of the bride and the Beloved, comes
their bed. Thereon the bride enters into the joy of Christ. Thus the present stanza
refers to the bed, which is pure and chaste, and divine, and in which the bride
is pure, divine, and chaste. The bed is nothing else but the Bridegroom Himself,
the Word, the Son of God, in Whom, through the union of love, the bride reposes.
This bed is said to be of flowers, for the Bridegroom is not only that, but, as
He says Himself of Himself, “I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys.”
IN two of the foregoing stanzas — the fourteenth and the fifteenth — the bride-soul celebrated the grace and magnificence of the Beloved, the Son of God. In the present stanza she not only pursues the same subject, but also sings of her high and blessed state, and her own security in it. She then proceeds to the virtues and rich gifts with which she is endowed and adorned in the chamber of the Bridegroom; for she says that she is in union with Him, and is strong in virtue. Next she says that she has attained to the perfection of love, and then that she enjoys perfect spiritual peace, endowed and adorned with gifts and graces, so far as it is possible to have them in this life. The first subject of the stanza is the joy which the bride feels in her union with the Beloved, saying:
2. I have already said that this bed of the soul is the bosom and love of the Son of God, full of flowers to the soul, which now united to God and reposing in Him, as His bride, shares the bosom and love of the Beloved. That is, the soul is admitted to a knowledge of the wisdom, secrets and graces, and gifts and powers of God, whereby it is made so beautiful, so rich, so abounding in delights that it seems to be lying on a bed of many-colored divine flowers, the touch of which makes it thrill with joy, and the odors of which refresh it.
3. This union of love with God is therefore most appropriately called a bed of
flowers, and is so called by the bride in the Canticle, saying to the Beloved, “Our
bed is of flowers.”
4. The dens of lions signify the virtues with which the soul is endowed in the state of union. The dens of lions are safe retreats, protected from all other animals, who, afraid of the boldness and strength of the lion within, are afraid not only to enter, but even to appear in sight. So each virtue of the soul in the state of perfection is like a den of lions where Christ dwells united to the soul in that virtue; and in every one of them as a strong lion. The soul also, united to Him in those very virtues, is as a strong lion, because it then partakes of the perfections of God.
5. Thus, then, the perfect soul is so defended, so strong in virtue, and in all virtues together, reposing on the flowery bed of its union with God, that the evil spirits are not only afraid to assault it, but even dare not appear before it; such is their dread of it, when they behold it strong, courageous, and mature in its perfect virtues, on the bed of the Beloved. The evil spirits fear a soul transformed in the union of love as much as they fear the Beloved Himself, and they dare not look upon it, for Satan is in great fear of that soul which has attained to perfection.
6. The soul’s bed is encompassed by virtues: they are the dens, for when the soul has advanced to perfection, its virtues are so perfectly ordered, and so joined together and bound up one with another, each supporting the other, that no part of it is weak or exposed. Not only is Satan unable to penetrate within it, but even worldly things, whether great or little, fail to disturb or annoy it, or even move it; for being now free from all molestation of natural affections, and a stranger to the worry of temporal anxieties, it enjoys in security and peace the participation of God.
7. This is that for which the bride longed when she said, “Who shall give to
me You my brother, sucking the breast of my mother, that I may find You without,
and kiss You, and now no man may despise me?”
8. But beside this habitual contentment and peace, the flowers of the virtues of this garden so open in the soul and diffuse their odors that it seems to be, and is, full of the delights of God. I say that the flowers open; because the soul, though filled with the virtues in perfection, is not always in the actual fruition of them, notwithstanding its habitual perception of the peace and tranquillity which they produce. We may say of these virtues that they are in this life like the budding flowers of a garden; they offer a most beautiful sight — opening under the inspirations of the Holy Spirit — and diffuse most marvelous perfumes in great variety.
9. Sometimes the soul will discern in itself the mountain flowers — the fullness, grandeur, and beauty of God — intermingled with the lilies of the valley — rest, refreshment, and defense; and again among them, the fragrant roses of the strange islands — the strange knowledge of God; and further, the perfume of the water lilies of the roaring torrents — the majesty of God filling the whole soul. And amid all this, it enjoys the exquisite fragrance of the jasmine, and the whisper of the amorous gales, the fruition of which is granted to the soul in the estate of union, and in the same way all the other virtues and graces, the calm knowledge, silent music, murmuring solitude, and the sweet supper of love; and the joy of all this is such as to make the soul say in truth, “Our bed is of flowers, by dens of lions encompassed.” Blessed is that soul which in this life deserves at times to enjoy the perfume of these divine flowers.
10. Purple in Holy Scripture means charity, and kings are clad in it, and for that reason the soul says that the bed of flowers is hung with purple, because all the virtues, riches, and blessings of it are sustained, flourish, and are delighted only in charity and love of the King of heaven; without that love the soul can never delight in the bed nor in the flowers thereof. All these virtues, therefore, are, in the soul, as if hung on the love of God, as on that which preserves them, and they are, as it were, bathed in love; for all and each of them always make the soul love God, and on all occasions and in all actions they advance in love to a greater love of God. That is what is meant by saying that the bed is hung with purple.
11. This is well expressed in the sacred Canticle: “King Solomon has made himself
a litter of the wood of Lebanon; the pillars thereof he has made of silver, the
seat of gold, the going up of purple; the midst he has paved with charity.”
12. This is the fourth excellence of the bed, and depends on the third, of which
I have just spoken. For the third is perfect charity, the property of which is,
as the Apostle says, to cast out fear;
13. The shields are the virtues and graces of the soul, which, though they are also
the flowers, serve for its crown, and the reward of the toil by which they are acquired.
They serve also, like strong shields, as a protection against the vices, which it
overcame by the practice of them; and the bridal bed of flowers therefore — that
is, the virtues, the crown and defense — is adorned with them by way of reward,
and protected by them as with a shield. The shields are said to be of gold, to show
the great worth of the virtues. The bride in the Canticle sets forth the same truth,
saying: “Three score valiant men of the most valiant of Israel surround the little
bed of Solomon, all holding swords; . . . every man’s sword upon his thigh, because
of fears in the night.”
14. Thus in this stanza the bride speaks of a thousand shields, to express the
variety of the virtues, gifts, and graces with which God has endowed the soul in
this state. The Bridegroom also in the Canticle has employed the same expression,
in order to show forth the innumerable virtues of the soul, saying: “Your neck is
as the tower of David, which is built with bulwarks; a thousand shields hang upon
it, all the armor of valiant men.”
NOTE
THE soul, having attained to perfection, is not satisfied with magnifying and extolling the excellencies of the Beloved, the Son of God, nor with recounting and giving thanks for the graces received at His hands and the joy into which it has entered, but recounts also the graces conferred on other souls. In this blessed union of love the soul is able to contemplate both its own and others’ graces; thus praising Him and giving Him thanks for the many graces bestowed upon others, it sings as in the following stanza:
HERE the bride gives thanks to her Beloved for three graces which devout souls receive from Him, by which they encourage and excite themselves to love God more and more. She speaks of them here because she has had experience of them herself in this state of union. The first is sweetness, which He gives them, and which is so efficacious that it makes them run swiftly on the road of perfection. The second is a visit of love, by which they are suddenly set on fire with love. The third is overflowing charity infused into them, with which He so inebriates them that they are as much excited by it as by the visit of love, to utter the praises of God, and to love Him with all sweetness.
2. These are the marks on the ground by which we trace the course of one we seek. The sweetness and knowledge of Himself which God communicates to the soul that seeks Him are the footsteps by which it traces and recognizes Him. Thus the soul says to the Word, the Bridegroom, “In Your footsteps” — “in the traces of Your sweetness which You diffuse, and the odors which You scatter.”
3. “Devout souls run with youthful vigor in the sweetness which Your footsteps communicate.” They run in many ways and in various directions — each according to the spirit which God bestows and the vocation He has given — in the diversified forms of spiritual service on the road of everlasting life, which is evangelical perfection, where they meet the Beloved in the union of love, in spiritual detachment from all things.
4. This sweetness and impression of Himself which God leaves in the soul render
it light and active in running after Him; for the soul then does little or nothing
in its own strength towards running along this road, being rather attracted by the
divine footsteps, so that it not only advances, but even runs, as I said before,
in many ways. The bride in the Canticle, therefore, prays for the divine attraction,
saying, “Draw me, we will run after You to the odor of Your ointments”;
5. I said, while explaining the previous lines, that souls run in His footsteps in the way of exterior works. But the three lines I have just quoted refer to the interior acts of the will, when souls are under the influence of the other two graces, and interior visits of the Beloved. These are the touch of fire, and spiced wine; and the interior act of the will, which is the result of these visits, is the flowing of the divine balsam. The contact of the fire is that most delicate touch of the Beloved which the soul feels at times even when least expecting it, and which sets the heart on fire with love, as if a spark of fire had fallen upon it and made it burn. Then the will, in an instant, like one roused from sleep, burns with the fire of love, longs for God, praises Him and gives Him thanks, worships and honors Him, and prays to Him in the sweetness of love.
6. This is the flowing of the divine balsam, which obeys the touch of the fire that issues forth from the consuming love of God which that fire kindled; the divine balsam which comforts the soul and heals it with its odor and its substance.
7. The bride in the Canticle speaks of this divine touch, saying, “My Beloved
put His hand through the opening, and my belly trembled at His touch.”
8. “The spiced wine” is that exceedingly great grace which God sometimes bestows upon advanced souls, when the Holy Spirit inebriates them with the sweet, luscious, and strong wine of love. Hence it is here called spiced wine, for as such wine is prepared by fermentation with many and diverse aromatic and strengthening herbs; so this love, the gift of God to the perfect, is in the soul prepared and seasoned with the virtues already acquired. This love, seasoned with the precious spices, communicates to the soul such a strong, abundant inebriation when God visits it that it pours forth with great effect and force those acts of rapturous praise, love, and worship which I referred to before, and that with a marvelous longing to labor and to suffer for Him.
9. This sweet inebriation and grace, however, do not pass quickly away, like
the touch of the fire, for they are of longer continuance. The fire touches and
passes, but the effects abide often; and sometimes the spiced wine continues for
a considerable time, and its effects also; this is the sweet love of the soul, and
continues occasionally a day or two, sometimes even many days together, though not
always in the same degree of intensity, because it is not in the power of the soul
to control it. Sometimes the soul, without any effort of its own, is conscious of
a most sweet interior inebriation, and of the divine love burning within, as David
says, “My heart waxed hot within me, and in my meditation a fire shall burn.”
10. The outpourings of this inebriation last sometimes as long as the inebriation itself. At other times there are no outpourings; and they are more or less intense when they occur, in proportion to the greater or less intensity of the inebriation itself. But the outpourings, or effects of the fire, generally last longer than the fire which caused them; indeed the fire leaves them behind in the soul, and they are more vehement than those which proceed from the inebriation, for sometimes this divine fire burns up and consumes the soul in love.
11. As I have mentioned fermented wine, it will be well to touch briefly upon the difference between it, when it is old, and new wine; the difference between old wine and new wine is the same, and will furnish a little instruction for spiritual men. New wine has not settled on the lees, and is therefore fermenting; we cannot ascertain its quality or worth before it has settled, and the fermentation has ceased, for until then there is great risk of its corruption. The taste of it is rough and sharp, and an immoderate draught of it intoxicates. Old wine has settled on the lees, and ferments no more like new wine; the quality of it is easily ascertained and it is now very safe from corruption, for all fermentation which might have proved pernicious has entirely ceased. Well-fermented wine is very rarely spoiled, the taste of it is pleasant, and its strength is in its own substance, not in the taste, and drinking it produces health and a sound constitution.
12. New lovers are compared to new wine; these are beginners in the service of God, because the fervor of their love manifests itself outwardly in the senses; because they have not settled on the lees of sense, frail and imperfect; and because they measure the strength of love by the sweetness of it, for it is sensible sweetness that ordinarily gives them their strength for good works, and it is by this they are influenced; we must, therefore, place no confidence in this love till the fermentation has subsided, with the coarse satisfaction of sense.
