Quote of the day, 15 November: St. John of the Cross
Reveal your presence,
and may the vision of your beauty be my death;
for the sickness of love
is not cured
except by your very presence and image.
THE SPIRITUAL CANTICLE, STANZA 11
Death cannot be bitter to the soul that loves, for in it she finds all the sweetness and delight of love. The thought of death cannot sadden her, for what she finds is that gladness accompanies this thought. Neither can the thought of death be burdensome and painful to her, for death will put an end to all her sorrows and afflictions and be the beginning of all her bliss. She thinks of death as her friend and bridegroom, and at the thought of it she rejoices as she would over the thought of her betrothal and marriage, and she longs for the day and the hour of her death more than earthly kings long for kingdoms and principalities.
The Wise Man proclaims of this kind of death: O death, your sentence is welcome to the person who feels need [Sir 41:2]. If it is welcome to those who feel need for earthly things, even though it does not provide for these needs but rather despoils such persons of the possessions they have, how much better will its sentence be for the soul in need of love, as is this one who is crying out for more love. For death will not despoil her of the love she possesses, but rather will be the cause of love’s completeness, which she desires, and the satisfaction of all her needs.
The soul is right in daring to say, “may the vision of your beauty be my death,” since she knows that at the instant she sees this beauty she will be carried away by it, and absorbed in this very beauty, and transformed in this beauty, and made beautiful like this beauty itself, and enriched and provided for like this very beauty. David declares, consequently, that the death of the saints is precious in the sight of the Lord [Ps 116:15]. This would not be true if they did not participate in God’s own grandeurs, for in the sight of God nothing is precious but what he in himself is.
Accordingly, the soul does not fear death when she loves; rather she desires it. Yet sinners are always fearful of death. They foresee that death will take everything away and bring them all evils. As David says, the death of sinners is very evil [Ps 34:21]. And hence, as the Wise Man says, the remembrance of it is bitter [Sir 41:1]. Since sinners love the life of this world intensely and have little love for that of the other, they have an intense fear of death. But the soul that loves God lives more in the next life than in this, for a soul lives where it loves more than where it gives life, and thus takes little account of this temporal life. She says then: May the vision of your beauty be my death.
Saint John of the Cross
The Spiritual Canticle, st. 11, no. 10
John of the Cross, St. 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, Revised Edition, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O with revisions and introductions by Kavanaugh, K, ICS Publications, Washington DC.
Featured image: Father Corey Bruns captures this image of blue and white votive candles at his parish, Saint Joseph Catholic Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Image credit: © Corey Bruns / Flicker (Used by permission)
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