Discourse II: The Second Hindrance and Its Remedy

Second Hindrance; the Distraction of the Imagination

THE better known a road is to us, the more we frequent it; the more people we know therein, the more willingly also we journey thereby and the more easily: but still by such roads we are more slow in arriving at our journey's end, be cause, having many acquaintance, here we speak to one, there to another, here we enter into somebody's shop, there we stay to talk with a friend. For the consideration of God no track is more beaten, known, or familiar than that of corporeal things, amid which we live; no way is more easy in itself, but also no way has more distractions. When I meditate on God in the angel, who is an invisible thing, and one in no way familiar to me, it produces in me but few fancies and distractions: but if I consider God in man, my imagination descends from the universal to the particular, and under the name of man represents to me Peter, Paul, or somebody doing with me this or that thing. Hence while in this way which is so familiar to us we stop at all the shops of our acquaintance, we arrive at our journey's end either late or never.

In the same way as the multitude of dreams does not allow us to sleep peacefully, but keeps us almost awake while sleeping; so prayer, when io jftgsttcal (Explanation of tfyc Canttcte it has arrived at the sleep of ecstasy, which is as it were its summit, may be itself called sleep; but when it is interrupted by distractions of the fancy, it is a sleep full of dreams; and then our Beloved speaks to us and comes to us, not to abide and repose with us; but He comes by leaps and starts:

The voice of my beloved, behold he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills.

He seems sometimes to approach, sometimes to flee:

My beloved is like a roe or a young hart. Now He shows Himself, now He hides Himself:

Behold he standeth behind our wall. And though He seemeth to make Himself seen:

Looking through the windows. Yet as our sight of Him is neither very clear nor very unbroken, it may be said that the windows have bars, and that He is:

Looking through the lattices.

Remedy for the Second Impediment: Attention to Inspirations

Now we must not be beyond measure distressed in these distractions; for they are attached to our nature, and we cannot be blamed for them unless they happen through our fault. Still we must use remedies, which are to often recollect discourse IE n ourselves, and to incline our ear to hear inspira tions:

Behold my beloved speaketh to me:

Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come.

And further, He makes her remember the innocence at which she may piously believe she has arrived, not feeling herself burdened with any mortal sin. 0 how sad was the winter of sin:

For winter is now past, the rain is over and gone.

He rejoices that the flowers of devotion begin to spring and grow:

The flowers have appeared in our land, That she has begun to cut off evil super fluities:

The time of pruning is come: That, as a turtle-dove she makes her plaining and her soft murmuring in her prayer:

The voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

But further He rejoices that she has already produced flowers of good works and perfumes of good example:

The fig-tree hath put forth her green figs: the vines in flower yield their sweet smell.

He exhorts her besides this still to go forward; and of a beginner to become a proficient, saying to her:

Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come.

12 JHgstical Explanation of tlje Canticles

And because in the beginnings it seems to the soul, that she is amid many difficulties, as amid rocks and thorns:

My dove in the clifts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall. Therefore He assures her that still she ceases not to be very agreeable to Him:

Shew me thy face, let thy voice sound in my ears: for thy voice is sweet and thy face comely.

This discourse is so sweet that it should drive away all other thoughts: yet if these thoughts return, she will say, as it were in a dream:

Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vines: for our vineyard hath flourished. And re-uniting herself with her object, she will say:

My beloved to me and I to him, who feedeth among the lilies, as long as the day * lasts and till the shadows fall. Re turn: be like, my beloved, to a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether. And thus will she surmount this second impediment.

Second Degree: the Soul Considers God in Spiritual Things Outside Itself

This way of considerations is less known, but is also less subject to distractions. In the pre-

• The Vulgate has donee. Our English version translates till. S. Francis takes in the first place its meaning of as long as, and in the second the meaning of till.

Bfecourge EK 13 ceding degree it seems as if one finds not God, although one has found Him; here, however, we at once recognise that we have found Him:

In my bed (that is, in human bodies which are the beds of souls) by night I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him and found him not. I will rise and will go about the city: (of this world). And running through sometimes earthly some times heavenly bodies, I have sought Him, and have not found Him; at least distractions have been so great that I scarcely seem to myself to have met Him:

In the streets and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not. My happiness has led me to remember the angels who are, as it were, the sentinels of the world:

The watchmen who keep the city found me.

And I resolved to try whether I should find in them the consideration of God more settled:

Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth?

Immediately above the angelic nature I have found the divine:

When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: And this without sensible distractions, so that it seems that I shall never lose Him:

I held him, and I will not let him go.

14 iHgstical Explanation of tfjc Canticles

Till I enter into heavenly glory, the true home of human nature my mother, and into her chamber, that is, the thrones of the angels which are prepared for me: then to this mysterious seeing will succeed a clear vision:

Till I bring him (or rather, till He bring me) into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that bore me. Holy consideration of God in spiritual things! —which, as of its nature it does not breed fancies of the imagination, so it will not breed dreams. The consideration which belongs to the first degree is more interrupted, this is more stable and more exalted. Hence it produces all its effects with more excellence, namely, a livelier love and more spiritual joyousness: to which God adding His grace forbids with a more particular solicitude that she should be awakened:

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