13. For as these fervors and sensible warmth may incline men to good and perfect love, and serve as an excellent means to it, when the lees of imperfections are cleared; so also is it very easy at first, when sensible sweetness is fresh, for the wine of love to fail, and the sweetness of the new to vanish. New lovers are always anxious, sensibly tormented by their love; it is necessary for them to put some restraint upon themselves, for if they are very active in the strength of this wine, their natural powers will be ruined with these anxieties and fatigues of the new wine, which is rough and sharp, and not made sweet in the perfect fermentation, which then takes place when the anxieties of love are over, as I shall show immediately.
14. The Wise Man employs the same illustration; saying, “A new friend is as new
wine; it shall grow old, and you shall drink it with pleasure.”
15. Old lovers, therefore, free from that spiritual sweetness which has its roots in the senses, suffer neither in sense nor spirit from the anxieties of love, and thus scarcely ever prove faithless to God, because they have risen above that which might be an occasion of falling, namely, the flesh. These now drink of the wine of love, which is not only fermented and free from the lees, but spiced also with the aromatic herbs of perfect virtues, which will not allow it to corrupt, as may happen to new wine.
16. For this cause an old friend is of great price in the eyes of God: “Forsake
not an old friend, for the new will not be like to him.”
NOTE
SUCH, then, is the state of the blessed soul in the bed of flowers, where all
these blessings, and many more, are granted it. The seat of that bed is the Son
of God, and the hangings of it are the charity and love of the Bridegroom Himself.
The soul now may say, with the bride, “His left hand is under my head,”
2. This fullness will be in the very being of the soul, seeing that its drink
is nothing else but the torrent of delights, and that torrent the Holy Spirit, as
it is written: “And he showed me a river of living water, clear as crystal, proceeding
from the throne of God and the Lamb.”
HERE the soul speaks of that sovereign grace of God in taking it to Himself into the house of His love, which is the union, or transformation of love in God. It describes two effects proceeding therefrom: forgetfulness of, and detachment from, all the things of this world, and the mortification of its tastes and desires.
2. In order to explain in any degree the meaning of this, I have need of the special
help of the Holy Spirit to direct my hand and guide my pen. The cellar is the highest
degree of love to which the soul may attain in this life, and is therefore said
to be the inner. It follows from this that there are other cellars not so interior;
that is, the degrees of love by which souls reach this, the last. These cellars
are seven in number, and the soul has entered into them all when it has in perfection
the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, so far as it is possible for it. When the soul
has the spirit of fear in perfection, it has in perfection also the spirit of love,
inasmuch as this fear, the last of the seven gifts, is filial fear, and the perfect
fear of a son proceeds from his perfect love of his father. Thus when the Holy Scripture
speaks of one as having perfect charity, it says of him that he fears God. So the
prophet Isaiah, announcing the perfections of Christ, says of Him, “The spirit of
the fear of the Lord shall replenish him.”
3. Many souls reach and enter the first cellar, each according to the perfection of its love, but the last and inmost cellar is entered by few in this world, because therein is wrought the perfect union with God, the union of the spiritual marriage, of which the soul is now speaking. What God communicates to the soul in this intimate union is utterly ineffable, beyond the reach of all possible words — just as it is impossible to speak of God Himself so as to convey any idea of what He is — because it is God Himself who communicates Himself to the soul now in the marvelous bliss of its transformation. In this state God and the soul are united, as the window is with the light, or coal with the fire, or the light of the stars with that of the sun, yet, however, not so essentially and completely as it will be in the life to come. The soul, therefore, to show what it received from the hands of God in the cellar of wine, says nothing else, and I do not believe that anything could be said but the words which follow:
4. As a draught diffuses itself through all the members and veins of the body, so
this communication of God diffuses itself substantially in the whole soul, or rather,
the soul is transformed in God. In this transformation the soul drinks of God in
its very substance and its spiritual powers. In the understanding it drinks wisdom
and knowledge, in the will the sweetest love, in the memory refreshment and delight
in the thought and sense of its bliss. That the soul receives and drinks delight
in its very substance, appears from the words of the bride in the Canticle: “My
soul melted as He spoke”
5. That the understanding drinks wisdom is evident from the words of the bride
longing and praying for the kiss of union: “There You shall teach me, and I will
give you a cup of spiced wine.”
6. There is a common saying that the will cannot love that of which the understanding has no knowledge. This, however, is to be understood in the order of nature, it being impossible, in a natural way, to love anything unless we first know what it is we love. But in a supernatural way God can certainly infuse love and increase it without infusing and increasing distinct knowledge, as is evident from the texts already quoted. Yes, many spiritual persons have experience of this; their love of God burns more and more, while their knowledge does not grow. Men may know little and love much, and on the other hand, know much and love but little.
7. In general, those spiritual persons whose knowledge of God is not very great are usually very rich in all that belongs to the will, and infused faith suffices them for this knowledge, by means of which God infuses and increases charity in them and the acts thereof, which are to love Him more and more though knowledge is not increased. Thus the will may drink of love while the understanding drinks in no fresh knowledge. In the present instance, however, all the powers of the soul together, because of the union in the inner cellar, drink of the Beloved.
8. As to the memory, it is clear that the soul drinks of the Beloved in it, because it is enlightened with the light of the understanding in remembering the blessings it possesses and enjoys in union with the Beloved.
9. That is, after this grace: the divine draught having so deified the soul, exalted it, and inebriated it in God. Though the soul is always in the high estate of marriage ever since God has placed it there, nevertheless actual union in all its powers is not continuous, though the substantial union is. In this substantial union the powers of the soul are most frequently in union, and drink of His cellar, the understanding by knowledge, the will by love, etc. We are not, therefore, to suppose that the soul, when saying that it went out, has ceased from its substantial or essential union with God, but only from the union of its faculties, which is not, and cannot be, permanent in this life; it is from this union, then, it went forth when it wandered over all the plain — that is, through the whole breadth of the world.
10. This draught of God’s most deep wisdom makes the soul forget all the things of this world, and consider all its previous knowledge, and the knowledge of the whole world besides, as pure ignorance in comparison with this knowledge.
11. For a clearer understanding of this, we must remember that the most regular
cause of the soul’s ignoring the things of the world, when it has ascended to this
high state, is that it is informed by a supernatural knowledge, in the presence
of which all natural and worldly knowledge is ignorance rather than knowledge. For
the soul in possession of this knowledge, which is most profound, learns from it
that all other knowledge not included in this knowledge is not knowledge, but ignorance,
and worthless. We have this truth in the words of the Apostle when he said that
“the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”
12. This is the reason why the soul says it knows nothing, now that it has drunk
of the divine wisdom. The truth is that the wisdom of men and of the whole world
is mere ignorance, and not deserving any attention, but it is a truth that can be
learned only in that truth of the presence of God in the soul communicating to it
His wisdom and making it strong by this draught of love that it may see it distinctly.
This is taught us by Solomon, saying: “The vision that the man spoke, with whom
God is, and who being strengthened by God abiding with him, said: I am the most
foolish of men, and the wisdom of men is not with me.”
13. When the soul is raised to this high wisdom of God, the wisdom of man is
in its eyes the lowest ignorance: all natural science and the works of God, if accompanied
by ignorance of Him, are as ignorance; for where He is not known, there nothing
is known. “The deep things of God are foolishness to men.”
14. Moreover, this deification and elevation of the spirit in God, whereby the
soul is, as it were, rapt and absorbed in love, one with God, suffer it not to dwell
upon any worldly matter. The soul is now detached, not only from all outward things,
but even from itself: it is, as it were, undone, assumed by, and dissolved in, love
— that is, it passes out of itself into the Beloved. Thus the bride, in the Canticle,
after speaking of her own transformation by love into the Beloved, expresses her
state of ignorance by the words “I knew not.”
15. Such a soul will scarcely intermeddle with the affairs of others, because it forgets even its own; for the work of the Spirit of God in the soul in which He dwells is to incline it to ignore those things which do not concern it, especially such as do not minister to edification. The Spirit of God abides within the soul to withdraw it from outward things rather than to lead it among them; and thus the soul knows nothing as it knew it formerly. We are not, however, to suppose that it loses the habits of knowledge previously acquired, for those habits are improved by the more perfect habit of supernatural knowledge infused, though these habits are not so powerful as to necessitate knowledge through them, and yet there is no reason why they should not do so occasionally.
16. In this union of the divine wisdom, these habits are united with the higher wisdom of other knowledge, as a little light with another which is great; it is the great light that shines, overwhelming the less, yet the latter is not therefore lost, but rather perfected, though it is not the light which shines pre-eminently. Thus, I imagine, will it be in heaven; the acquired habits of knowledge in the just will not be destroyed, though they will be of no great importance there, seeing that the just will know more in the divine wisdom than by the habits acquired on earth.
17. But the particular notions and forms of things, acts of the imagination, and every other apprehension having form and figure are all lost and ignored in this absorbing love, and this for two reasons. First, the soul cannot actually attend to anything of the kind, because it is actually absorbed by this draught of love. Secondly, and this is the principal reason, its transformation in God so conforms it to His purity and simplicity — for there is no form or imaginary figure in Him — as to render it pure, cleansed and empty of all the forms and figures it entertained before, being now purified and enlightened in simple contemplation. All spots and stains in the glass become invisible when the sun shines upon it, but they appear again as soon as the light of the sun is withheld.
18. So is it with the soul; while the effects of this act of love continue, this
ignorance continues also, so that it cannot observe anything in particular until
these effects have ceased. Love has set the soul on fire and transmuted it into
love, has annihilated it and destroyed it as to all that is not love, according
to the words of David: “My heart has been inflamed, and my reins have been changed;
and I am brought to nothing, and I knew not.”
19. These are the two effects of drinking the wine of the cellar of God; not only is all previous knowledge brought to nothing and made to vanish, but the old life also with its imperfections is destroyed, and into the new man renewed; this is the second of the two effects described in the words that follow:
20. Until the soul reaches the state of perfection, however spiritual it may be, there always remains a troop of desires, likings, and other imperfections, sometimes natural, sometimes spiritual, after which it runs, and which it tries to feed while following and satisfying them. With regard to the understanding, there are certain imperfections of the desire of knowledge. With regard to the will, certain likings and peculiar desires, at times in temporal things, as the wish to possess certain trifles, and attachment to some things more than to others, certain prejudices, considerations, and punctilios, with other vanities, still savoring of the world: and again in natural things, such as eating and drinking, the preference of one kind of food over another, and the choice of the best: at another time, in spiritual things, such as seeking for sweetness, and other follies of spiritual persons not yet perfect, too numerous to recount here. As to the memory, there are many inconsistencies, anxieties, unseemly reminiscences, which drag the soul captive after them.
21. The four passions of the soul also involve it in many useless hopes, joys, griefs, and fears, after which it runs. As to this flock, some men are more influenced by it than others; they run after and follow it, until they enter the inner cellar, where they lose it altogether, being then transformed in love. In that cellar the flock of imperfections is easily destroyed, as rust and mold on metal in the fire. Then the soul feels itself free from the pettiness of self-likings and the vanities after which it ran before, and may well say, “I have lost the flock which I followed before.”
NOTE
GOD communicates Himself to the soul in this interior union with a love so intense
that the love of a mother, who so tenderly caresses her child, the love of a brother,
or the affection of a friend bear no likeness to it, for so great is the tenderness,
and so deep is the love with which the Infinite Father comforts and exalts the humble
and loving soul. O wonders worthy of all awe and reverence! He humbles Himself in
reality before that soul that He may exalt it, as if He were its servant, and the
soul His lord. He is as anxious to comfort it as if He were a slave, and the soul
God. So great is the humility and tenderness of God. In this communion of love He
renders in a certain way those services to the soul which He says in the Gospel
He will perform for the elect in heaven. “Amen, I say to you, that He will gird
Himself and make them sit down to meat, and passing will minister to them.”
