|
1. This second verse refers to the fire of love that, like material fire acting
on wood, penetrates the soul in this night of painful contemplation. Although
this enkindling of love we are now discussing is in some way similar to what
occurs in the sensory part of the soul, it is as different from it, in another
way, as is the soul from the body or the spiritual part from the sensory part.1
For this enkindling of love occurs in the spirit. Through it the soul in the
midst of these dark conflicts feels vividly and keenly that it is being wounded
by a strong divine love, and it has a certain feeling and foretaste of God. Yet
it understands nothing in particular, for as we said the intellect is in
darkness.
2. The spirit herein experiences an impassioned and intense love because this
spiritual inflaming engenders the passion of love. Since this love is infused,
it is more passive than active and thus generates in the soul a strong passion
of love. This love is now beginning to possess something of union with God and
thereby shares to a certain extent in the properties of this union. These
properties are actions of God more than of the soul and they reside in it
passively, although the soul does give its consent. But only the love of God
that is being united to the soul imparts the heat, strength, temper, and passion
of love, or fire, as it is termed here. This love finds that the soul is
equipped to receive the wound and union in the measure that all its appetites
are brought into subjection, alienated, incapacitated, and unable to be
satisfied by any heavenly or earthly thing.
3. This happens very particularly in this dark purgation, as was said, since God
so weans and recollects the appetites that they cannot find satisfaction in any
of their objects. God proceeds thus so that by both withdrawing the appetites
from other objects and recollecting them in himself, he strengthens the soul and
gives it the capacity for this strong union of love, which he begins to accord
by means of this purgation. In this union the soul loves God intensely with all
its strength and all its sensory and spiritual appetites. Such love is
impossible if these appetites are scattered by their satisfaction in other
things. In order to receive the strength of this union of love, David exclaimed
to God: I will keep my strength for you [Ps. 59:9], that is, all the ability,
appetites, and strength of my faculties, by not desiring to make use of them or
find satisfaction in anything outside of you.2
4. One might, then, in a certain way ponder how remarkable and how strong this
enkindling of love in the spirit can be. God gathers together all the strength,
faculties, and appetites of the soul, spiritual and sensory alike, so the energy
and power of this whole harmonious composite may be employed in this love. The
soul consequently arrives at the true fulfillment of the first commandment
which, neither disdaining anything human nor excluding it from this love,
states: You shall love your God with your whole heart, and with your whole mind,
and with your whole soul, and with all your strength [Dt. 6:5].
5. When the soul is wounded, touched, and impassioned, all its strength and its
appetites are recollected in this burning of love. How will we be able to
understand the movements and impulses of all this strength and these appetites?
They are aroused when the soul becomes aware of the fire and wound of this
forceful love and still neither possesses it nor gets satisfaction from it, but
remains in darkness and doubt. Certainly, suffering hunger like dogs, as David
says, these souls wander about the city and howl and sigh because they are not
filled with this love [Ps. 59:6, 14-15].
The touch of this divine love and fire
so dries up the spirit and so enkindles the soul's longings to slake its thirst
for this love that such persons go over these longings in their mind a thousand
times and pine for God in a thousand ways. David expresses this state very well
in a psalm: My soul thirsts for you; in how many ways does my flesh long for you
[Ps. 63:1], that is, in its desires. And another translation puts it this way:
My soul thirsts for you, my soul loses itself or dies for you.3
6. As a result the soul proclaims in this verse: "with love's urgent longings,"
and not, "with an urgent longing of love." In all its thoughts and in all its
business and in all events, it loves in many ways, and desires, and also suffers
in its desire in many ways, and at all times and in many places. It finds rest
in nothing, for it feels this anxiety in the burning wound, as the prophet Job
explains: As the servant desires the shade and as the hireling desires the end
of his work, so have I had empty months and numbered to myself long and
wearisome nights. If I lie down to sleep I shall say: When will I arise? And
then I will await the evening and will be filled with sorrows until the darkness
of the night [Jb. 7:2-4].
Everything becomes narrow for this soul: There is no
room for it within itself, neither is there any room for it in heaven or on
earth; and it is filled with sorrows unto darkness, as Job says speaking
spiritually and from our point of view. This affliction the soul undergoes here
is a suffering unaccompanied by the comfort of certain hope for some spiritual
light and good. One's anxiety and affliction in this burning of love are more
intense because they are doubly increased: first, through the spiritual darknesses in which the soul is engulfed and which afflict it with doubts and
fears; second, through the love of God that inflames and stimulates and
wondrously stirs it with a loving wound.
7. Isaiah clearly explains these two ways of suffering in this state when he
says: My soul desired you in the night [Is. 26:9], that is, in the midst of
misery. This is one way of suffering in this dark night. Yet within my spirit,
he says, until the morning I will watch for you [Is. 26:9]. And this is a second
way of suffering: with desire and anxiety of love in the innermost parts of the
spirit, which are the spiritual feelings. Nonetheless, in the midst of these
dark and loving afflictions, the soul feels a certain companionship and an
interior strength; these so fortify and accompany it that when this weight of
anxious darkness passes, the soul often feels alone, empty, and weak. The reason
is that since the strength and efficacy of the dark fire of love that assails it
is communicated and impressed on it passively, the darkness, strength, and
warmth of love cease when the assault terminates.
|
