aeternus

“God alone is he, who, by his infinite wisdom, sees, knows and penetrates all the turnings and windings of our hearts: he understands our thoughts from afar, he finds out our traces, doubles and turnings; his knowledge therein is admirable, surpassing our capacity and reach.”


This is a statement by Saint Francis de Sales in Chapter I of book VI of his “Treatise on the Love of God”. Saint Francis is talking about love and prayer and how it becomes a secret language between our heart and the heart of our Beloved. I appreciated how Saint Francis took the opportunity to explain the mystical side of prayer as he considered it along with the poetry of the Song of Songs (Canticles). I thought it might be something to share. Here he begins on mystical theology (the theme of Book VI) which he says is “No other thing than prayer”.


“Now it is called mystical, because its conversation is altogether secret, and there is nothing said in it between God and the soul save only from heart to heart, by a communication incommunicable to all but those who make it. Lovers’ language is so peculiar to themselves that none but themselves understand it. I sleep, said the holy spouse, and my heart watcheth. Ah! hark! The voice of my beloved knocking. [Cant. v. 2. ] Who would have guessed that this spouse being asleep could yet talk with her beloved? But where love reigns, the sound of exterior words is not necessary, nor the help of sense to entertain and to hear one another. In fine, prayer and mystical theology is nothing else but a conversation in which the soul amorously entertains herself with God concerning his most amiable goodness, to unite and join herself thereto.

Prayer is a manna, for the infinity of delicious tastes and precious sweetnesses which it gives to such as use it, but it is hidden, [Rev. 2: 17] because it falls before the light of any science, in the mental solitude where the soul alone treats with her God alone. Who is she, might one say of her, that goeth up by the desert, as a pillar of smoke of aromatical spices, of myrrh, and frankincense, and of all the powders of the perfumer? [Cant. 3: 6]. And it was the desire of secrecy that moved her to make this petition to her love: Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field, let us abide in the villages. [Cant. 7: 11.] For this reason the heavenly spouse is styled a turtle, a bird which is delighted in shady and solitary places, where she makes no other use of her song but for her only mate, either in life wooing him or after his death plaining him. For this reason, in the Canticles, the divine lover and the heavenly spouse describe their loves by a continual conversing together; and if their friends sometimes speak during their conference, it is but casually, and without interrupting their colloquy. Hence the Blessed Mother Saint Teresa of Jesus found at first more profit in the mysteries where our Saviour was most alone; as in the Garden of Olives, and where he was awaiting the Samaritan woman, for she fancied that he being alone would more readily admit her into his company.

Love desires secrecy; yea, though lovers may have nothing secret to say, yet they love to say it secretly: and this is partly, if I am not mistaken, because they would speak only for themselves, whereas when they speak out loud it seems no longer to be for themselves alone; partly because they do not say common things in a common manner, but with touches which are particular, and which manifest the special affection with which they speak. The language of love is common, as to the words, but in manner and pronunciation it is so special that none but lovers understand it.”

– St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) : Treatise on the Love of God

There is still some snow around thought the sun shone so brightly yesterday that we did get a lot of melting. Here is the outdoor shrine at the Carmel of St. Joseph.