Commentaries on the Song of Songs: Second Volume

By Alfonso Gálvez

The second volume of the Commentaries on the Song of Songs is dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of three

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shoreless Lake Press
• Release date: Feb 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781953170279

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COMMENTARIES ON THE SONG OF SONGS

Second Volume

ALFONSO GÁLVEZ

Shoreless Lake Press Shoreless Lake Press

Commentaries on the Song of Songs, Second Volume by Alfonso Gálvez.

Copyright © 2022 by Shoreless Lake Press.

American edition published with permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission of the Society of Jesus Christ the Priest, P.O. Box 157, Stewartsville, New Jersey 08886.

Second Edition

New Jersey U.S.A. — 2022

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022920601

ISBN: 978-1-953170-26-2 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-953170-27-9 (e-book)

Published by

Shoreless Lake Press

P.O. Box 157

Stewartsville, New Jersey 08886

www.alfonsogalvez.com

"Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est;

modus, sine modo diligere."

Saint Bernard, De diligendo Deo, I, 1.

CONTENTS

First Part

1. In The Steps Of Jesus Christ

2. The Urgency Of Love

3. In The Steps Of The Master Once Again

Second Part

4. Towards The Chamber Of The King

5. More About Christian Joy Or The Perfect Joy

6. From Joy Lost To Joy Recovered

7. Rightly Are You Loved

Third Part

8. The Immaculate Bride

9. The Solitude Of The Bride (Part One)

10. The Solitude Of The Bride (Part Two)

Notes

FIRST PART

Draw me after you; let us run!

(Ca 1:4a)

1

IN THE STEPS OF JESUS CHRIST

The bride, in her eagerness, wants to follow the Bridegroom so as to be with Him; consequently she proclaims her desire with impetuosity and haste, as can be seen from her own exclamation: Let us run! In fact one gets the impression that she is waiting for the Bridegroom Himself to command her to set about following Him, or at least to permit her to do so; that is why she says: Draw me after you.

However, the Bridegroom has already invited her several times to follow Him. ¹ So, there are quite veritable reasons to think that the bride’s exclamation is really meant to express her intense desire to follow Him, so that the two of them can meet and stay together, alone and undisturbed. This latter intention seems to be definitely confirmed by what she goes on to say: The king has brought me into his chambers…

Solitude, as a precondition for intimacy, is something essential to love: the two of them alone, the Bridegroom and the bride, so as to be able to give themselves fully to each other, putting everything else into oblivion. And it is quite clear that in perfect love, that is, a love which has been purified as far as the human creature is concerned, only the thou and the I are to be found.

I remained, lost in oblivion;

my face I reclined on the Beloved;

all ceased and I abandoned myself,

leaving my cares

among the lilies to be forgotten. ²

In another stanza of his Spiritual Canticle, the poet from Fontiveros conveys a similar idea:

In solitude she lived;

and in solitude now has built her nest;

and in solitude her Beloved

alone guides her,

who likewise in solitude was wounded by love. ³

So much is this solitude an essential element that, as such, it cannot be absent from love; it has been said above: only the two lovers, the thou and the I, are present; anything else and anyone else are excluded and forgotten. This appears to make sense and seems easy to understand, yet it still raises important and unexpectedly deep problems.

To begin with, it needs to be said that the first and most obvious question that comes to mind is: Why are things like this…? Why do we have to describe the solitude of the lovers —thou and I, alone ⁴— as being part of the very essence of love? Replying to this question involves nothing less than positing and developing an entire metaphysics of love.

However, before trying to give a sketchy reply, some aspects of this solitude are worth clarifying. In the first place, there is its radical nature which shows quite clearly its absolute necessity and total seriousness.