2. This very service He renders now to the soul, comforting and cherishing it,
as a mother her child whom she nurtures in her bosom. And the soul recognizes herein
the truth of the words of Isaiah, “You shall be carried at the breasts, and upon
the knees they shall caress you.”
HERE the soul speaks of the two contracting parties in this spiritual betrothal, itself and God. In the inner cellar of love they both met together, God giving to the soul the breasts of His love freely, whereby He instructs it in His mysteries and wisdom, and the soul also actually surrendering itself, making no reservation whatever either in its own favor or in that of others, promising to be His for ever.
2. To give the breast to another is to love and cherish him and communicate one’s secrets to him as a friend. The soul says here that God gave it His breasts — that is, He gave it His love and communicated His secrets to it. It is thus that God deals with the soul in this state, and more, too, as it appears from the words that follow:
3. This science is mystical theology, which is the secret science of God, and which spiritual men call contemplation. It is most full of sweetness because it is knowledge by love, love is the master of it, and it is love that renders it all so sweet. Inasmuch as this science and knowledge are communicated to the soul in that love with which God communicates Himself, it is sweet to the understanding, because knowledge belongs to it, and sweet to the will, because it comes by love which belongs to the will.
4. The soul in this sweet draught of God, surrenders itself wholly to Him most willingly and with great sweetness; it desires to be wholly His, and never to retain anything which is unbecoming His Majesty. God is the author of this union, and of the purity and perfection requisite for it; and as the transformation of the soul in Himself makes it His, He empties it of all that is alien to Himself. Thus it comes to pass that, not in will only, but in act as well, the whole soul is entirely given to God without any reserve whatever, as God has given Himself freely to it. The will of God and of the soul are both satisfied, each given up to the other, in mutual delight, so that neither fails the other in the faith and constancy of the betrothal; therefore the soul says:
5. As a bride does not give her love to another, and as all her thoughts and actions
are directed to her bridegroom only, so the soul now has no affections of the will,
no acts of the understanding, neither object nor occupation of any kind which it
does not wholly refer to God, together with all its desires. The soul is, as it
were, absorbed in God, and even its first movements have nothing in them — so far
as it can comprehend them — which is at variance with the will of God. The first
movements of an imperfect soul in general are, at least, inclined to evil, in the
understanding, the memory, the will, the desires and imperfections; but those of
the soul which has attained to the spiritual state of which I am speaking are ordinarily
directed to God, because of the great help and courage it derives from Him, and
its perfect conversion to goodness. This is set forth with great clearness by David,
when he says: “Shall not my soul be subject to God? For from Him is my salvation.
For He is my God and my Savior; He is my protector, I shall be moved no more.”
6. It is quite clear from this that the soul which has attained the spiritual
betrothal knows nothing else but the love of the Bridegroom and the delights thereof,
because it has arrived at perfection, the form and substance of which is love, according
to St. Paul.
NOTE
I HAVE said that God is pleased with nothing but love; but before I explain this,
it will be as well to set forth the grounds on which the assertion rests. All our
works, and all our labors, however grand they may be, are nothing in the sight of
God, for we can give Him nothing, neither can we by them fulfill His desire, which
is the growth of our soul. As to Himself He desires nothing of this, for He has
need of nothing, and so, if He is pleased with anything it is with the growth of
the soul; and as there is no way in which the soul can grow but in becoming in a
manner equal to Him, for this reason He is only pleased with our love. It is the
property of love to place him who loves on an equality with the object of his love.
Hence the soul, because of its perfect love, is called the bride of the Son of God,
which signifies equality with Him. In this equality and friendship all things are
common, as the Bridegroom Himself said to His disciples: “I have called you friends,
because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.”
THE soul, or rather the bride having given herself wholly to the Bridegroom without any reserve whatever, now recounts to the Beloved how she fulfills her task. “My soul and body,” she says, “all my abilities and all my capacities, are occupied not with other matters, but with those pertaining to the service of the Bridegroom.” She is therefore not seeking her own proper satisfaction, nor the gratification of her own inclinations, neither does she occupy herself in anything whatever which is alien to God; yes, even her communion with God Himself is nothing else but acts of love, inasmuch as she has changed her former mode of conversing with Him into loving.
2. This refers to the soul’s surrender of itself to the Beloved in this union of love, wherein it devotes itself, with all its faculties, understanding, will, and memory, to His service. The understanding is occupied in considering what most tends to His service, in order that it might be accomplished; the will in loving all that is pleasing to God, and in desiring Him in all things; the memory in recalling what ministers to Him, and what may be more pleasing to Him.
3. By substance here is meant all that relates to the sensual part of the soul, which includes the body, with all its powers, interior and exterior, together with all its natural capacities — that is, the four passions, the natural desires, and the whole substance of the soul, all of which is employed in the service of the Beloved, as well as the rational and spiritual part, as I explained in the previous section. As to the body, that is now ordered according to God in all its interior and exterior senses, all the acts of which are directed to God; the four passions of the soul are also under control in Him; for the soul’s joy, hope, fear, and grief are conversant with God only; all its appetites, and all its anxieties also, are directed to Him only.
4. The whole substance of the soul is now so occupied with God, so intent upon Him, that its very first movements, even inadvertently, have God for their object and their end. The understanding, memory, and will tend directly to God; the affections, senses, desires and longings, hope and joy, the whole substance of the soul, rise instantly towards God, though the soul is making no conscious efforts in that direction. Such a soul is very often doing the work of God, intent upon Him and the things of God, without thinking or reflecting on what it is doing for Him. The constant and habitual practice of this has deprived it of all conscious reflection, and even of that fervor which it usually had when it began to act. The whole substance of the soul being thus occupied, what follows cannot be but true also.
5. “I do not now go after my likings and desires; for having fixed them upon God, I no longer feed or guard them.” The soul not only does not guard them now, but has no other occupation than to wait upon God.
6. Before the soul succeeded in effecting this gift and surrender of itself, and of all that belongs to it, to the Beloved, it was entangled in many unprofitable occupations, by which it sought to please itself and others, and it may be said that its occupations of this kind were as many as its habits of imperfection.
7. To these habits belong that of speaking, thinking, and the doing of things that are useless; and likewise, the not making use of these things according to the requirements of the soul’s perfection; other desires also the soul may have, with which it ministers to the desires of others, to which may be referred display, compliments, flattery, human respect, aiming at being well thought of, and the giving pleasure to people, and other useless actions, by which it labored to content them, wasting its efforts herein, and finally all its strength. All this is over, says the soul here, for all its words, thoughts, and works are directed to God, and, conversant with Him, freed from their previous imperfections. It is as if it said: “I follow no longer either my own or other men’s likings, neither do I occupy or entertain myself with useless pastimes, or the things of this world.”
8. “All my occupation now is the practice of the love of God, all the powers of
soul and body, memory, understanding, and will, interior and exterior senses, the
desires of spirit and of sense, all work in and by love. All I do is done in love;
all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love.” This is the meaning of David when
he said, “I will keep my strength to You.”
9. When the soul has arrived at this state all the acts of its spiritual and
sensual nature, whether active or passive, and of whatever kind they may be, always
occasion an increase of love and delight in God: even the act of prayer and communion
with God, which was once carried on by reflections and diverse other methods, is
now wholly an act of love. So much so is this the case that the soul may always
say, whether occupied with temporal or spiritual things, “My sole occupation is
love.” Happy life! happy state! and happy the soul which has attained to it! where
all is the very substance of love, the joyous delights of the betrothal, when it
may truly say to the Beloved with the bride in the Canticle, “The new and the old,
my Beloved, have I kept for You”
NOTE
IN truth the soul is now lost to all things, and gained only to love, and the
mind is no longer occupied with anything else. It is, therefore, deficient in what
concerns the active life, and other exterior duties, that it may apply in earnest
to the one thing which the Bridegroom has pronounced necessary;
2. Observe, however, that if the soul has not reached the state of unitive love, it is necessary for it to make acts of love, as well in the active as in the contemplative life. But when it has reached it, it is not requisite it should occupy itself in other and exterior duties — unless they are matters of obligation — which might hinder, were it but for a moment, the life of love in God, though they may minister greatly to His service; because an instant of pure love is more precious in the eyes of God and the soul, and more profitable to the Church, than all other good works together, though it may seem as if nothing were done. Thus, Mary Magdalene, though her preaching was most edifying, and might have been still more so afterwards, out of the great desire she had to please her Bridegroom and benefit the Church, hid herself, nevertheless, in the desert thirty years, that she might surrender herself entirely to love; for she considered that she would gain more in that way, because an instant of pure love is so much more profitable and important to the Church.
3. When the soul, then, in any degree possesses the spirit of solitary love, we must not interfere with it. We should inflict a grievous wrong upon it, and upon the Church also, if we were to occupy it, were it only for a moment, in exterior or active duties, however important they might be. When God Himself adjures all not to waken it from its love, who shall venture to do so, and be blameless? In a word, it is for this love that we are all created. Let those men of zeal, who think by their preaching and exterior works to convert the world, consider that they would be much more edifying to the Church, and more pleasing to God — setting aside the good example they would give — if they would spend at least one half their time in prayer, even though they may have not attained to the state of unitive love. Certainly they would do more, and with less trouble, by one single good work than by a thousand: because of the merit of their prayer, and the spiritual strength it supplies. To act otherwise is to beat the air, to do little more than nothing, sometimes nothing and occasionally even mischief; for God may give up such persons to vanity, so that they may seem to have done something, when in reality their outward occupations bear no fruit; for it is quite certain that good works cannot be done but in the power of God. O how much might be written on this subject! this, however, is not the place for it.
4. I have said this to explain the stanza that follows, in which the soul replies to those who call in question its holy tranquillity, who will have it wholly occupied with outward duties, that its light may shine before the world: these persons have no conception of the fibers and the unseen root whence the sap is drawn, and which nourish the fruit.
THE soul replies here to a tacit reproach. Worldly people are in the habit of censuring those who give themselves up in earnest to God, regarding them as extravagant, in their withdrawal from the world, and in their manner of life. They say also of them that they are useless for all matters of importance, and lost to everything the world prizes and respects! This reproach the soul meets in the best way; boldly and courageously despising it with everything else that the world can lay to its charge. Having attained to a living love of God, it makes little account of all this; and that is not all: it confesses it itself in this stanza, and boasts that it has committed that folly, and that it is lost to the world and to itself for the Beloved.
2. That which the soul is saying here, addressing itself to the world, is in substance this: “If you see me no longer occupied with the subjects that engrossed me once, with the other pastimes of the world, say and believe that I am lost to them, and a stranger to them, yes, that I am lost of my own choice, seeking my Beloved whom I so greatly love.” But that they may see that the soul’s loss is gain, and not consider it folly and delusion, it adds that its loss was gain, and that it therefore lost itself deliberately.
3. The common is a public place where people assemble for recreation, and where shepherds feed their flocks. By the common here is meant the world in general, where men amuse themselves and feed the herd of their desires. The soul says to the worldly-minded: “If you see me no more where I used to be before I gave myself up wholly to God, look upon me as lost, and say so”: the soul rejoices in that and would have men so speak of it.
4. He who loves is not ashamed before men of what he does for God, neither does
he hide it through shame though the whole world should condemn it. He who shall
be ashamed to confess the Son of God before men, neglecting to do His work, the
Son of God also will be ashamed to acknowledge him before His Father. “He that shall
deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father Who is in heaven.”
5. But few spiritual persons arrive at this perfect courage and resolution in their conduct. For though some attempt to practice it, and some even think themselves proficient therein, they never entirely lose themselves on certain points connected with the world or self, so as to be perfectly detached for the sake of Christ, despising appearances and the opinion of the world. These can never answer, “Say that I am lost,” because they are not lost to themselves, and are still ashamed to confess Christ before men through human respect; these do not therefore really live in Christ.
