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We have two principal exercises of our love towards
God, the one affective, the other effective, or, as
S. Bernard calls it, active; by that we affect or
love God and what he loves, by this we serve God and
do what he ordains; that joins us to God's goodness,
this makes us execute his will: the one fills us with
complacency, benevolence, yearnings, desires,
aspirations and spiritual ardours, causing us to
practise the sacred infusions and minglings of our
spirit with God's; the other establishes in us the
solid resolution, the constancy of heart, and the
inviolable obedience requisite to effect the
ordinances of the divine will, and to suffer, accept,
approve and embrace, all that comes from his
good-pleasure; the one makes us pleased in God, the
other makes us please God: by the one we conceive, by
the other we bring forth: by the one we place God
upon our heart, as a standard of love, around which
all our affections are ranged, by the other we place
him upon our arm, as a sword of love whereby we
effect all the exploits of virtue.
Now the first exercise consists principally in
prayer; in which so many different interior movements
take place that to express them all is impossible,
not only by reason of their number, but also for
their nature and quality, which being spiritual, they
cannot but be very rarefied, and almost imperceptible
to our understanding. The cleverest and best trained
hounds are often at fault; they lose the strain and
scent by the variety of sleights which the stag uses,
who makes doubles, puts them on a wrong scent, and
practises a thousand arts to escape the cry; and we
oftentimes lose the scent and knowledge of our own
heart in the infinite diversity of motions by which
it turns itself, in so many ways and with such
promptitude, that one cannot discern its track.
God alone is he, who, by his infinite wisdom, sees,
knows and penetrates all the turnings and windings of
our hearts: he understands our thoughts from afar, he
finds out our traces, doubles and turnings; his
knowledge therein is admirable, surpassing our
capacity and reach. Certainly if our spirits would
turn back upon themselves by reflections, and by
reconsiderations of their acts, we should enter into
labyrinths from which we should find no outgate; and
it would require an attention quite beyond our power,
to think what our thoughts are, to consider our
considerations, to observe all our spiritual
observations, to discern that we discern, to remember
that we remember, these acts would be mazes from
which we could not deliver ourselves. This treatise,
then, is difficult, especially to one who is not a
man of great prayer.
We take not here the word prayer (oraison) only
for the petition (priere) or demand for some good,
poured out by the faithful before God, as S. Basil
calls it, but as S. Bonaventure does, when he says
that prayer, generally speaking; comprehends all the
acts of contemplation; or as S. Gregory Nazianzen,
who teaches that prayer is a conference or
conversation of the soul with God; or again as S.
Chrysostom, when he says that prayer is a discoursing
with the divine Majesty; or finally as S. Augustine
and S. Damascene, who term prayer an ascent or
raising of the soul to God. And if prayer be a
colloquy, a discourse or a conversation of the soul
with God, by it then we speak to God, and he again
speaks to us; we aspire to him and breathe in him,
and he reciprocally inspires us and breathes upon us.
But of what do we discourse in prayer? What is the
subject of our conference?
Theotimus, in it we speak of God only: for of what
can love discourse and talk but of the well-beloved?
And therefore prayer, and mystical theology, are one
same thing. It is called theology, because, as
speculative theology has God for its object, so this
also treats only of God, yet with three differences:
for, 1. The former treats of God as God, but the
latter treats of him as sovereignty amiable; that is,
the former regards the Divinity of the supreme
goodness, and the latter the supreme goodness of the
Divinity. 2. The speculative treats of God with men
and amongst men, the mystical speaks of God with God,
and in God himself. 3. The speculative tends to the
knowledge of God, and the mystical to the love of
God; that, therefore, makes its scholars wise, and
learned, and theologians, but this makes its scholars
fervent, and affectionate, lovers of God, a
Philotheus or a Theophilus.
Now it is called mystical, because its conversation
is altogether secret, and there is nothing said in it
between God and the soul save only from heart to
heart, by a communication incommunicable to all but
those who make it. Lovers' language is so peculiar to
themselves that none but themselves understand it. I
sleep, said the holy spouse, and my heart watcheth.
Ah! hark! The voice of my beloved knocking.(1) Who
would have guessed that this spouse being asleep
could yet talk with her beloved? But where love
reigns, the sound of exterior words is not necessary,
nor the help of sense to entertain and to hear one
another.
In fine, prayer and mystical theology is nothing
else but a conversation in which the soul amorously
entertains herself with God concerning his most
amiable goodness, to unite and join herself thereto.
Prayer is a manna, for the infinity of delicious
tastes and precious sweetnesses which it gives to
such as use it, but it is hidden,(2) because it falls
before the light of any science, in the mental
solitude where the soul alone treats with her God
alone. Who is she, might one say of her, that goeth
up by the desert, as a pillar of smoke of aromatical
spices, of myrrh, and frankincense, and of all the
powders of the perfumer?(3) And it was the desire of
secrecy that moved her to make this petition to her
love: Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the
field, let us abide in the villages.(4)
For this reason the heavenly spouse is styled a
turtle, a bird which is delighted in shady and
solitary places, where she makes no other use of her
song but for her only mate, either in life wooing him
or after his death plaining him. For this reason, in
the Canticles, the divine lover and the heavenly
spouse describe their loves by a continual conversing
together; and if their friends sometimes speak during
their conference, it is but casually, and without
interrupting their colloquy. Hence the Blessed Mother
(S.) Teresa of Jesus found at first more profit in
the mysteries where our Saviour was most alone; as in
the Garden of Olives, and where he was awaiting the
Samaritan woman, for she fancied that he being alone
would more readily admit her into his company.
Love desires secrecy; yea, though lovers may have
nothing secret to say, yet they love to say it
secretly: and this is partly, if I am not mistaken,
because they would speak only for themselves, whereas
when they speak out loud it seems no longer to be for
themselves alone; partly because they do not say
common things in a common manner, but with touches
which are particular, and which manifest the special
affection with which they speak.
The language of love is common, as to the words,
but in manner and pronunciation it is so special that
none but lovers understand it. The name of a friend
uttered in public is no great thing, but spoken
apart, secretly in the ear, it imports wonders, and
the more secretly it is spoken the more delightful is
its signification.
O God! what a difference there is between the
language of the ancient lovers of the Divinity, -
Ignatius, Cyprian, Chrysostom, Augustine, Hilary,
Ephrem, Gregory, Bernard, - and that of less
affectionate theologians! We use their very words,
but with them the words were full of fire and of
sweets of amorous perfumes; with us they are cold and
have no scent at all.
Love speaks not only by the tongue, but by the
eyes, by sighs, and play of features; yea, silence
and dumbness are words for it. My heart hath said to
thee, my face hath sought thee: thy face, O Lord,
will I still seek.(5) My eyes have failed for thy
word, saying: When wilt thou comfort me?(6) Hear my
prayer, O Lord, and my supplication: give ear to my
tears.(7) Let not the apple of thy eye cease,(8) said
the desolate heart of the inhabitants of Jerusalem to
their own city.
Do you mark, Theotimus, how the silence of
afflicted lovers speaks by the apple of their eye,
and by tears? Truly the chief exercise in mystical
theology is to speak to God and to hear God speak in
the bottom of the heart; and because this discourse
passes in most secret aspirations and inspirations we
term it a silent conversing. Eyes speak to eyes, and
heart to heart, and none understand what passes save
the sacred lovers who speak.
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