As a rule, the Master does not expressly insist that his disciple has to leave everything in order to follow in his footsteps; ⁵ he prefers to talk in terms of taking up one’s cross daily in order to follow Him. ⁶ But if we look at the whole body of his teaching we can see very clearly that following Him means the uttermost postponing of everything else: no matter how one goes about it or what it takes, but it has to be a complete postponing and without conditions. In fact the apostles did not hesitate to leave everything and follow Him: When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him… ⁷ And he left everything, and rose and followed him. ⁸ Speaking for all of them, though with a reward in mind, St Peter expressly states their abandoning all: And Peter said, Behold, we have left all and followed you. ⁹ Our Lord does not say there will be no reward; in fact, he confirms that there will be one, and he uses the occasion to make it quite clear that one needs to give up absolutely everything one has, even the things which are most dearly loved: Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house, or wife, or brothers, or parents, or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God… ¹⁰ And one has to make this renunciation or abandonment prior to following Him; a following which is going to become more radical in other passages.

As can be seen, for example, in Luke 9: 57–62 and another parallel text, ¹¹ Jesus states that it is not enough for one who wants to be his follower to commit himself unconditionally to following Him wherever he goes, even though that is a considerable commitment to make; a candidate for discipleship also has to take into account that the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. This amounts to saying that the disciple has to be ready to be so poor and detached that he has nowhere to lay his head. Even the dearest of family ties and affections are not allowed if they are an obstacle to following Jesus or cause even the slightest hold-up: that is why it is not permissible to take leave of one’s family or even to see first to the burial of one’s father if he has just died. Our Lord’s words in this connection are categorical, and even harsh: Let the dead bury their dead… No one, having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. Even that is not the end of the demands he makes —far from it. When it comes to following the Master, and things can become impediments which hinder it, the disciple has to be ready even to loathe or to hate what he most loves: If any one comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. ¹² And, even though obviously this expression should not be taken literally because it refers not to hatred but rather to an appropriate hierarchy of loves —or better to say, to putting authentic love in its rightful place—, that does not dilute the forcefulness of words which must be taken very seriously in their exact meaning. The terms are so radical because their intention is but to make quite clear how extremely earnest this doctrine is so as to dispel any danger of taking it lightly. In this sense one can say that, harsh though they are, the Master’s words maintain their whole literal meaning. The risk of their being taken too literally, although real, is not as frequently impending as the risk of one’s reading them or hearing them in a superficial way. One needs to remember that what our Lord is talking about is not just removing obstacles that lie in the way of love: he is referring to the radical, without reserve and outright eradication of anything which might get in the way of one’s complete and total self–surrender to the beloved person. Or put another way: the accent is being placed here on alacrity —absence of delay— and radicalness, rather than on mere surmounting of obstacles.

But the forcefulness of these statements aiming at stressing the radical nature of this fundamental teaching does not end here. Anything which in any way opposes real love or puts an obstacle in its path needs to be uprooted with as much decisiveness as absence of hesitation. Even if it is something which is very close to one’s life, or indeed a part of it: If your right eye is an occasion of sin to you, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is better for you that one of your members should perish than that your whole body should be thrown into hell. And if your right hand is an occasion of sin to you, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is better for you that one of your members should be lost than that your whole body should go into hell. ¹³ The essentially radical nature of the lovers’ solitude, which perforce leads them to forget and relinquish everything and everyone else, is simply a demand of the basic law of love; a law which stems necessarily from the very structure of love. The lover and the beloved, the Bridegroom and his bride, are alone together at last, never again to be parted:

My beloved is mine and I am his. ¹⁴

…………

I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. ¹⁵

…………

I belong to my beloved

and all his desires are for me. ¹⁶

…………

A garden locked is my sister, my bride,

a garden locked, a fountain sealed. ¹⁷

My Beloved requested me

to forget about all things,

and standing by his side

alone, to gaze at him

before the waking of the dawn. ¹⁸

Once love has surrendered everything, in line with its peculiar demands, there is nothing else left, only the persons of the lover and the beloved. For each, the only thing that exists now is the other. But in such a way that each sees in the other its all; and therefore there is nothing else that they desire:

I belong to my love,

and his desires are for me. ¹⁹

The beloved is her lover’s all; so much so that others mean little to Him or maybe nothing at all:

As an apple tree among the trees of the wood,

so is my love among young men. ²⁰

What our Lord has to say in this connection is categorical and leaves no room for doubt: No one can serve two masters. ²¹ According to his teaching it is just not possible to give one’s heart to two things at the same time because that attempt will always end in despising, or even hating, one or the other: For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. ²² In perfect love, then, there is no room for parts or shares: taken in that sense, what St John of the Cross says is entirely valid: Through Nothingness to All. That is why St Paul, who does not hesitate to proclaim the indubitable superiority of virginity over marriage (1 Cor 7: 1–8), thinks that a married person is a divided being: I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. ²³ This teaching is expressed very clearly and categorically in the Pauline text, even if it no longer has a good press; which explains the frequent attempts at making it unnoticed, just as is also the case with many other passages of Scripture nowadays. ²⁴ Which in no sense means that in the Apostle’s mind marriage is reduced merely to the level of a lesser evil. ²⁵ And yet, even when one accepts the doctrine that perfect love is open to everyone, one must acknowledge that a married person has to make an effort to rise above the love he owes his spouse; in the sense of greatly exceeding the extent of that love. This is precisely what the Apostle means when, after pointing out (in passing, as it were) that married people cannot avoid experiencing the distress of the flesh, he adds: But this I say, brethren, the time has grown very short; it remains that those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who weep as though they were not weeping, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they were not possessing; and those who use the world as though they were not using it. For this world in its present form is passing away. ²⁶ And the same radicalism as regards abandoning things, in order to obtain the most important thing of all, can be seen through the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price (Mt 13: 44–46). As the book of Proverbs already put it: once true wisdom has been found, it must be acquired no matter what it costs. ²⁷ And there is no greater wisdom than making oneself poor for love’s sake.

However, although it is undoubtedly essential for a Christian life and a correct understanding of what following Jesus Christ involves, this doctrine needs to be inserted into the wider setting of the whole New Testament revelation. Is it possible to deduce from what has been said that, for St Paul and for Christianity in general, anything other than perfect love is something secondary, relative and of no importance? Is that how one should interpret the so–called contemptus mundi, or despising or rejecting all things in order to follow Jesus Christ? Where does that leave the doctrine about the goodness and beauty of created things? Perhaps written off, or at least marginalized…? According to the well-known Pauline teaching, even charisma fade away or take second place when compared with charity (1 Cor 12); and in the Letter to the faithful of Philippi the Apostle says, I consider all things loss, and count them as dung, because of the excelling knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things. ²⁸

Clearly, the only possible reply to those questions must be a categorical No! In fact, although things can be regarded as having relative or secondary importance, this does not mean in the least that they have no importance. All things are relative when compared with the Absolute; and everything is of secondary importance when set alongside what is definitely the first thing, the main thing.

Jesus’ remark to Martha about only one thing being necessary does not derive from the fact that she is so busy trying to meet needs which perhaps could be regarded as useless: the problem is that she is too busy, anxious and troubled about many things. And if in addition one remembers that, according to the Master Himself, Mary chose the better part, it is clear that the other parts are also good, though they need to be arranged in hierarchical order after or behind that better part. That is all there is to it; nothing more, nothing less: Martha, Martha, sollicita es et turbaris erga plurima, porro unum est necessarium; Maria enim optimam partem elegit, quae non auferetur ab ea. ²⁹

This is one of the extremely important points in New Testament morality, and Church teaching has not always managed to find the correct place for it. Many complex lines of thinking intersect here, not all of them right ones: from Manichaeism, which does not appreciate the goodness of created things (matter, especially), to doctrines which fail to give enough importance to the reality of the Human Nature of Jesus Christ —and therefore to the reality of the mystery of the Incarnation—, passing en route the mystical theologies that speak in terms of total negation, or those which regard the human body as unpleasant baggage or an intolerable burden which needs to be shed if one is to reach one’s final goal. ³⁰

Two things, therefore, must be stated very clearly. The first, and most important, has to do with the radical nature of self–surrender in authentic love. If each of the lovers is everything for the other, in keeping with the basic law of love, it logically follows that each also finds his or her all in the other. Each is solely and entirely for the other.