That is, practicing virtues for the love of God,
6. The soul remembers well the words of the Bridegroom in the Gospel: “No man can
serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other,”
7. This loss occurs in two ways. The soul loses itself, making no account whatever
of itself, but of the Beloved, resigning itself freely into His hands without any
selfish views, losing itself deliberately, and seeking nothing for itself. Secondly,
it loses itself in all things, making no account of anything save that which concerns
the Beloved. This is to lose oneself — that is, to be willing that others should
have all things. Such is he that loves God; he seeks neither gain nor reward, but
only to lose all, even himself, according to God’s will; this is what such a one
counts gain. This is real gain, for the Apostle says, “to die is gain”
8. But if we wish to know the deeper spiritual meaning of this line, and its peculiar fitness here, it is as follows: When a soul has advanced so far on the spiritual road as to be lost to all the natural methods of communing with God; when it seeks Him no longer by meditation, images, impressions, nor by any other created ways, or representations of sense, but only by rising above them all, in the joyful communion with Him by faith and love, then it may be said to have found God of a truth, because it has truly lost itself as to all that is not God, and also as to its own self.
NOTE
THE soul being thus gained, all its works are gain, for all its powers are exerted
in the spiritual intercourse of most sweet interior love with the Beloved. The interior
communications between God and the soul are now so delicious, so full of sweetness,
that no mortal tongue can describe them, nor human understanding comprehend them.
As a bride on the day of her betrothal attends to nothing but to the joyous festival
of her love, and brings forth all her jewels and ornaments for the pleasure of the
bridegroom, and as he too in the same way exhibits his own magnificence and riches
for the pleasure of his bride, so is it in the spiritual betrothal where the soul
feels that which the bride says in the Canticle, “I to my Beloved and my Beloved
to me.”
THE bride now turns to the Bridegroom and addresses Him in the intercourse and comfort of love; the subject of the stanza being the solace and delight which the bride-soul and the Son of God find in the possession of the virtues and gifts of each other, and in the exercise thereof, both rejoicing in their mutual love. Thus the soul, addressing the Beloved, says that they will make garlands rich in graces and acquired virtues, obtained at the fitting and convenient season, beautiful and lovely in the love He bears the soul, and kept together by the love which it itself has for Him. This rejoicing in virtue is what is meant by making garlands, for the soul and God rejoice together in these virtues bound up as flowers in a garland, in the common love which each bears the other.
2. The flowers are the virtues of the soul; the emeralds are the gifts it has received from God. Then of these flowers and emeralds
3. That is, acquired in youth, which is the early morning of life. They are said to be gathered because the virtues which we acquire in youth are most pleasing to God; because youth is the season when our vices most resist the acquisition of them, and when our natural inclinations are most prone to lose them. Those virtues also are more perfect which we acquire in early youth. This time of our life is the early morning; for as the freshness of the spring morning is more agreeable than any other part of the day, so also are the virtues acquired in our youth more pleasing in the sight of God.
4. By the fresh morning we may understand those acts of love by which we acquire
virtue, and which are more pleasing to God than the fresh morning is to the sons
of men; good works also, wrought in the season of spiritual dryness and hardness;
this is the freshness of the winter morning, and what we then do for God in dryness
of spirit is most precious in His eyes. Then it is that we acquire virtues and graces
abundantly; and what we then acquire with toil and labor is for the most part better,
more perfect and lasting than what we acquire in comfort and spiritual sweetness;
for virtue sends forth its roots in the season of dryness, toil, and trial: as it
is written, “Virtue is made perfect in infirmity.”
5. All the virtues and graces which the soul, and God in it, acquire are as a garland of diverse flowers with which the soul is marvelously adorned as with a vesture of rich embroidery. As material flowers are gathered, and then formed into a garland, so the spiritual flowers of virtues and graces are acquired and set in order in the soul: and when the acquisition is complete, the garland of perfection is complete also. The soul and the Bridegroom rejoice in it, both beautiful, adorned with the garland, as in the state of perfection.
6. These are the garlands which the soul says they will make. That is, it will
wreathe itself with this variety of flowers, with the emeralds of virtues and perfect
gifts, that it may present itself worthily before the face of the King, and be on
an equality with Him, sitting as a queen on His right hand; for it has merited this
by its beauty. Thus David says, addressing himself to Christ: “The queen stood on
Your right hand in vestments of gold, girt with variety.”
7. The soul does not say, “I will make garlands,” nor “You will make them,” but,
“We will make them,” not separately, but both together; because the soul cannot
practice virtues alone, nor acquire them alone, without the help of God; neither
does God alone create virtue in the soul without the soul’s concurrence. Though
it is true, as the Apostle says, that “every best gift, and every perfect gift,
is from above, descending from the Father of lights,”
8. These words may also be fittingly applied to Christ and His Church, which, as His bride, says to Him, “We will make the garlands.” In this application of the words the garlands are the holy souls born to Christ in the Church. Every such soul is by itself a garland adorned with the flowers of virtues and graces, and all of them together a garland for the head of Christ the Bridegroom.
9. We may also understand by these beautiful garlands the crowns formed by Christ
and the Church, of which there are three kinds. The first is formed of the beauty
and white flowers of the virgins, each one with her virginal crown, and forming
altogether one crown for the head of the Bridegroom Christ. The second, of the brilliant
flowers of the holy doctors, each with his crown of doctor, and all together forming
one crown above that of the virgins on the head of Christ. The third is composed
of the purple flowers of the martyrs, each with his own crown of martyrdom, and
all united into one, perfecting that on the head of Christ. Adorned with these garlands
He will be so beautiful, and so lovely to behold, that heaven itself will repeat
the words of the bride in the Canticle, saying: “Go forth, you daughters of Zion,
and see king Solomon in the diadem with which his mother crowned him in the day
of his betrothal, and in the day of the joy of his heart.”
10. The flowering of good works and virtues is the grace and power which they derive from the love of God, without which they not only flower not, but even become dry, and worthless in the eyes of God, though they may be humanly perfect. But if He gives His grace and love they flourish in His love.
11. The hair is the will of the soul, and the love it bears the Beloved. This love
performs the function of the thread that keeps the garland together. For as a thread
binds the flowers of a garland, so loves knits together and sustains virtues in
the soul. “Charity” — that is, love — says the Apostle, “is the bond of perfection.”
12. The soul speaks of one hair, not of many, to show that the will by itself is fixed on God, detached from all other hairs; that is, from strange love. This points out the great price and worth of these garlands of virtues; for when love is single, firmly fixed on God, as here described, the virtues also are entire, perfect, and flowering in the love of God; for the love He bears the soul is beyond all price, and the soul also knows it well.
13. Were I to attempt a description of the beauty of that binding of the flowers
and emeralds together, or of the strength and majesty which their harmonious arrangement
furnishes to the soul, or the beauty and grace of its embroidered vesture, expressions
and words would fail me; for if God says of the evil spirit, “His body is like molten
shields, shut close up with scales pressing upon one another, one is joined to another,
and not so much as any air can come between them”;
14. What a marvelous vision will be that of the bride-soul, when it shall sit
on the right hand of the Bridegroom-King, crowned with graces! “How beautiful are
your steps in shoes, O prince’s daughter!”
NOTE
I BELIEVE I have now shown how the intertwining of the garlands and their lasting
presence in the soul explain the divine union of love which now exists between the
soul and God. The Bridegroom, as He says Himself, is the “flower of the field and
the lily of the valleys,”
2. We may form some conception of it from the love of David and Jonathan, whose
“soul was knit with the soul of David.”
THERE are three things mentioned here. The first is, that the love by which the virtues are bound together is nothing less than a strong love; for in truth it need be so in order to preserve them. The second is, that God is greatly taken by this hair of love, seeing it to be alone and strong. The third is, that God is deeply enamored of the soul, beholding the purity and integrity of its faith.
2. The neck signifies that strength in which, it is said, fluttered the hair of love, strong love, which bound the virtues together. It is not sufficient for the preservation of virtues that love be alone, it must be also strong so that no contrary vice may anywhere destroy the perfection of the garland; for the virtues so are bound up together in the soul by the hair, that if the thread is once broken, all the virtues are lost; for where one virtue is, all are, and where one fails, all fail also. The hair is said to flutter on the neck, because its love of God, without any hindrance whatever, flutters strongly and lightly in the strength of the soul.
3. As the air causes hair to wave and flutter on the neck, so the breath of the Holy Spirit stirs the strong love that it may fly upwards to God; for without this divine wind, which excites the powers of the soul to the practice of divine love, all the virtues the soul may possess become ineffectual and fruitless. The Beloved observed the hair fluttering on the neck — that is, He considered it with particular attention and regard; because strong love is a great attraction for the eyes of God.
4. This shows us that God not only esteems this love, seeing it alone, but also loves it, seeing it strong; for to say that God regards is to say that He loves, and to say that He observes is to say that He esteems what He observes. The word “neck” is repeated in this line, because it, being strong, is the cause why God loves it so much. It is as if the soul said, “You have loved it, seeing it strong without weakness or fear, and without any other love, and flying upwards swiftly and fervently.”
5. Until now God had not looked upon this hair so as to be captivated by it, because He had not seen it alone, separate from the others, withdrawn from other loves, feelings, and affections, which hindered it from fluttering alone on the neck of strength. Afterwards, however, when mortifications and trials, temptations and penance had detached it, and made it strong, so that nothing whatever could break it, then God beholds it, and is taken by it, and binds the flowers of the garlands with it; for it is now so strong that it can keep the virtues united together in the soul.
6. But what these temptations and trials are, how they come, and how far they
reach, that the soul may attain to that strength of love in which God unites it
to Himself, I have described in the “Dark Night,”
7. O joyful wonder! God captive to a hair. The reason of this capture so precious
is that God was pleased to observe the fluttering of the hair on the soul’s neck;
for where God regards He loves. If He in His grace and mercy had not first looked
upon us and loved us,
8. The eye is faith. The soul speaks of but one, and that this has wounded the Beloved. If the faith and trust of the soul in God were not one, without admixture of other considerations, God never could have been Wounded by love. Thus the eye that wounds, and the hair that binds, must be one. So strong is the love of the Bridegroom for the bride, because of her simple faith, that, if the hair of her love binds Him, the eye of her faith imprisons Him so closely as to wound Him through that most tender affection He bears her, which is to the bride a further progress in His love.
9. The Bridegroom Himself speaks in the Canticle of the hair and the eyes, saying
to the bride, “You have wounded My heart, My sister, My bride; you have wounded
My heart with one of your eyes, and with one hair of your neck.”
NOTE
GREAT is the power and courage of love, for God is its prisoner. Blessed is the soul that loves, for it has made a captive of God Who obeys its good pleasure. Such is the nature of love that it makes those who love do what is asked of them, and, on the other hand, without love the utmost efforts will be fruitless, but one hair will bind those that love. The soul, knowing this, and conscious of blessings beyond its merits, in being raised up to so high a degree of love, through the rich endowments of graces and virtues, attributes all to the Beloved, saying:
IT is the nature of perfect love to seek or accept nothing for itself, to attribute nothing to itself, but to refer all to the Beloved. If this is true of earthly love, how much more so of the love of God, the reason of which is so constraining. In the two foregoing stanzas the bride seemed to attribute something to herself; for she said that she would make garlands with her Beloved, and bind them with a hair of her head; that is a great work, and of no slight importance and worth: afterwards she said that she exulted in having captivated Him by a hair, and wounded Him with one of her eyes. All this seems as if she attributed great merits to herself. Now, however, she explains her meaning, and removes the wrong impression with great care and fear, lest any merit should be attributed to herself, and therefore less to God than His due, and less also than she desired. She now refers all to Him, and at the same time gives Him thanks, saying that the cause of His being the captive of the hair of her love, and of His being wounded by the eye of her faith, was His mercy in looking lovingly upon her, thereby rendering her lovely and pleasing in His sight; and that the loveliness and worth she received from Him merited His love, and made her worthy to adore her Beloved, and to bring forth good works worthy of His love and favor.
