Revelations of Divine Love · 77 of 127 · tr. Grace Warrack
Chapter LII-a
"We have now matter of mourning: for our sin is cause of Christ's pains; and we have, lastingly, matter of joy: for endless love made Him to suffer" And thus I saw that God rejoiceth that He is our Father, and God rejoiceth that He is our Mother, and God rejoiceth that He is our Very Spouse and our soul is His loved Wife.
And Christ rejoiceth that He is our Brother, and Jesus rejoiceth that He is our Saviour.
These are five high joys, as I understand, in which He willeth that we enjoy; Him praising, Him thanking, Him loving, Him endlessly blessing.
All that shall be saved, we have in us, for the time of this life, a marvellous mingling both of weal and woe: we have in us our Lord Jesus uprisen, we have in us the wretchedness and the mischief of Adam's falling, dying.
By Christ we are steadfastly kept, and by His grace touching us we are raised into sure trust of salvation.
And by Adam's falling we are so broken, in our feeling, in diverse manners by sins and by sundry pains, in which we are made dark, that scarsely we can take any comfort.
But in our intent we abide in God, and faithfully trust to have mercy and grace; and this is His own working in us.
And of His goodness He openeth the eye of our understanding, by which we have sight, sometime more and sometime less, according as God giveth ability to receive.
And now we are raised into the one, and now we are suffered to fall into the other.
And thus is this medley so marvellous in us that scarsely we know of our self or of our even-Christian in what way we stand, for the marvellousness of this sundry feeling.
But that same Holy Assent, that we assent to God when we feel Him, truly setting our will to be with Him, with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might.
And then we hate and despise our evil stirrings and all that might be occasion of sin, spiritual and bodily.
And yet nevertheless when this sweetness is hid, we fall again into blindness, and so into woe and tribulation in diverse manners.
But then is this our comfort, that we know in our faith that by virtue of Christ which is our Keeper, we assent never thereto, but we groan there-against, and dure on, in pain and woe, praying, unto that time that He sheweth Him again to us.
And thus we stand in this medley all the days of our life.
But He willeth that we trust that He is lastingly with as.
And that in three manner.—He is with us in Heaven, very Man, in His own Person, us updrawing; and that was shewed in [the Shewing of] the Spiritual Thirst.
And He is with us in earth, us leading; and that was shewed in the Third [Shewing], where I saw God in a Point.
And He is with us in our soul, endlessly dwelling, us ruling and keeping; and that was shewed in the Sixteenth [Shewing], as I shall tell.
And thus in the Servant was shewed the scathe and blindness of Adam's falling; and in the Servant was shewed the wisdom and goodness of God's Son.
And in the Lord was shewed the ruth and pity of Adam's woe, and in the Lord was shewed the high nobility and the endless worship that Mankind is come to by the virtue of the Passion and death of His dearworthy Son.
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 passage emphasizes 'praising, thanking, loving' God and the path of 'faithfully trust[ing]' as the means of spiritual standing.
John of the Cross's stage of contemplative purgation: a felt absence and aridity of God that strips the soul of attachments to its own consolations en route to deeper union.
The text describes periods where 'sweetness is hid' and the soul falls into 'blindness,' 'woe,' and 'tribulation' despite maintaining faith.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The text asserts that God actively keeps, raises, rules, and leads the soul, ordering the experience of weal and woe.
The doctrine that emotions constitute a valid and necessary mode of knowing reality, complementing or surpassing intellectual cognition.
The author explicitly links 'feeling' to knowing God ('assent to God when we feel Him') and describes a 'sundry feeling' that defines the spiritual state.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The passage contrasts the presence of Christ with the 'wretchedness' and 'mischief of Adam's falling,' describing a state of brokenness and blindness.