Salesian Literature

Chapter 12  :  Love melts the soul till it flows into God

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Liquids can be given any shape or limitation at will; they have no harness or solidity by which to detain or confine themselves.  Pour a liquid into a vase, and you will see the liquid circumscribed by its container – round, if that is round; square, if that is square – taking its shape, its limitations, from the jar that holds it.

 

The nature of the soul is very different.  It has its own characteristic shapes and limits; its shape from its habits and tendencies, its own wishes, we say it is hard – in other words, obstinate, stubborn.  So, when God says, I will take away from your breasts that are hard as stone (Ez. 36:26), he means “I will take away your stubbornness.”

 

A gentle, pliable, docile heart, on the other hand, we describe as molten, flexible. I am spent as split water, says David, speaking for our Lord on the cross, all my bones out of joint, my heart turned to molten wax within me (Ps. 21:15).

 

How my heart had melted at the sound of his voice! (Cant. 5:6) cried the bride in the Song of Songs.  What did she mean by her heart melting, but that she could contain it no longer, that it had flowed out towards her divine lover?

 

How does the soul flow into God?  The lover is so gratified by what he loves that a form of spiritual powerlessness results; this causes the soul to feel that it can no longer contain itself.  Here is no soaring flight, no close embrace of union; the soul, as though it were a liquid flowing, glides gently unto the God it loves.  And just as we see clouds, piled up thickly by the south wind, unable to contain themselves, melt and turn into rain which falls to intimate union with the land it soaks; so the loving soul, without losing its identity, melts and flows out of itself towards its beloved – not merely to be close to him, but to blend into one with him.

 

Clearly, then, you see, this flowing of the soul out of itself into God is an actual ecstasy, in which the soul utterly transcends the limits of its natural state, until it is blended, absorbed and swallowed up in God.

 

As a result, people who achieve this intensity of divine love find – after they come round from their ecstasy – that nothing this world has to offer can satisfy them.  Completely exhausted, they are apathetic to all that concerns the senses, the motto of that saintly virgin Teresa of Jesus ever in their hearts: “God alone suffices.”  This, it seems, was the passionate love of God’s great friend, who said: I am alive; or rather, not I; it is Christ that lives in me (Gal. 2:20)…  Who also said: Your life is hidden away now with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).

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