2. That is, with loving affection, for I have already said, that where God regards there He loves.
3. The eyes of the Bridegroom signify here His merciful divinity, which, mercifully inclined to the soul, imprints or infuses in it the love and grace by which He makes it beautiful, and so elevates it that He makes it the partaker of His divinity. When the soul sees to what height of dignity God has raised it, it says:
4. To love again is to love much; it is more than simple love, it is a twofold love, and for two reasons. Here the soul explains the two motives of the Bridegroom’s love; He not only loved it because captivated by the hair, but He loved it again, because He was wounded with one of its eyes. The reason why He loved it so deeply is that He would, when He looked upon it, give it the grace to please Him, endowing it with the hair of love, and animating with His charity the faith of the eye. And therefore the soul says:
5. To say that God shows favor to the soul is to say that He renders it worthy and
capable of His love. It is therefore as if the soul said, “Having shown Your favor
to me, worthy pledges of Your love, You have therefore loved me again”; that is,
“You have given me grace upon grace”; or, in the words of St. John, “grace for grace”;
6. If we could clearly understand this truth, we must keep in mind that, as God loves nothing beside Himself, so loves He nothing more than Himself, because He loves all things with reference to Himself. Thus love is the final cause, and God loves nothing for what it is in itself. Consequently, when we say that God loves such a soul, we say, in effect, that He brings it in a manner to Himself, making it His equal, and thus it is He loves that soul in Himself with that very love with which He loves Himself. Every good work, therefore, of the soul in God is meritorious of God’s love, because the soul in His favor, thus exalted, merits God Himself in every act.
7. That is, “By the grace and favor which the eyes of Your compassion have wrought, when You looked upon me, rendering me pleasing in Your sight and worthy of Your regard.”
8. That is: “The powers of my soul, O my Bridegroom, the eyes by which I can see You, although once fallen and miserable in the vileness of their mean occupations, have merited to look upon You.” To look upon God is to do good works in His grace. Thus the powers of the soul merit in adoring because they adore in the grace of God, in which every act is meritorious. Enlightened and exalted by grace, they adored what in Him they saw, and what they saw not before, because of their blindness and meanness. What, then, have they now seen? The greatness of His power, His overflowing sweetness, infinite goodness, love, and compassion, innumerable benefits received at His hands, as well now when so near Him as before when far away. The eyes of the soul now merit to adore, and by adoring merit, for they are beautiful and pleasing to the Bridegroom. Before they were unworthy, not only to adore or behold Him, but even to look upon Him at all: great indeed is the stupidity and blindness of a soul without the grace of God.
9. It is a melancholy thing to see how far a soul departs from its duty when it is not enlightened by the love of God. For being bound to acknowledge these and other innumerable favors which it has every moment received at His hands, temporal as well as spiritual, and to worship and serve Him unceasingly with all its faculties, it not only does not do so, but is unworthy even to think of Him; nor does it make any account of Him whatever. Such is the misery of those who are living, or rather who are dead, in sin.
NOTE
FOR the better understanding of this and of what follows, we must keep in mind
that the regard of God benefits the soul in four ways: it cleanses, adorns, enriches,
and enlightens it, as the sun, when it shines, dries, warms, beautifies, and brightens
the earth. When God has visited the soul in the three latter ways, whereby He renders
it pleasing to Himself, He remembers its former uncleanness and sin no more: as
it is written, “All the iniquities that he has wrought, I will not remember.”
God having once done away with our sin and uncleanness, He will look upon them
no more; nor will He withhold His mercy because of them, for He never punishes twice
for the same sin, according to the words of the prophet: “There shall not rise a
double affliction.”
Still, though God forgets the sin He has once forgiven, we are not for that reason
to forget it ourselves; for the Wise Man says, “Be not without fear about sin forgiven.”
The soul, therefore, calling to mind all the mercies it has received, and seeing
itself united to the Bridegroom in such dignity, rejoices greatly with joy, thanksgiving,
and love. In this it is helped exceedingly by the recollection of its former condition,
which was so mean and filthy that it not only did not deserve that God should look
upon it, but was unworthy that He should even utter its name, as He says by the
mouth of the prophet David: “Nor will I be mindful of their names by My lips.”
THE soul now is becoming bold, and respects itself, because of the gifts and endowments which the Beloved has bestowed upon it. It recognizes that these things, while itself is worthless and underserving, are at least means of merit, and consequently it ventures to say to the Beloved, “Do not disregard me now, or despise me”; for if before it deserved contempt because of the filthiness of its sin, and the meanness of its nature, now that He has once looked upon it, and thereby adorned it with grace and beauty, He may well look upon it a second time and increase its grace and beauty. That He has once done so, when the soul did not deserved it, and had no attractions for Him, is reason enough why He should do so again and again.
2. The soul does not say this because it desires in any way to be esteemed — for contempt and insult are of great price, and occasions of joy to the soul that truly loves God — but because it acknowledges that in itself it merits nothing else, were it not for the gifts and graces it has received from God, as it appears from the words that follow.
3. “If, before You graciously looked upon me You found me in my filthiness, black with imperfections and sins, and naturally mean and vile,”
4. After once looking upon me, and taking away my swarthy complexion, defiled by sin and disagreeable to look upon, when You rendered me lovely for the first time, You may well look upon me now — that is, now I may be looked on and deserve to be regarded, and thereby to receive further favors at Your hands. For Your eyes, when they first looked upon me, not only took away my swarthy complexion, but rendered me also worthy of Your regard; for in Your look of love, —
5. The two preceding lines are a commentary on the words of St. John, “grace for
grace,”
6. Now a soul which in the eyes of God is thus exalted in grace, honorable and lovely, is for that reason an object of His unutterable love. If He loved that soul before it was in a state of grace, for His own sake, He loves it now, when in a state of grace, not only for His own sake, but also for itself. Thus enamored of its beauty, through its affections and good works, now that it is never without them, He bestows upon it continually further grace and love, and the more honorable and exalted He renders that soul, the more is He captivated by it, and the greater His love for it.
7. God Himself sets this truth before us, saying to His people, by the mouth
of the prophet, “since you became honorable in My eyes, and glorious, I have loved
you.”
8. Who can measure the greatness of the soul’s exaltation when God is pleased
with it? No language, no imagination is sufficient for this; for in truth God does
this as God, to show that it is He who does it. The dealings of God with such a
soul may in some degree be understood; but only in this way, namely, that He gives
more to him who has more, and that His gifts are multiplied in proportion to the
previous endowments of the soul. This is what He teaches us Himself in the Gospel,
saying; “He that has to him shall be given, and he shall abound: but he that has
not, from him shall be taken away even that which he has.”
9. Thus the talent of that servant, not then in favor with his lord, was taken
from him and given to another who had gained others, so that the latter might have
all, together with the favor of his lord.
10. Well may You then, O God, gaze upon and prize that soul which You regard,
for You have made it precious by looking upon it, and given it graces which in Your
sight are precious, and by which You are captivated. That soul, therefore, deserves
that You should regard it not only once, but often, seeing that You have once looked
upon it; for so is it written in the book of Esther by the Holy Spirit: “This honor
is he worthy of, whom the king has a mind to honor.”
NOTE
THE gifts of love which the Bridegroom bestows on the soul in this state are
inestimable; the praises and endearing expressions of divine love which pass so
frequently between them are beyond all utterance. The soul is occupied in praising
Him, and in giving Him thanks; and He in exalting, praising, and thanking the soul,
as we see in the Canticle, where He thus speaks to the bride: “Behold, you are fair,
O My love, behold, you are fair; your eyes are as those of doves.” The bride replies:
“Behold, you are fair, my Beloved, and comely.”
2. In the previous stanza the soul despised itself, and said it was swarthy and unclean, praising Him for His beauty and grace, Who, by looking upon the soul, rendered it gracious and beautiful. He, Whose way it is to exalt the humble, fixing His eyes upon the soul, as He was entreated to do, praises it in the following stanza. He does not call it swarthy, as the soul calls itself, but He addresses it as His white dove, praising it for its good dispositions, those of a dove and a turtle-dove.
IT is the Bridegroom Himself who now speaks. He celebrates the purity of the soul in its present state, the rich rewards it has gained, in having prepared itself, and labored to come to Him. He also speaks of its blessedness in having found the Bridegroom in this union, and of the fulfillment of all its desires, the delight and joy it has in Him now that all the trials of life and time are over.
2. He calls the soul, on account of its whiteness and purity — effects of the grace
it has received at the hands of God — a dove, “the little white dove,” for this
is the term He applies to it in the Canticle, to mark its simplicity, its natural
gentleness, and its loving contemplation. The dove is not only simple, and gentle
without gall, but its eyes are also clear, full of love. The Bridegroom, therefore,
to point out in it this character or loving contemplation, wherein it looks upon
God, says of it that its eyes are those of a dove: “Your eyes are dove’s eyes.”
3. Here the Bridegroom compares the soul to the dove of Noah’s ark, the going and returning of which is a figure of what befalls the soul. For as the dove went forth from the ark, and returned because it found no rest for its feet on account of the waters of the deluge, until the time when it returned with the olive branch in its mouth — a sign of the mercy of God in drying the waters which had covered the earth — so the soul went forth at its creation out of the ark of God’s omnipotence, and having traversed the deluge of its sins and imperfections, and finding no rest for its desires, flew and returned on the air of the longings of its love to the ark of its Creator’s bosom; but it only effected an entrance when God had dried the waters of its imperfections. Then it returned with the olive branch, that is, the victory over all things by His merciful compassion, to this blessed and perfect recollection in the bosom of the Beloved, not only triumphant over all its enemies, but also rewarded for its merits; for both the one and the other are symbolized by the olive bough. Thus the dove-soul returns to the ark of God not only white and pure as it went forth when He created it, but with the olive branch of reward and peace obtained by the conquest of itself.
4. The Bridegroom calls the soul the turtle-dove, because when it is seeking after the Beloved it is like the turtle-dove when it cannot find its desired mate. It is said of the turtle-dove, when it cannot find its mate, that it will not sits on the green boughs, nor drink of the cool refreshing waters, nor retire to the shade, nor mingle with companions; but when it finds its mate then it does all this.
5. Such, too, is the condition of the soul, and necessarily, if it is to attain to union with the Bridegroom. The soul’s love and anxiety must be such that it cannot rest on the green boughs of any joy, nor drink of the waters of this world’s honor and glory, nor recreate itself with any temporal consolation, nor shelter itself in the shade of created help and protection: it must repose nowhere, it must avoid the society of all its inclinations, mourn in its loneliness, until it shall find the Bridegroom to its perfect contentment.
6. And because the soul, before it attained to this estate, sought the Beloved
in great love, and was satisfied with nothing short of Him, the Bridegroom here
speaks of the end of its labors, and the fulfillment of its desires, saying: “Now
the turtle-dove its desired mate on the green banks has found.” That is: Now the
bride-soul sits on the green bough, rejoicing in her Beloved, drinks of the clear
waters of the highest contemplation and of the wisdom of God; is refreshed by the
consolations it finds in Him, and is also sheltered under the shadow of His favor
and protection, which she had so earnestly desired. There is she deliciously and
divinely comforted, refreshed and nourished, as she says in the, Canticle: “I sat
down under His shadow Whom I desired, and His fruit was sweet to my palate.”
NOTE
THE Bridegroom proceeds to speak of the satisfaction which He derives from the
happiness which the bride has found in that solitude wherein she desired to live
— a stable peace and unchangeable good. For when the bride is confirmed in the
tranquillity of her soul and solitary love of the Bridegroom, she reposes so sweetly
in the love of God, and God also in her, that she requires no other means or masters
to guide her in the way of God; for God Himself is now her light and guide, fulfilling
in her what He promised by the mouth of Hosea, saying: “I will lead her into the
wilderness, and I will speak to her heart.”
