THE SOUL FLOWS OUT OF ITSELF INTO GOD AND IS ABSORBED IN HIM[1]
Moist and liquid substances easily receive the shapes and limits which we wish to give them. For they have no firmness and solidity which contain and limit them in themselves. Pour some liquid in a vessel. You will see that it remains enclosed within the limits of the vessel. If the vessel is round or square, the liquid will take the same shape as it has no limit or shape except that of the vessel which contains it.
By nature the soul is not the same. It has its shapes and limits. It has its shape from its habits and tendencies and its limits from its own will. When it is held by its own inclinations and its self-will, we say that it is hard. It means that it is stubborn and obstinate: I will take away, says God, your heart of stone (Ez 36:26), that is, I will take away your obstinacy. To change the shape of stone, iron, wood, we need the hammer, the fire, the axe. He who does not easily receive divine impressions is considered a person with a heart of iron, of wood or of stone. Thus he remains in his own will amidst tendencies which accompany our corrupt nature. Instead, a heart that is gentle, pliable and flexible is called a melted and liquefied heart: My heart, says David, speaking in the person of our Lord on the cross, my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast (Ps 22:14).[2]
The notorious queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, wanted to outdo Marc Antony in all the excesses and dissoluteness of his banquets. At the end of a feast she gave in her turn, she had a bottle of pure vinegar brought to her. In it she dropped one of the pearls she wore on her ears. It is estimated that it had a value of two hundred and fifty thousand crowns.[3] When it dissolved, melted and became liquid she swallowed it. She would have buried another pearl which she was wearing on the other ear in the cavity of her greedy stomach if Lucius Plancus had not stopped her.
The heart of our Saviour, the true oriental pearl, uniquely unique and of inestimable value, was cast in the midst of a sea of unfathomable bitterness on the day of his passion. It melted itself, dissolved and flowed out in pain under the impact of such great deadly anguishes. But love stronger than death (Song 8:6) softens, makes tender and melts hearts still more promptly than all other passions.
My soul, said the sacred spouse, in the Song of Songs, wholly melted as my Beloved spoke to me (Song 5:6). What did she mean by saying melted away except that she could not any longer contain within herself? So she flowed out of herself towards her divine Lover. God ordered Moses to speak to the rock and it would produce water (Num 20:8). It is not surprising then that he himself made the soul of his spouse melt as he spoke to her in his tenderness. The balm is so thick by its nature that it is not a liquid at all or flowing. The longer it is kept the thicker it becomes and finally hardens itself, becoming red and transparent. But heat dissolves it and makes it fluid.
Love had made the bridegroom fluid and flowing. Hence the spouse calls him a perfume poured out (Song 1:3). Here she assures that she herself completely melted away out of love: My soul, she says, flowed out while my Beloved spoke (Song 5:6). The love of the Bridegroom was in her heart and under her breasts as a new wine, quite strong, which cannot be kept in the cask. For it was flowing out to all sides, since the soul follows its love, according to what the spouse said: For your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, she adds: Your name is perfume poured out (Song 1:2,3). Just as the bridegroom infuses his love and his soul into the heart of the spouse, so also the spouse mutually pours out her soul into the heart of the Bridegroom. See, a honeycomb or beehive touched by the burning rays of the sun goes out of itself, loses its shape and flows towards the spot where the rays touch it. Similarly, this loving soul flowed towards the voice of its Beloved, going out of itself and the limits of its natural being, to follow him who was speaking to it.
How does this sacred flowing out[4] of the human spirit into its Beloved take place? An intense experience of gratifaction (gratifying love) of the lover in the thing loved causes a certain spiritual powerlessness. It makes the soul feel powerless to contain itself. Hence, like a melted balm which has no more the strength or solidity, it lets itself go out and flow into what it loves. The soul does not soar high nor does it come to close union, but it gently flows out like a fluid or liquid into God whom it loves. We see clouds thickened by the south wind dissolve and turn into rain. They cannot contain themselves. So they fall and flow down. They merge themselves so intimately with the land that they soak it and become one with it. So the loving soul, though it still remains in itself, goes out by this sacred outpouring and holy fluidity. It leaves itself not only to unite itself with the Beloved but also to completely blend itself and permeate itself with him.
Do you see clearly, Theotimus, that this “flowing out" of the human spirit into its God is nothing else than a real ecstasy.[5] By it the soul entirely transcends the limits of its natural state and is completely blended, absorbed and swallowed up in God. Hence it happens that those who reach this intensity of divine love, once they come to themselves, do not see on earth anything that can satisfy them. They remain in extreme self-emptying. They feel quite exhausted [disinterested] in all that concern the senses. They have always in their hearts the maxim of the virgin, [St.] Blessed Teresa of Jesus [Avila]: “What is not God is nothing to me." It seems that such was the passionate love of this great friend of the Beloved [Christ] who said: It is no longer I who live but it is Jesus Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20) and: Our life is hidden with Jesus Christ in God (Col 3:3). For tell me, I beg you, Theotimus, if a drop of ordinary water dropped into an ocean of orange-scented water was living and could speak of the state in which it is, would it not cry out with great joy: “O humans! I live indeed but I do not live by myself. This ocean lives in me and my life is hidden in its abyss.”
The human spirit that flowed out into God does not die. For how can it die being immersed in life? Yet it lives without living in itself. The stars, though they have not lost their light, no longer shine in the presence of the sun (day time), but the sun shines on them. They are hidden in the sun's light. So too the soul, though alive, no longer lives, being blended with God. Rather God lives in it. Such were, I believe, the experiences of the great [Saints][6] Philip Neri and Francis Xavier who, overwhelmed by heavenly joys, prayed God to withdraw a little from them. It is because God willed that they continued to live a little longer in this world. This was impossible as long as their life was hidden and absorbed in God.
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[1] Literally, the title of the Chapter is: Flowing out or Liquefaction of the Soul into God. As many find it difficult to understand, we have taken the meaning and expressed it in the title given to the Chapter. Some deep experience of God is necessary to understand what it really means. It is a profound mystical experience.
[2] NRSV. Ref in the original text Ps 21: 15.
[3] Crown is a unit of money in several European countries.
39 [4] l'ecoulement literally, flowing, flow. To suit the context we have translated as flowing out, outpouring.
[5] ecstasy literally means standing out or going out of itself
[6] They were Blessed only when SFS was writing the Treatise.