Discourse I: The First Hindrance and Its Remedy

First Hindrance: the Remembrance of Sensible Pleasures

HE who purposes never more to offend God meets with many occasions of sin presented by the devil. He who resolves to desire no other consolation save in God, meets with the world, which offers to him new temporal pleasures: and it is a great hindrance to receiving the divine consolations to be unable to quit and give up former society, conversations, and recreations.

Therefore the spouse, that is, the soul already in grace, wishing to enter upon the spiritual life

2 jHgstical Explanation of tfje Canticles in the kisses of her divine Beloved, which are spiritual consolations, has great difficulty in de taching herself from the company of her com panions, old conversations which offer her wine and perfumes, that is, temporal pleasures: where fore the soul languishing on account of the absence of her Beloved, and desiring to be united to Him by prayer, her companions seek to cheer her with wines and perfumes, bringing to her memory pleasures passed, in spite of which she begs:

Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.

KEMEDY FOR THE FIRST OBSTACLE: THE SOUL DESIRES AND DEMANDS SPIRITUAL GOODS ist. She considers that earthly goods and pleasures by the side of divine are nothing but vanity. 2nd. That God is sweet and desirable in Himself. 3rd. That many holy souls have led the way, having found no pleasure save in God. 4th. She begs God to take from her all earthly affections.

And as to the first she says:

For thy breasts are better than wine, smelling sweet of the best ointments. As to the second she says:

Thy name is as oil poured out. As to the third:

Therefore young maidens have loved thee.

Discourse

And as to the fourth:

Draw me; we will run after thee to the odour of thy ointments.

And then immediately, moved with a great confidence of obtaining what she asks, as if it were already gained she adds:

The King hath brought me into his store rooms; we will be glad and rejoice in thee, remembering thy breasts more than wine: the righteous have loved thee.

But scruples arise, from the memory of past sins; whence she says:

I am black (but the integrity of her present conscience makes her add) but I am beautiful, 0 ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

The presence of the elements of sin in concupiscence is a species of disgrace, and yet they cannot be made a reproach to her or imputed to her as sin:

Do not consider me that I am brown, Because my sun has willed to leave me in this state of strife:

Because the sun hath altered my colour. And this has not happened through my fault, but through that of the first children of human nature my mother:

The sons of my mother have fought against me. It was by their sins that I was laid under the necessity of keeping such careful guard over myself, as if I had to keep a vineyard:

They have made me the keeper in the vineyards, against the attacks of concupiscence: and all this, alas! not by my own actual fault, but by that of another, whence I can say:

It is not my vineyard that I have kept. Yet still let confidence return to me, and let me begin to seek my Beloved, where He is more easily found, by prayer:

Show me, 0 thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the mid-day, lest I begin to wander after the flocks of thy companions: that is, after creatures. Teach me where I may find Thee in prayer Avith Thy lights and consola tions, not staying at the creature.

First Degree of Prayer: Consideration of God in Corporeal Things

Dost thou now see this sun, O my spouse, these stars, this sky, this earth, these rocks? they are so many ways and roads to find Me; they did not make themselves; they are not without some principle which made them, and which is their last end, which preserves them, which guards them. And who is this principle and this end? It is God: the mothers of all things are the ideas which are in Me, in My

Ufecoum power and goodness. The lambs, as soon as the gate of the sheepfold is open, run straight to their mothers; so man, seeing creatures, ascends little by little to God; it is a means of finding Me:

If thou know not thyself, 0 fairest among women (because thou art as yet a beginner), go forth (from the remembrance of past pleasures) and follow after the steps of the flocks.

Seek My path in all creatures; let thyself be guided and led whither they of themselves return, and thou shalt find that they will go and repose in the pastures of their first shepherd:

And feed thy kids beside the tents of the shepherds.

Thou shalt be conducted to three feeders and one shepherd, to three creating ones and one creator. All sensible creatures will lead thee thither, and the most noble the best. Above all will human nature be profitable to thee in this way in thy first meditations. Thou shalt see the supernatural goods which are therein, as that it is the habitation of God, His throne, and, as it were, His chariot, whence it can say to Him:

To my company of horsemen, in Pharao's chariots, have I likened thee, 0 my love. Thou shalt see in it natural goods; for it is as beautiful in itself as if it had all the ornaments in the world:

Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's, thy neck as jewels. Thou shalt see accidental goods, such as this,

6 JHgstical (JBxplanatton of fyt (tattttclcs that all the world has been made for thy use, ornament, and service:

We will make thee chains of gold inlaid with silver.

Which are benefits so great that the soul in meditating upon them is inflamed with love, and is constrained to cry out: As I can do no more, at least* I will love Thee, O my love! and will myself be Thy royal chamber, which I will per fume with spikenard; that is, I will fill myself with love:

While my King was at his repose, my spikenard sent forth the odour thereof. And further, I will unite myself so closely with Him, that I shall carry Him as a nosegay within my bosom:

A bundle of rnyrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts. He shall ever be my dear balm, and my greatest treasure:

A cluster of Cyprus * is my love to me in the vineyards of Engaddi. These affections make the Beloved love and praise the soul, saying:

Behold thou art fair, 0 my love, behold thou art fair, thy eyes are as those of doves.

As for the soul, which acknowledges that all its light depends on its sun, which is God, it con fesses that He alone is good by essence:

Behold thou art fair, my beloved, and

• i.e. of Cyprian grapes [TV.].

comely; (and thou so embellishest our essence when thou wilt, that even) our bed (which is our body) is flourishing. Behold our bed flourishing, and even this world our habitation.

The beams of our houses are of cedar, our rafters of cypress trees. Therefore, what wonder is it if:

I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys.

The Beloved, acknowledging this, declares that many souls are of a very different quality, by the malice of their wills; for they are like thorns:

As a lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

Beloved praises, which the soul neither accepts nor rejects, but, captivated with her Beloved, she returns to consider Him amid the same sensible things, not now meditating on Him to love Him, but contemplating Him to delight in Him, praising Him to the highest amid all created things:

As the apple tree among the trees of the woods, so is my beloved among the sons.

Wherefore having found a good so eminent above every other, she rests in it, seeking no more:

I sat down under his shadow whom 1 desired:

And in this spiritual repose is tasted the sweetness of devotion:

And his fruit was sweet to my palate.

8 JHgsttcal Explanation of tfje Canticles

So sweet that it produces certain holy distrac tions and madnesses in my soul, as if it was inebriated with love; whence it cries out:

He brought me into the cellar of wine, he spread the standard of his charity over me.*

But particularly by the frequent communication of them, they produce the habit of spiritual joyfulness, in which sweetly languishing she feels herself faint away and fall; wherefore she says: Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples: because I languish with love.

What further? The soul, feeling the rapture, mystically signified by sleep, coming over it, and not wishing to sleep anywhere but in the arms of her Beloved, says:

His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace rue. Then God takes care that low things do not hinder this divine consolation, wherefore He says to the choir of women:

I adjure you, 0 ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and the harts of the fields, that you stir not up, nor make the beloved to awake till she please.

Then the soul begins to prove and know that there is no sweetness equal to that which is found in mental prayer.

• According to the Hebrew [TV.].

Discourse