IN this stanza the Bridegroom is doing two things: one is, He is praising the solitude in which the soul once lived, for it was the means whereby it found the Beloved, and rejoiced in Him, away from all its former anxieties and troubles. For, as the soul abode in solitude, abandoning all created help and consolation, in order to obtain the fellowship and union of the Beloved, it deserved thereby possession of the peace of solitude in the Beloved, in Whom it reposes alone, undisturbed by any anxieties.
2. The second is this: the Bridegroom is saying that, inasmuch as the soul has desired to be alone, far away, for His sake, from all created things, He has been enamored of it because of its loneliness, has taken care of it, held it in His arms, fed it with all good things, and guided it to the deep things of God. He does not merely say that He is now the soul’s guide, but that He is its only guide, without any intermediate help, either of angels or of men, either of forms or of figures; for the soul in this solitude has attained to true liberty of spirit, and is wholly detached from all subordinate means.
3. The turtle-dove, that is, the soul, lived in solitude before she found the Beloved in this state of union; for the soul that longs after God derives no consolation from any other companionship, — yes, until it finds Him everything does but increase its solitude.
4. The previous solitude of the soul was its voluntary privation of all the comforts
of this world, for the sake of the Bridegroom — as in the instance of the turtledove
— its striving after perfection, and acquiring that perfect solitude wherein it
attains to union with the Word, and in consequence to complete refreshment and repose.
This is what is meant by “nest”; and the words of the stanza may be thus explained:
“In that solitude, wherein the bride formerly lived, tried by afflictions and troubles,
because she was not perfect, there, in that solitude, has she found refreshment
and rest, because she has found perfect rest in God.” This, too, is the spiritual
sense of these words of the Psalmist: “The sparrow has found herself a house, and
the turtle a nest for herself, where she may lay her young ones;
5. In the solitude of perfect detachment from all things, wherein it lives alone
with God — there He guides it, moves it, and elevates it to divine things. He guides
the understanding in the perception of divine things, because it is now detached
from all strange and contrary knowledge, and is alone. He moves the will freely
to love Himself, because it is now alone, disencumbered from all other affections.
He fills the memory with divine knowledge, because that also is now alone, emptied
of all imaginations and fancies. For the instant the soul clears and empties its
faculties of all earthly objects, and from attachments to higher things, keeping
them in solitude, God immediately fills them with the invisible and divine; it being
God Himself Who guides it in this solitude. St. Paul says of the perfect, that they
“are led by the Spirit of God,”
6. That is, the Beloved not only guides the soul in its solitude, but it is He alone Who works in it directly and immediately. It is of the nature of the soul’s union with God in the spiritual marriage that God works directly, and communicates Himself immediately, not by the ministry of angels or by the help of natural capacities. For the exterior and interior senses, all created things, and even the soul itself, contribute very little towards the reception of those great supernatural favors which God bestows in this state; indeed, inasmuch as they do not fall within the cognizance of natural efforts, ability and application, God effects them alone.
7. The reason is, that He finds the soul alone in its solitude, and therefore will not give it another companion, nor will He entrust His work to any other than Himself.
8. There is a certain fitness in this; for the soul having abandoned all things, and passed through all the ordinary means, rising above them to God, God Himself becomes the guide, and the way to Himself. The soul in solitude, detached from all things, having now ascended above all things, nothing now can profit or help it to ascend higher except the Bridegroom Word Himself, Who, because enamored of the bride, will Himself alone bestow these graces on the soul. And so He says:
9. That is, the love of the bride; for the Bridegroom not only loves greatly the solitude of the soul, but is also wounded with love of her, because the soul would abide in solitude and detachment, on account of its being itself wounded with love of Him. He will not, therefore, leave it alone; for being wounded with love because of the soul’s solitude on His account, and seeing that nothing else can satisfy it, He comes Himself to be alone its guide, drawing it to, and absorbing it in, Himself. But He would not have done so if He had not found it in this spiritual solitude.
NOTE
IT is a strange characteristic of persons in love that they take a much greater
pleasure in their loneliness than in the company of others. For if they meet together
in the presence of others with whom they need have no intercourse, and from whom
they have nothing to conceal, and if those others neither address them nor interfere
with them, yet the very fact of their presence is sufficient to rob the lovers of
all pleasure in their meeting. The cause of this lies in the fact that love is the
union of two persons, who will not communicate with each other if they are not alone.
And now the soul, having reached the summit of perfection, and liberty of spirit
in God, all the resistance and contradictions of the flesh being subdued, has no
other occupation or employment than indulgence in the joys of its intimate love
of the Bridegroom. It is written of holy Tobit, after the trials of his life were
over, that God restored his sight, and that “the rest of his life was in joy.”
2. The prophet Isaiah says of the soul which, having been tried in the works
of perfection has arrived at the goal desired: “Your light shall arise up in darkness,
and your darkness shall be as the noonday. And the Lord will give you rest always,
and will fill your soul with brightness, and deliver your bones, and you shall be
as a watered garden and as a fountain of water whose waters shall not fail. And
the deserts of the world shall be built in you: you shall raise up the foundations
of generation and generation; and you shall be called the builder of the hedges,
turning the paths into rest. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing
your will in My holy day, and call the Sabbath delicate, and the Holy of our Lord
glorious, and glorify Him while you do not your own ways, and your will be not found,
to speak a word: then shall you be delighted in the Lord, and I will lift you up
above the heights of the earth, and will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob
your father,”
THE perfect union of love between itself and God being now effected, the soul longs to occupy itself with those things that belong to love. It is the soul which is now speaking, making three petitions to the Beloved. In the first place, it asks for the joy and sweetness of love, saying, “Let us rejoice.” In the second place, it prays to be made like Him, saying, “Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty.” In the third place, it begs to be admitted to the knowledge of His secrets, saying, “Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.”
2. That is, in the sweetness of our love; not only in that sweetness of ordinary union, but also in that which flows from active and affective love, whether in the will by an act of affection, or outwardly in good works which tend to the service of the Beloved. For love, as I have said, where it is firmly rooted, ever runs after those joys and delights which are the acts of exterior and interior love. All this the soul does that it may be made like to the Beloved.
3. “Let us so act, that, by the practice of this love, we may come to see ourselves in Your beauty in everlasting life.” That is: “Let me be so transformed in Your beauty, that, being alike in beauty, we may see ourselves both in Your beauty; having Your beauty, so that, one beholding the other, each may see his own beauty in the other, the beauty of both being Yours only, and mine absorbed in it. And thus I shall see You in Your beauty, and myself in Your beauty, and You shall see me in Your beauty; and I shall see myself in You in Your beauty, and You Yourself in me in Your beauty; so shall I seem to be Yourself in Your beauty, and You myself in Your beauty; my beauty shall be Yours, Yours shall be mine, and I shall be You in it, and You myself in Your own beauty; for Your beauty will be my beauty, and so we shall see, each the other, in Your beauty.”
4. This is the adoption of the sons of God, who may truly say what the Son Himself
says to the Eternal Father: “All My things are Yours, and Yours are Mine,”
5. That is, to the morning and essential knowledge of God,
6. That is, to the evening knowledge of God, to the knowledge of Him in His creatures, in His works, and in His marvelous laws. This is signified by the expression “hill,” because it is a kind of knowledge lower than the other. The soul prays for both when it says “to the mountain and the hill.”
7. When the soul says, “Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty to the mountain,” its meaning is, “Transform me, and make me like the beauty of the Divine Wisdom, the Word, the Son of God.” When it says “to the hill,” the meaning is, “Instruct me in the beauty of this lower knowledge, which is manifest in Your creatures and mysterious works.” This also is the beauty of the Son of God, with which the soul desires to shine.
8. But the soul cannot see itself in the beauty of God if it is not transformed
in His wisdom, wherein all things are seen and possessed, whether in heaven or in
earth. It was to this mountain and to this hill the bride longed to come when she
said, “I will go to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.”
9. This is the wisdom and knowledge of God, which cleanse the understanding, and detach it from all accidents and fancies, and which clear it of the mist of ignorance. The soul is ever influenced by this desire of perfectly and clearly understanding the divine verities, and the more it loves the more it desires to penetrate them, and hence the third petition which it makes:
10. Into the depths of God’s marvelous works and profound judgments. Such is their
multitude and variety, that they may be called a thicket. They are so full of wisdom
and mystery, that we may not only call them a thicket, but we may even apply to
them the words of David: “The mountain of God is a rich mountain, a mountain curdled
as cheese, a rich mountain.”
11. But the soul longs to enter this thicket and incomprehensibility of His judgments,
for it is moved by that longing for a deeper knowledge of them. That knowledge is
an inestimable delight, transcending all understanding. David, speaking of the sweetness
of them, says: “The judgments of our Lord are true, justified in themselves, to
be desired above gold and many precious stones, and sweeter than honey and the honey-comb.
For Your servant keeps them.”
12. Hence, also, the thicket, which the soul desires to enter, may be fittingly understood as signifying the great and many trials and tribulations which the soul longs for, because suffering is most sweet and most profitable to it, inasmuch as it is the way by which it enters more and more into the thicket of the delicious wisdom of God. The most pure suffering leads to the most pure and the deepest knowledge, and consequently to the purest and highest joy, for that is the issue of the deepest knowledge. Thus, the soul, not satisfied with ordinary suffering, says, “Let us enter into the heart of the thicket,” even the anguish of death, that I may see God.
13. Job, desiring to suffer that he might see God, thus speaks “Who will grant
that my request may come, and that God may give me what I look for? And that He
that has begun may destroy me, that He may let loose His hand and cut me off? And
that this may be my comfort, that afflicting me with sorrow, He spare not.”
14. For this cause it was that St. Paul admonished the Ephesians not to faint
in their tribulations, but to take courage: “That being rooted and founded in charity,
you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length,
and height, and depth; to know also the charity of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge,
that you may be filled to all the fullness of God.”
NOTE
ONE of the principal reasons why the soul desires to be released and to be with
Christ is that it may see Him face to face, and penetrate to the depths of His ways
and the eternal mysteries of His incarnation, which is not the least part of its
blessedness; for in the Gospel of St. John He, addressing the Father, said: “Now
this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
Whom You have sent.”
ONE of the reasons which most influence the soul to desire to enter into the “thicket” of the wisdom of God, and to have a more intimate knowledge of the beauty of the divine wisdom, is, as I have said, that it may unite the understanding with God in the knowledge of the mysteries of the Incarnation, as of all His works the highest and most full of sweetness, and the most delicious knowledge. And here the bride therefore says, that after she has entered in within the divine wisdom — that is, the spiritual marriage, which is now and will be in glory, seeing God face to face — her soul united with the divine wisdom, the Son of God, she will then understand the deep mysteries of God and Man, which are the highest wisdom hidden in God. They, that is, the bride and the Bridegroom, will enter in — the soul engulfed and absorbed — and both together will have the fruition of the joy which springs from the knowledge of mysteries, and attributes and power of God which are revealed in those mysteries, such as His justice, His mercy, wisdom, power, and love.
2. “This rock is Christ,” as we learn from St. Paul.
3. Notwithstanding the marvelous mysteries which holy doctors have discovered,
and holy souls have understood in this life, many more remain behind. There are
in Christ great depths to be fathomed, for He is a rich mine, with many recesses
full of treasures, and however deeply we may descend we shall never reach the end,
for in every recess new veins of new treasures abound in all directions: “In Whom,”
according to the Apostle, “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
4. Thus God said to Moses, when he asked to see His glory, “Man shall not see
Me and live.” God, however, said that He would show him all that could be revealed
in this life; and so He set Moses “in a hole of the rock,” which is Christ, where
he might see His “back parts”;
5. The soul longs to enter in earnest into these caverns of Christ, that it may
be absorbed, transformed, and inebriated in the love and knowledge of His mysteries,
hiding itself in the bosom of the Beloved. It is into these caverns that He invites
the bride, in the Canticle, to enter, saying: “Arise, My love, My beautiful one,
and come; My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall.”
