“While Mary is thus our example in this aspect, St. John paints for us the glory of the divine Motherhood as image of the mystical life even further.
It is as if the Holy Spirit in the highest phases of the mystical life bears his Bride towards the Bridegroom, so that they embrace and entwine. In this entwinement He slumbers in her womb. He abides there “secretly”. However, the soul feels that intimate embrace, although not always as profoundly as when He awakens. At this awakening it seems to it that He at first lay in its womb as if fallen into slumber. It did indeed feel Him, it enjoyed Him from beforehand, but it was still as if He, its beloved, was asleep in its womb. As long as one of the beloveds still slumbers, there is not yet between them a mutual exchange of thoughts and feelings of love. This happens only then, when they have both awakened. How happy is the soul that feels God living in it and feels resting in its womb. How appropriate it seems to it to keep itself far from everything, to flee all interactions and to live in the deepest inward reflection in order not to disturb or dismay, by the smallest movement or the least clamour, the lap on which the Beloved rests. Usually He lies there as if slumbering in the embrace of his Bride, in the independence of the soul. It experiences Him and usually with sweet pleasure. If He, by the way, were always Awake and radiated it constantly with his light and love, this would be for it as already abiding in God’s glory. If a gentle awakening, in which He only opens the eyes slightly, already moves the soul thus, what would happen to it if He, in and for it, were usually completely awake.”
Bl. Titus Brandsma
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