Revelations of Divine Love · 122 of 127 · tr. Grace Warrack
Chapter LXXXI
"God seeth all our living a penance: for nature-longing of our love is to Him a lasting penance in us." "His love maketh Him to long" Our Good Lord shewed Himself in diverse manners both in heaven and in earth, but I saw Him take no place save in man's soul. He shewed Himself in earth in the sweet Incarnation and in His blessed Passion. And in other manner He shewed Himself in earth [as in the Revelation] where I say: I saw God in a Point . And in another manner He shewed Himself in earth thus as it were in pilgrimage: that is to say, He is here with us, leading us, and shall be till when He hath brought us all to His bliss in heaven. He shewed Himself diverse times reigning, as it is aforesaid; but principally in man's soul. He hath taken there His resting-place and His worshipful City: out of which worshipful See He shall never rise nor remove without end. Marvellous and stately is the place where the Lord dwelleth, and therefore He willeth that we readily answer to His gracious touching, more rejoicing in His whole love than sorrowing in our often fallings. For it is the most worship to Him of anything that we may do, that we live gladly and merrily, for His love, in our penance. For He beholdeth us so tenderly that He seeth all our living [here] a penance: for nature's longing in us is to Him aye-lasting penance in us : which penance He worketh in us and mercifully He helpeth us to bear it. For His love maketh Him to long [for us]; His wisdom and His truth with His rightfulness maketh Him to suffer us [to be] here: and in this same manner [of longing and abiding] He willeth to see it in us. For this is our natural penance,—and the highest, as to my sight. For this penance goeth never from us till what time that we be fulfilled, when we shall have Him to our meed. And therefore He willeth that we set our hearts in the Overpassing : that is to say, from the pain that we feel into the bliss that we trust.
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 centers on the path of loving devotion, describing how God's love makes Him long for us and how we should live gladly in His love.
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 leads humanity and will bring them all to His bliss in heaven.
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 text identifies the 'nature-longing' and 'penance' of earthly life as the result of being separated from God until final fulfillment.