Salesian Literature

Part III: The Mystical Exposition of the Canticle of Canticles

::   Foreword   ::   Preface   ::   Discourse 1   ::   Discourse 2   ::   Discourse 3   ::   Discourse 4   ::   Discourse 5   ::   Discourse 6

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Discourse 2

        

Second Obstacle: Imaginative Distractions

The more a path is known to us, the more we frequent it; the more we know people there, the more voluntarily and easily we also walk there. But likewise, by such paths we arrive later at the destination, because having many acquaintances, here we speak to one, there to the other; here we enter into the shop of one, there we pause with a friend.  For the consideration of God, no path is for us more beaten, known and familiar than that of the corporeal things among which we live; none has in itself more facility, but also, none has more distractions.  When I meditate on God in the Angel, which is an invisible thing and which is in no way familiar to me, it engenders in me only fear of phantasms and of 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 any of them with whom we do this or that thing.  However, if in this path which is so familiar to us we pause at all the shops of our knowledge, either we arrive late to our goal, or never.

        

In the same way that the multitude of dreams lets us sleep pleasurably, but causes us to awaken with a start while sleeping, so prayer arrives in the drowsiness of ecstasy, which is like its resting place; it can even be called sleepiness itself.  But when it is interrupted by fantastic distractions, it is a sleepiness full of dreams.  And then, our Bridegroom speaks to us and comes to us, but not in order to dwell there and repose.  Instead he comes by leaps and bounds: It is the voice of my Beloved; behold him who comes upon the mountains, leaping over and crossing the hills.  It seems that often he would come and that often he would flee: My Beloved is similar to a roe and to a fawn of a stag. Now he is shown, now he is hidden: Behold him who is held upright behind our walls.  And even though it seems that he turns himself to see, looking in by the window, nevertheless the vision is neither so clear nor so fixed, and one can say that the windows have cross-bars and that he looks in through the lattices (2:8-9).

        

Remedy: Attention to Inspiration

Now it is not necessary to feel inordinately dull by these distractions, for they are conjoined to our nature, and we cannot be taken aback by them if they do not come from our fault.  Nevertheless, it is necessary to use a remedy, which is to recoil oneself often and to listen in order to hear the inspirations: Behold my beloved who calls me and says to me: Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beauty, and come to me. Doing this, moreover, remember the innocence by which she can piously believe to have arrived, not sensing herself burdened without any mortal sin.  O how sorrowful is the winter of sin: for already the winter is passed; its rain has gone.  He rejoices in the fact that the flowers of devotion are beginning to emerge and bud forth: Already the flowers appear on our land.  Likewise he rejoices in the fact that she has begun to curtail her vicious superfluities: the time of pruning and of cleaning the trees is come.  He also rejoices that she, much the same as a turtle dove, has caused her wail and her groan to be heard with prayer: One has heard the voice of the turtle dove in this region.  But what is more, he rejoices in the fact that she has already produced flowers of good works and fragrances of good example: already the fig tree bears its fruit; the vines have flowered and are spreading their good fragrance. He admonishes her, beyond that, to pass farther ahead, and, in beginning, when she is concerned with her own interests, he says again: Arise, my beloved, my beauty, and come (2:10-13).

        

And because it is only beginning, it seems to the soul that it is situated among several difficulties, as between stone or thorns (My dove, which is in the caves of stone and in the hollow of the wall).  For this reason he assures her that she does not, however, quit of being very agreeable to him: alas, show me your face; let the sound of your voice come to my ears, for your voice is sweet and your face most beautiful (2:14).

        

This discourse is so sweet that it should chase away all other thoughts; yet, if these thoughts return, she will say as in dreaming: Take these small fox cubs which dig up and spoil the vines, for our vineyard is in bloom.  And being reunited with her object, she will say: My beloved is to me and I to him. And she will pray to him that he return to her as long as the day lasts and until the time when the shades lower themselves: Return, my Beloved, and be similar to a roe or to a fawn of a stag on the mountains of Bether (2:15-17).  And thus, she surmounts this second obstacle.

        

Second Degree: The soul considers God in spiritual things, outside of itself

This way of considerations is less known, but also less subject to distractions.  In the preceding degree it seems that one does not find God, or that one may have found him.  But in this way, one recognizes at once that one has found him: At night, in my bed (that is in human bodies, which are the beds of souls), I have searched for Him whom my soul loves, and I have not found him.  I will arise, and I will return to the city of this world.  And running sometimes by the earthly bodies, sometimes by the heavenly, I have searched for him, and I have not found him there.  At least the distractions have been so great that in pain she seems to me to have encountered him again: I will search by the streets and by the squares for Him whom my soul loves; I have searched for him, and I have not found him (3:1-2).

        

My goodness has willed that I remind myself of the Angels who are like the sentinels of the world: the sentinels who guard the city have found me.  And I resolve to see if in them I would find the consideration of God more firm: Have you not seen the Beloved of my soul? Above the angelic nature I have immediately found the divine: A little after having passed them, I have found Him whom my soul loves.  And this, without sensible distractions, so well that it seems that I must never lose him:  I hold him and I will not let him go, until I enter into the heavenly glory, true house of human nature.  My mother is in her chamber, that is in the assembly of the Angels which is prepared for me.  Then, in this enigmatic vision a clear vision will occur: when I will introduce him, but more so when he will introduce me into the house of my mother, and into the chamber of she who has engendered me (3:3-4).

        

Holy consideration of God in spiritual things, which, as of its nature does not engender phantasms, so it does not engender dreams.  The consideration of the first degree is more interrupted; this second more stable and more lofty, for which it produces all its effects with more excellence, namely, a love more living and a joy more spiritual.  To which God, by adding his grace, forbids with a more particular care to arouse her, saying: I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the goats and stags of the fields, that you not awaken nor cause to awaken my beloved until she would will it (3:5).

 

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