The Living Flame of Love

^42. The soul being thus swallowed up of life, detached from all secular and temporal things, and delivered from the disorderliness of nature, is led into the chamber of the King, where it rejoices and is glad in the Beloved, remembering His breasts more than wine, and saying, 'I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,'^[54:¶] for my natural blackness is changed into the beauty of the heavenly King. O then, the burning of the fire! infinitely burning above all other fires, O how infinitely beyond all other fires dost thou burn me, and the more thou burnest the sweeter thou art to me. 'O delicious wound,' more delicious to me than all the delights and health of the world. 'O tender hand,' infinitely more tender than all tenderness, and the greater the pressure of it the more tender is it to me. 'O gentle touch,' the gentleness of which surpasses infinitely all the gentleness and all the loveliness of created things, sweeter and more delicious than honey and the honeycomb, because thou savourest of everlasting life; and is the more sweet the more profoundly thou dost touch me. Thou art infinitely more precious than gold and precious stones, for thou payest debts which nothing else can pay, because thou changest marvellously death into life.

43. In this state of life, so perfect, the soul is, as it were, keeping a perpetual feast with the praises of God in its mouth, with a new song of joy and love, full of the knowledge of its high dignity. It sometimes exulteth, repeating the words of Job, 'My glory shall always be renewed,' and 'as a palm tree' I 'will multiply days.'^[55:*] That is, God will not suffer my glory to grow old as before, and He will multiply my days, that is, my merits, unto heaven, as a palm tree multiplies its branches. And also the words of David in the twenty-ninth Psalm, the soul sings interiorly to God, especially the conclusion thereof, 'Thou hast turned my mourning into joy unto me: Thou hast cut my sackcloth and hast compassed me with gladness, that my glory may sing to Thee, and I be not compunct'—for this state is inaccessible to pain—'Lord my God, for ever will I confess to Thee.'^[56:*]

44. Here the soul is so conscious of God's solicitude to comfort it, feeling that He is Himself encouraging it with words so precious, so tender, so endearing; that He is conferring graces upon it, one upon another, so that it seems as if there were no other soul in the world for Him to comfort, no other object of His care, but that everything was done for this one soul alone. This truth is admitted by the bride in the Canticle when she says, 'My Beloved to me and I to Him.'^[56:†]

[54:¶] Cant. i. 4.

[55:*] Job xxix. 18, 20.

[56:*] Ps. xxix. 12, 13.

[56:†] Cant. ii. 16.