6. That is, in the knowledge of the divine mysteries. The bride does not say “I will enter” alone, which seems the most fitting — seeing that the Bridegroom has no need to enter in again — but “we will enter,” that is, the Bridegroom and the bride, to show that this is not the work of the bride, but of the Bridegroom with her. Moreover, inasmuch as God and the soul are now united in the state of spiritual marriage, the soul does nothing of itself without God. To say “we will enter,” is as much as to say, “there shall we transform ourselves” — that is, “I shall be transformed in You through the love of Your divine and sweet judgments”: for in the knowledge of the predestination of the just and in the foresight of the wicked, wherein the Father prevented the just in the benedictions of His sweetness in Jesus Christ His Son, the soul is transformed in a most exalted and perfect way in the love of God according to this knowledge, giving thanks to the Father, and loving Him again and again with great sweetness and delight, for the sake of Jesus Christ His Son. This the soul does in union with Christ and together with Him. The delight flowing from this act of praise is ineffably sweet, and the soul speaks of it in the words that follow:
7. The pomegranates here are the mysteries of Christ and the judgments of the wisdom
of God; His power and attributes, the knowledge of which we have from these mysteries;
and they are infinite. For as pomegranates have many grains in their round orb,
so in each one of the attributes and judgments and power of God is a multitude of
admirable arrangements and marvelous works contained within the sphere of power
and mystery, appertaining to those works. Consider the round form of the pomegranate;
for each pomegranate signifies some one power and attribute of God, which power
or attribute is God Himself, symbolized here by the circular figure, which has neither
beginning not end. It was in the contemplation of the judgments and mysteries of
the wisdom of God, which are infinite, that the bride said, “His belly is of ivory
set with sapphires.”
8. The wine of the pomegranates which the bride says that she and the Bridegroom will taste is the fruition and joy of the love of God which overflows the soul in the understanding and knowledge of His mysteries. For as the many grains of the pomegranate pressed together give forth but one wine, so all the marvels and magnificence of God, infused into the soul, issue in but one fruition and joy of love, which is the drink of the Holy Spirit, and which the soul offers at once to God the Word, its Bridegroom, with great tenderness of love.
9. This divine drink the bride promised to the Bridegroom if He would lead her
into this deep knowledge: “There You shall teach me,” says the bride, “and I will
give You a cup of spiced wine, and new wine of my pomegranates.”
NOTE
IN the two previous stanzas the bride sung of those good things which the Bridegroom is to give her in everlasting bliss, namely, her transformation in the beauty of created and uncreated wisdom, and also in the beauty of the union of the Word with flesh, wherein she shall behold His face as well as His back. Accordingly two things are set before us in the following stanza. The first is the way in which the soul tastes of the divine wine of the pomegranates; the second is the soul’s putting before the Bridegroom the glory of its predestination. And though these two things are spoken of separately, one after the other, they are both involved in the one essential glory of the soul.
THE reason why the soul longed to enter the caverns was that it might attain to the consummation of the love of God, the object of its continual desires; that is, that it might love God with the pureness and perfection with which He has loved it, so that it might thereby requite His love. Hence in the present stanza the bride says to the Bridegroom that He will there show her what she had always aimed at in all her actions, namely, that He would show her how to love Him perfectly, as He has loved her. And, secondly, that He will give her that essential glory for which He has predestined her from the day of His eternity.
2. That which the soul aims at is equality in love with God, the object of its natural and supernatural desire. He who loves cannot be satisfied if he does not feel that he loves as much as he is loved. And when the soul sees that in the transformation in God, such as is possible in this life, notwithstanding the immensity of its love, it cannot equal the perfection of that love with which God loves it, it desires the clear transformation of glory in which it shall equal the perfection of love with which it is itself beloved of God; it desires, I say, the clear transformation of glory in which it shall equal His love.
3. For though in this high state, which the soul reaches on earth, there is a
real union of the will, yet it cannot reach that perfection and strength of love
which it will possess in the union of glory; seeing that then, according to the
Apostle, the soul will know God as it is known of Him: “Then I shall know even as
I am known.”
4. Thus the soul loves God with the will and strength of God Himself, being made one with that very strength of love with which itself is loved of God. This strength is of the Holy Spirit, in Whom the soul is there transformed. He is given to the soul to strengthen its love; ministering to it, and supplying in it, because of its transformation in glory, that which is defective in it. In the perfect transformation, also, of the state of spiritual marriage, such as is possible on earth, in which the soul is all clothed in grace, the soul loves in a certain way in the Holy Spirit, Who is given to it in that transformation.
5. We are to observe here that the bride does not say, “There will You give me Your love,” though that is true — for that means only that God will love her — but that He will there show her how she is to love Him with that perfection at which she aims, because there in giving her His love He will at the same time show her how to love Him as He loves her. For God not only teaches the soul to love Himself purely, with a disinterested love, as He has loved us, but He also enables it to love Him with that strength with which He loves the soul, transforming it in His love, wherein He bestows upon it His own power, so that it may love Him. It is as if He put an instrument in its hand, taught it the use thereof, and played upon it together with the soul. This is showing the soul how it is to love, and at the same time endowing it with the capacity of loving.
6. The soul is not satisfied until it reaches this point, neither would it be
satisfied even in heaven, unless it felt, as St. Thomas teaches,
7. What He will give is the essential glory which consists in the vision of God. Before proceeding further it is requisite to solve a question which arises here, namely, Why is it, seeing that essential glory consists in the vision of God, and not in loving Him, the soul says that its longing is for His love, and not for the essential glory? Why is it that the soul begins the stanza with referring to His love, and then introduces the subject of the essential glory afterwards, as if it were something of less importance?
8. There are two reasons for this. The first is this: As the whole aim of the soul is love, the seat of which is in the will, the property of which is to give and not to receive — the property of the understanding, the subject of essential glory, being to receive and not to give — to the soul inebriated with love the first consideration is not the essential glory which God will bestow upon it, but the entire surrender of itself to Him in true love, without any regard to its own advantage.
9. The second reason is that the second object is included in the first, and has been taken for granted in the previous stanzas, it being impossible to attain to the perfect love of God without the perfect vision of Him. The question is solved by the first reason, for the soul renders to God by love that which is His due, but with the understanding it receives from Him and does not give.
10. I now resume the explanation of the stanza, and inquire what day is meant by the “other day,” and what is it that God then gave the soul, and what that is which it prays to receive afterwards in glory? By “other day” is meant the day of the eternity of God, which is other than the day of time. In that day of eternity God predestined the soul to glory, and determined the degree of glory which He would give it and freely gave from the beginning before He created it. This now, in a manner, so truly belongs to the soul that no event or accident, high or low, can ever take it away, for the soul will enjoy for ever that for which God had predestined it from all eternity.
11. This is that which He gave it “the other day”; that which the soul longs
now to possess visibly in glory. And what is that which He gave it? That what “eye
has not seen nor ear has heard, neither has it ascended into the heart of man.”
12. But that I may not leave the subject without saying something further concerning
it, I will repeat what Christ has said of it in the Revelation of St. John, in many
terms, phrases, and comparisons, because a single word once uttered cannot describe
it, for there is much still unsaid, notwithstanding all that Christ has spoken at
seven different times. “To him that overcomes,” says He, “I will give to eat of
the tree of life, which is in the paradise of My God.”
13. This also is insufficient, and so He speaks again more obscurely, but explaining
it more: “To him that overcomes I will give the hidden manna, and will give him
a white counter, and on the counter a new name written which no man knows but he
that receives it.”
14. Still, all this falls short. He speaks of it in words of unutterable majesty
and grandeur: “He that shall overcome I will make Him a pillar in the temple of
My God, and he shall go out no more; and I will write upon him the name of My God,
and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem which descends out of heaven
from My God, and My new name.”
15. These are the words of the Son of God; all of which tend to describe that which was given to the soul. The words correspond most accurately with it, but still they do not explain it, because it involves infinite good. The noblest expressions befit it, but none of them reach it, no, not all together.
16. Let us now see whether David has said anything of it. In one of the
Psalms he says, “O how great is the multitude of your sweetness, O Lord, which You
have hidden for them that fear You.”
17. That is, “That weight of glory to which You predestined me, O my Bridegroom, in the day of Your eternity, when it was Your good pleasure to decree my creation, You will then give me in my day of my betrothal and of my nuptials, in my day of the joy of my heart, when, released from the burden of the flesh, led into the deep caverns of Your bridal chamber and gloriously transformed in You, we drink the wine of the sweet pomegranates.”
NOTE
BUT inasmuch as the soul, in the state of spiritual marriage, of which I am now
speaking, cannot but know something of this “that,” seeing that because of its transformation
in God something of it must be experienced by it, it will not omit to say something
on the subject, the pledges and signs of which it is conscious of in itself, as
it is written: “Who can withhold the words He has conceived?”
THE soul refers here, under five different expressions, to that which the Bridegroom is to give it in the beatific transformation. 1. The aspiration of the Holy Spirit of God after it, and its own aspiration after God. 2. Joyous praise of God in the fruition of Him. 3. The knowledge of creatures and the order of them. 4. The pure and clear contemplation of the divine essence. 5. Perfect transformation in the infinite love of God.
2. This is a certain faculty which God will there give the soul in the communication of the Holy Spirit, Who, like one breathing, raises the soul by His divine aspiration, informs it, strengthens it, so that it too may breathe in God with the same aspiration of love which the Father breathes with the Son, and the Son with the Father, which is the Holy Spirit Himself, Who is breathed into the soul in the Father and the Son in that transformation so as to unite it to Himself; for the transformation will not be true and perfect if the soul is not transformed in the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity in a clear manifest degree. This breathing of the Holy Spirit in the soul, whereby God transforms it in Himself, is to the soul a joy so deep, so exquisite, and so grand that no mortal tongue can describe it, no human understanding, as such, conceive it in any degree; for even that which passes in the soul with respect to the communication which takes place in its transformation wrought in this life cannot be described, because the soul united with God and transformed in Him breathes in God that very divine aspiration which God breathes Himself in the soul when it is transformed in Him.
3. In the transformation which takes place in this life, this breathing of God
in the soul, and of the soul in God, is of most frequent occurrence, and the source
of the most exquisite delight of love to the soul, but not however in the clear
and manifest degree which it will have in the life to come. This, in my opinion,
is what St. Paul referred to when he said: “Because you are sons, God has sent the
Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father.”
4. Nor is it to be thought possible that the soul should be capable of so great a thing as that it should breathe in God as God in it, in the way of participation. For granting that God has bestowed upon it so great a favor as to unite it to the most Holy Trinity, whereby it becomes like God, and God by participation, is it altogether incredible that it should exercise the faculties of its understanding, perform its acts of knowledge and of love, or, to speak more accurately, should have it all done in the Holy Trinity together with It, as the Holy Trinity itself? This, however, takes place by communication and participation, God Himself effecting it in the soul, for this is “to be transformed in the Three Persons” in power, wisdom, and love, and herein it is that the soul becomes like God, Who, that it might come to this, created it to His own image and likeness.
5. How this can be so cannot be explained in any other way than by showing how
the Son of God has raised us to so high a state, and merited for us the “power to
be made the sons of God.”
6. We are not to suppose from this that our Lord prayed that the saints might become one in essence and nature, as the Father and the Son are; but that they might become one in the union of love as the Father and the Son are one in the oneness of love. Souls have by participation that very God which the Son has by nature, and are therefore really gods by participation like unto God and of His society.
7. St. Peter speaks of this as follows: “Grace to you and peace be accomplished
in the knowledge of God, and Christ Jesus our Lord; as all things of His divine
power, which pertain to life and godliness, are given us by the knowledge of Him
Who has called us by His own proper glory and virtue, by Whom He has given us most
great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine
nature.”
8. O souls created for this and called to this, what are you doing? What are your occupations? Your aim is meanness, and your enjoyments misery. Oh, wretched blindness of the children of Adam, blind to so great a light, and deaf to so clear a voice; you do not see that, while seeking after greatness and glory, you are miserable and contemptible, ignorant, and unworthy of blessings so great. I now proceed to the second expression which the soul has made use of to describe that which He gave it.
