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Turn
them away, O my Beloved!
I am
on the Wing.
THE
BRIDEGROOM
Return,
My Dove!
The
wounded hart
Looms
on the hill
In the
air of thy flight and is refreshed.
EXPLANATION
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 fervours 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 thine eyes from me.’
‘Turn
them away, O my Beloved!’
2.
That is, ‘Thy 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 thee now are not those of
the state of glory wherein thou desirest to be; but return to Me, for I am He
Whom thou, wounded with love, art seeking, and I, too, as the hart, wounded
with thy love, begin to show Myself to thee on the heights of contemplation,
and am refreshed and delighted by the love which thy contemplation
involves.’ The soul then says to the Bridegroom:
‘Turn
them away, O my Beloved!’
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,[123]
force it to cry out, ‘Turn them away, O my Beloved!’
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.[124]
Yea, rather, cost they what they may, the soul would not willingly miss these
visitations and favours of the Beloved; for though nature may suffer, the
spirit flies to this supernatural recollection in order to enjoy the spirit of
the Beloved, the object of its prayers and desires. The soul is unwilling to
receive these visitations in the body, when it cannot have the perfect
fruition of them, and only in a slight degree and in pain; but it covets them
in the flight of the disembodied spirit when it can enjoy them freely. Hence
it says, ‘Turn them away, my Beloved’—that is, Do not visit me in
the flesh.
‘I
am on the wing.’
6. It
is as if it said, ‘I am taking my flight out of the body, that Thou mayest
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.[125]
In this visitation of the divine Spirit the spirit of the soul is with great
violence borne upwards into communion with the divine, the body is abandoned,
all its acts and senses are suspended, because they are absorbed in God. Thus
the Apostle, St. Paul, speaking of his own ecstasy, saith, ‘Whether in the
body or out of the body, I cannot tell.’[126]
But we are not to suppose that the soul abandons the body, and that the
natural life is destroyed, but only that its actions have then ceased.
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 subtile 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,[127]
whose writings I hope in God to see published soon. The flight of the soul in
this place, then, is to be understood of ecstasy, and elevation of spirit in
God. The Beloved immediately says:
‘Return,
My Dove.’
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:
‘Return,
My Dove.’
10. It
is as if He said, ‘O My Dove, in thy high and rapid flight of contemplation,
in the love wherewith thou art inflamed, in the simplicity of thy
regard’—these are three characteristics of the dove—’return
from that flight in which thou aimest at the true fruition of Myself—the
time is not yet come for knowledge so high—return, and submit thyself to
that lower degree of it which I communicate in this thy rapture.’
‘The
wounded hart.’
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, saith in effect: ‘Return, my bride, to
Me; for as thou art wounded with the love of Me, I too, like the hart, am
wounded by love for thee. I am like the hart, looming on the top of the
hill.’ Therefore He says:
‘Looms
on the hill.’
12.
That is, ‘on the heights of contemplation, to which thou hast ascended in
thy 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:
‘In
the air of thy flight, and is refreshed.’
13.
The flight is contemplation in the ecstasy spoken of before,[128]
and the air is the spirit of love produced in the soul by this flight of
contemplation, and this love produced by the flight is here with great
propriety called ‘air,’ for the Holy Ghost also is likened to air in the
Sacred Writings, because He is the breath of the Father and the Son. And so as
He is there the air of the flight—that is, that He proceeds by the will
from the contemplation and wisdom of the Father and the Son, and is
breathed—so here the love of the soul is called air by the Bridegroom,
because it proceeds from the contemplation of God and the knowledge of Him
which at this time is possessed by the soul.
14. We
must observe here that the Bridegroom does not say that He cometh 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 nothing worth, and can do nothing, as the Apostle saith,
towards its union with God.[129]
In another place he saith, ‘Have charity, which is the bond of
perfection.’[130]
This charity then and love of the soul make the Bridegroom run to drink of the
fountain of the Bride’s love, as the cooling waters attract the thirsty and
the wounded hart, to be refreshed therein.
‘And
is refreshed.’
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 hath 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 ardour of
thy 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 practise those things of which the
Apostle speaks, saying: ‘Charity is patient, is benign: charity envieth not,
dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her
own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh not evil, rejoiceth not upon iniquity,
but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth
all things, endureth all things.’[131]
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,’[132]
the compassionate father Noe, in this last flight, put forth the hand of his
mercy, caught her, and brought her into the ark of his charity and love. That
took place when the Bridegroom, as in the stanza now explained, said,
‘Return, My Dove.’ In the shelter within the ark, the soul, finding all it
desired, and more than it can ever express, begins to sing the praises of the
Beloved, celebrating the magnificence which it feels and enjoys in that union,
saying:
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