Spiritual Canticle

^27. As if saying, “When I sought Your presence, I found You not; and I was detached from all things without being able to cling to You — borne painfully by the gales of love without help in You or in myself.” This going forth of the soul in search of the Beloved is the rising of the bride in the Canticle: “I will rise and go about the city; in the streets and the high ways I will seek Him Whom my soul loves. I have sought Him and have not found... they wounded me.”^[43] The rising of the bride — speaking spiritually — is from that which is mean to that which is noble; and is the same with the going forth of the soul out of its own ways and inferior love to the ennobling love of God. The bride says that she was wounded because she found him not;^[44] so the soul also says of itself that it is wounded with love and forsaken; that is, the loving soul is ever in pain during the absence of the Beloved, because it has given itself up wholly to Him hoping for the reward of its self-surrender, the Possession of the Beloved. Still the Beloved withholds Himself while the soul has lost all things, and even itself, for Him; it obtains no compensation for its loss, seeing that it is deprived of Him whom it loves.

28. This pain and sense of the absence of God is wont to be so oppressive in those who are going onwards to the state of perfection, that they would die if God did not interpose when the divine wounds are inflicted upon them. As they have the palate of the will wholesome, and the mind pure and disposed for God, and as they taste in some degree of the sweetness of divine love, which they supremely desire, so they also suffer supremely; for, having but a glimpse of an infinite good which they are not permitted to enjoy, that is to them an ineffable pain and torment.

[43] Cant. 3:2, 5:7

[44] Cant. 5:6, 7