“All other things, says St. John, God did in passing, as it were. In His Son, however, He saw all things and bestowed on them His beauty and His love. Through the Incarnation He gave these a supernatural existence and lifted them up, together with man, to the glory of God. Through the glory of …
“This becomes still more clear when in the commentary on the Spiritual Canticle we see, placed over against each other, the hiding of the Bridegroom in the Bosom of His Father and His discovery by the Bride, when He sleeps in her own lap by virtue of her overshadowing. “Beloved,” the bride cries to her …
“It is here that the Holy Ghost, as it were, brings His Bride to meet the Bridegroom, that they may embrace. In that clasp He slumbers in her. He is not there unknown to the soul itself, but he dwells there hidden from the devil who cannot penetrate the scene of this embrace, and from …
“Towards the end of this commentary St. John approaches the image of the Incarnation in Our Lady to express the most close communion of God with the soul, when he explains the words spoken by the loving soul to God: “Where thou dwellest in secret.” By this the soul means, says St. John, that God …
In his explanation of another metaphor, the Living Flame of Love, St. John draws Our Lady as closely as possible into the circle of his imagery. In speaking about the glittering and shining of the lamps of God in us, about our absorption of that divine light like the pane of glass, about our participation …
“A much loved comparison of the saint which he employs to express the necessity of our being susceptible and pure in order to partake of the grace of God, and even share the divine nature, is the image of the window through which the sunlight passes. The painters of the Flemish country, the land of …
“How often does the saint employ imagery that can generally be applied to Our Lady. It is next to impossible that he has not thought of his Holy Mother in this connection. But even if this should not be the case, nevertheless the use, and therefore the suitability, of these images stamp his mysticism as …
“As an example of a soul that always followed the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, he cites in the same chapter the example of Our Lady ‘la gloriosa’, the glorious one, Mother of God. From her earliest existence she was raised to this state. Never was the image of any creature impressed in her mind, …
“Particularly does he praise in her the fact that she, who is indeed called by the angel “full of the Holy Ghost”, always let herself be led by the Holy Spirit, an ideal which we must strive after in our intercourse with God, however difficult it may be and however few will be found who …
“For St. John of the Cross, Our Lady is the ideal of the soul that strives upward toward God, and is drawn by God towards Himself. But she is so under more than one aspect. Not always does he express himself with equal force.” St. Titus Brandsma What do you think of this quote? Write …