Revelations of Divine Love · 24 of 127 · tr. Grace Warrack

Chapter XVII-b

Then thought-me: I knew but little what pain it was that I asked ; and, as a wretch, repented me, thinking: If I had wist what it had been, loth me had been to have prayed it .

For methought it passed bodily death, my pains.

I thought: Is any pain like this?

And I was answered in my reason: Hell is another pain: for there is despair.

But of all pains that lead to salvation this is the most pain, to see thy Love suffer.

How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy, suffer?

Here felt I soothfastly that I loved Christ so much above myself that there was no pain that might be suffered like to that sorrow that I had to [see] Him in pain.

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Themes

Anthropomorphismtheology

Attributing human characteristics, emotions, or form to the divine; embodied divine imagery.

The divine is described with human attributes and experiences, specifically the capacity to suffer pain and possess emotions like love.

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Bhaktisoteriology

The path of loving devotion and self-surrender to a personal deity as itself sufficient means of liberation — the Gita's 'to those constantly devoted, I come forward as their deliverer,' Kabir's and the Sant poets' love-religion, the devotional stream that parallels Sufi love-mysticism. Distinct from mystical_union (the resulting state), fana_annihilation (the ego's unmaking at the path's end), ladder_of_love (eros staged toward Beauty), and prayer (the practice of address): bhakti names devotion as the soteriological road itself.

The text centers on the path of loving devotion to a personal deity (Christ), where the intensity of love and the sorrow of seeing Him suffer constitute the core of the spiritual experience.

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Emotional Epistemologysoteriology

The doctrine that emotions constitute a valid and necessary mode of knowing reality, complementing or surpassing intellectual cognition.

The passage explicitly contrasts intellectual reasoning ('answered in my reason') with the superior knowledge gained through the intensity of sorrow and love ('felt I soothfastly'), establishing emotion as the primary mode of knowing divine reality.

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Living Godtheology

The divine conceived as active, present, and dynamic—not an abstract principle but a personal responsive reality.

Christ is depicted not as an abstract principle but as a personal being who suffers, loves, and is the source of the mystic's life and joy.

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Prayerpraxis

Direct address to the divine, whether petitionary, contemplative, or liturgical; speech and silence offered upward.

The passage begins with a reflection on a specific act of petitionary prayer ('loth me had been to have prayed it') and the subsequent divine response.

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Related passages · 9 parallels

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