9. Out of this “breathing of the air” comes the sweet voice of the Beloved addressing Himself to the soul, in which the soul sends forth its own sweet song of joy to Him. Both are meant by the song of the nightingale. As the song of the nightingale is heard in the spring of the year, when the cold, and rain, and changes of winter are past, filling the ear with melody, and the mind with joy; so, in the true intercourse and transformation of love, which takes place in this life, the bride, now protected and delivered from all trials and changes of the world, detached, and free from the imperfections, sufferings, and darkness both of mind and body, becomes conscious of a new spring in liberty, largeness, and joy of spirit, in which she hears the sweet voice of the Bridegroom, Who is her sweet nightingale, renewing and refreshing the very substance of her soul, now prepared for the journey of everlasting life.
10. That voice is sweet to her ears, and calls her sweetly, as it is written:
“Arise, make haste, My love, My dove, My beautiful one, and come. For winter is
now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land, the
time of pruning is come: the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
11. It is for this that the Beloved sings, that the bride in unison with Him
may sing to God; this is the aim and desire of the Bridegroom, that the soul should
sing with the spirit joyously to God; and this is what He asks of the bride in the
Canticle: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come; my dove in the clefts of
the rock, in the hollow places of the wall, show me your face, let your voice sound
in my ears.”
12. The ears of God signify the desire He has that the soul should sing in perfect
joy. And that this song may be perfect, the Bridegroom bids the soul to send it
forth, and to let it sound in the clefts of the rock, that is, in the transformation
which is the fruit of the mysteries of Christ, of which I spoke just now.
13. “Your voice is sweet,”
14. This is the third thing which the Bridegroom is to give the soul. The grove, because it contains many plants and animals, signifies God as the Creator and Giver of life to all creatures, which have their being and origin from Him, reveal Him and make Him known as the Creator. The beauty of the grove, which the soul prays for, is not only the grace, wisdom, and loveliness which flow from God over all created things, whether in heaven or on earth, but also the beauty of the mutual harmony and wise arrangement of the inferior creation, and the higher also, and of the mutual relations of both. The knowledge of this gives the soul great joy and delight. The fourth request is:
15. That is, contemplation, in which the soul desires to behold the grove. It is called night, because contemplation is dim; and that is the reason why it is also called mystical theology — that is, the secret or hidden wisdom of God, where, without the sound of words, or the intervention of any bodily or spiritual sense, as it were in silence and in repose, in the darkness of sense and nature, God teaches the soul — and the soul knows not how — in a most secret and hidden way.
16. Some spiritual writers call this “understanding without understanding,” because it does not take place in what philosophers call the active understanding which is conversant with the forms, fancies, and apprehensions of the physical faculties, but in the understanding as it is possible and passive, which without receiving such forms receives passively only the substantial knowledge of them free from all imagery. This occurs without effort or exertion on its part, and for this reason contemplation is called night, in which the soul through the channel of its transformation learns in this life that it already possesses, in a supreme degree, this divine grove, together with its beauty.
17. Still, however clear may be its knowledge, it is dark night in comparison
with that of the blessed, for which the soul prays. Hence, while it prays for the
clear contemplation, that is, the fruition of the grove, and its beauty; with the
other objects here enumerated, it says, let it be in the night now serene; that
is, in the clear beatific contemplation: let the night of dim contemplation cease
here below, and change into the clear contemplation of the serene vision of God
above. Thus the serene night is the clear and unclouded contemplation of the face
of God. It was to this night of contemplation that David referred when he said,
“Night shall be my light in my pleasures”;
18. This flame is the love of the Holy Spirit. “Consumes” means absolute perfection. Therefore, when the soul says that the Beloved will give it all that is mentioned in this stanza, and that they will be its possession in love absolute and perfect, all of them and itself with them in perfect love, and that without pain, its purpose is to show forth the utter perfection of love. Love, to be perfect, must have these two properties: it must consume and transform the soul in God; the burning and transformation wrought in the soul by the flame must give no pain. But this can be only in the state of the blessed, where the flame is sweet love, for in this transformation of the soul therein there is a blessed agreement and contentment on both sides, and no change to a greater or less degree gives pain, as before, when the soul had attained to the state of perfect love.
19. But the soul having attained to this state abides in its love of God, a love
so like His and so sweet, God being, as Moses says,
20. So is it with the soul which in this life is transformed by perfect love:
for though it is wholly conformed, yet it still suffers, in some measure, both pain
and loss. Pain, on account of the beatific transformation which is still wanting;
loss, through the weakness and corruption of the flesh coming in contact with love
so strong and so deep; for everything that is grand hurts and pains our natural
infirmity, as it is written, “The corruptible body is a load upon the soul.”
21. As, in the foregoing stanzas, and in the one which follows, the bride prays for the boundless knowledge of God, for which she requires the strongest and the deepest love that she may love Him in proportion to the grandeur of His communications, she prays now that all these things may be bestowed upon her in love consummated, perfect, and strong.
THE bride perceiving that the desire of her will is now detached from all things,
cleaving to God with most fervent love; that the sensual part of the soul, with
all its powers, faculties, and desires, is now conformed to the spirit; that all
rebellion is quelled forever; that Satan is overcome and driven far away in the
varied contest of the spiritual struggle; that her soul is united and transformed
in the rich abundance of the heavenly gifts; and that she herself is now prepared,
strong and apparelled, “leaning upon her Beloved,” to go up “by the desert”
2. The first is that the soul is detached from all things and a stranger to them. The second is that the devil is overcome and put to flight. The third is that the passions are subdued, and the natural desires mortified. The fourth and the fifth are that the sensual and lower nature of the soul is changed and purified, and so conformed to the spiritual, as not only not to hinder spiritual blessings, but is, on the contrary, prepared for them, for it is even a partaker already, according to its capacity, of those which have been bestowed upon it.
3. That is, my soul is so detached, so denuded, so lonely, so estranged from all created things, in heaven and earth; it has become so recollected in You, that nothing whatever can come within sight of that most intimate joy which I have in You. That is, there is nothing whatever that can cause me pleasure with its sweetness, or disgust with its vileness; for my soul is so far removed from all such things, absorbed in such profound delight in You, that nothing can behold me. This is not all, for:
4. Aminadab, in the Holy Writings, signifies the devil; that is the enemy of the soul, in a spiritual sense, who is ever fighting against it, and disturbing it with his innumerable artillery, that it may not enter into the fortress and secret place of interior recollection with the Bridegroom. There, the soul is so protected, so strong, so triumphant in virtue which it then practices, so defended by God’s right hand, that the devil not only dares not approach it, but runs away from it in great fear, and does not venture to appear. The practice of virtue, and the state of perfection to which the soul has come, is a victory over Satan, and causes him such terror that he cannot present himself before it. Thus Aminadab did not appear with any right to keep the soul away from the object of its desire.
5. By the siege is meant the passions and desires, which, when not overcome and mortified, surround the soul and fight against it on all sides. Hence the term “siege” is applied to them. This siege is “intermitted” — that is, the passions are subject to reason and the desires mortified. Under these circumstances the soul entreats the Beloved to communicate to it those graces for which it has prayed, for now the siege is no hindrance. Until the four passions of the soul are ordered in reason according to God, and until the desires are mortified and purified, the soul is incapable of seeing God.
6. The waters are the spiritual joys and blessings which the soul now enjoys interiorly
with God. The cavalry is the bodily senses of the sensual part, interior as well
as exterior, for they carry with them the phantasms and figures of their objects.
They dismount now at the sight of the waters, because the sensual and lower part
of the soul in the state of spiritual marriage is purified, and in a certain way
spiritualized, so that the soul with its powers of sense and natural forces becomes
so recollected as to participate and rejoice, in their way, in the spiritual grandeurs
which God communicates to it in the spirit within. To this the Psalmist referred
when he said, “My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.”
7. It is to be observed that the cavalry did not dismount to taste of the waters, but only at the sight of them, because the sensual part of the soul, with its powers, is incapable of tasting substantially and properly the spiritual blessings, not merely in this life, but also in the life to come. Still, because of a certain overflowing of the spirit, they are sensibly refreshed and delighted, and this delight attracts them — that is, the senses with their bodily powers — towards that interior recollection where the soul is drinking the waters of the spiritual benedictions. This condition of the senses is rather a dismounting at the sight of the waters than a dismounting for the purpose of seeing or tasting them. The soul says of them that they dismounted, not that they went, or did anything else, and the meaning is that in the communication of the sensual with the spiritual part of the soul, when the spiritual waters become its drink, the natural operations subside and merge into spiritual recollection.
8. All these perfections and dispositions of the soul the bride sets forth before her Beloved, the Son of God, longing at the same time to be translated by Him out of the spiritual marriage, to which God has been pleased to advance her in the Church militant, to the glorious marriage of the Church triumphant. To that end may He bring of His mercy all those who call upon the most sweet name of Jesus, the Bridegroom of faithful souls, to Whom be all honor and glory, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
IN SÆCULA SÆCULORUM.
Genesis
Exodus
3:7-8 33:12-13 33:12-13 33:20 33:20-23 33:22-23 33:23 34:30
Deuteronomy
Judges
2 Kingdoms
1 Kings
1 Chronicles
Esther
Job
3:24 4:2 4:12-16 6:8-9 6:8-10 7:2-4 9:11 14:5 41:6-7 41:24 42:5
Psalms
9:10 15:4 16:15 17:12 17:12-13 18:10-12 20:4 30:20 33:8 33:20 33:22 34:3 35:9 35:9 35:9 37:11 38:4 38:4 41:1-2 44:10 49:11 53:5 58:10 61:2-3 61:11 62:2 67:14 67:16 67:34 68:2 72:21-22 72:21-22 83:3 83:3 83:4 96:2-3 101:8 115:15 118:32 118:131 138:11 138:12 144:16
Proverbs
2:4-5 4:23 8:31 8:31 15:15 30:1-2
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
1:3 1:3 1:4 1:6 1:10 1:11 1:15 2:1 2:1 2:3 2:4 2:5 2:6 2:9 2:10-12 2:11-12 2:13-14 2:13-14 2:14 2:14 2:15 3:1 3:2 3:4 3:5 3:5 3:6 3:7-8 3:9-10 3:11 3:11 4:1 4:1 4:4 4:6 4:9 4:9 4:12 4:16 5:1 5:4 5:6 5:6-7 5:7 5:8 5:14 6:1-2 6:2 6:3 6:3 6:4 6:6-7 6:9 6:11 6:11 7:1 7:10-12 7:13 8:1 8:1 8:2 8:2 8:5 8:5 8:6 8:8 30:1
Isaiah
2:2 2:3 11:3 24:16 26:20 43:3 43:4 45:3 58:10-14 64:4 65:24 66:12 66:12
Jeremiah
Lamentations
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Nahum
Zechariah
Matthew
5:26 6:6 6:24 7:14 10:33 13:12 13:44 13:44 16:25 20:6 25:28
Luke
1:13 1:52 2:25 10:42 11:9 12:37 15:5 15:8 15:9 17:21
John
1:3 1:3-4 1:12 1:16 1:16 1:18 2:3 4:14 4:14 7:39 11:3 12:29 12:32 15:7 15:15 17:3 17:10 17:20-23 17:24 20:15
Acts
Romans
1:20 8:13 8:14 8:23 8:26 11:33
1 Corinthians
2:9 2:14 3:19 6:17 10:4 13:2 13:4-7 13:10 13:10 13:12
2 Corinthians
5:4 6:16 12:2-4 12:3 12:4 12:4 12:9
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
Hebrews
James
1 Peter
2 Peter
1 John
Revelation
2:7 2:10 2:17 2:26-28 3:5 3:12 3:20 3:21-22 10:9 14:2 14:2 21:23 22:1
Tobit
Wisdom of Solomon
Baruch
Sirach