But, at the same time, it is important not to forget that the significance that other things have for both lovers has to do with self–surrender or self–giving, rather than renunciation. It is not so much a matter, therefore, of despising things as of giving them up to the person one loves. ³¹ It could not be otherwise, because here it is not a matter of abandoning things because they are bad, but of handing them over to the beloved precisely because they are good. In the decree of creation, things were not seen as obstacles or as a kind of strange test to be used as a proof, or touchstone, to identify genuine love —will the lover prove capable of abandoning them for the sake of the beloved: yes or no…? The truth is that things are indeed very good; and one reason they were created was because love is unthinkable without the presents and gifts which, thanks to the existence of created things, the lovers give one another. We can see this from what the Bridegroom says to the bride in the Song, so deep is his love for her, so exquisitely does He admire her:

Your cheeks show fair between their pendants

and your neck within its necklaces.

We shall make you golden earings

and beads of silver. ³²

And the bride, for her part, tells the Bridegroom, rivalling Him in love and enthusiasm:

The mandrakes give forth their fragrance,

the most exquisite fruits are at our doors;

the new as well as the old,

I have stored them for you, O my beloved. ³³

So, the other things are, as it were, the material from which the presents that the lovers give one another can be extracted and made up. If, besides that, the bride sees in these other things vestiges and traces of her Beloved, because they were created by Him and therefore cannot but be good…, it becomes impossible to regard them as a baneful obstacle which needs to be gotten rid of: they are a precious gift, worthy of being offered to Him. If that is the case, maybe it is better, when resorting to mystical language, to use, for instance, the expression going beyond the senses —or elevation of the senses— and not annihilation of the senses. Is man not destined to know and love God —and therefore enjoy Him— through his senses also and by means of them? If the Word had not become flesh, how could the apostle St John have written the words which open his first Letter?: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled: of the Word of life —the Life was made manifest, and we have seen, and now testify and announce to you, the life eternal which was with the Father, and has appeared to us. That which we have seen and have heard we announce also to you… ³⁴ Perhaps that is why the Bible begins by repeatedly emphasizing the goodness of created things (Gen 1: 1–25), not failing to stress that the created universe is destined not to be destroyed or annihilated, but rather elevated and transformed. ³⁵ St Paul for his part has no doubt in his mind that it is not created things as such that are going to deprive man of his love for God: For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord; ³⁶ and that is why he feels moved to proclaim enthusiastically that created things are a great gift that God has placed in men’s hands: For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas; or the world, or life, or death; or the present or the future —all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. ³⁷

Undoubtedly, the depth of this teaching and therefore the difficulty of making all the pieces of Revelation’s puzzle fit together —pieces which can sometimes look like paradoxes— are at least a part–explanation for the hesitations and perplexities often found in the writings of the mystics. St John of the Cross, for example, the Doctor of the Nothing, of the Nights, and of annihilation of the senses, but in the last analysis a poet, extols creation and created things as being vestiges of the Beloved. As can be seen from the following stanzas of his Spiritual Canticle:

O woods and thickets,

planted by the hand of the Beloved!

O meadow of green,

enamelled with blossoms,

tell me if he has passed your way! ³⁸

Scattering a thousand graces,

he passed through these groves in haste,

and, looking upon them as he went,

by his glance alone

he left them clothed with his beauty. ³⁹

The Mystical Doctor, who speaks so profoundly about annihilation of the senses, of the imagination and of memory, is also a man and a poet; therefore, he is well aware that unless he has these resources he cannot love the Beloved, or even recognize Him. Hence his most beautiful lines:

O crystalline spring,

would that on your silvered surface

you were suddenly to form

those eyes for which I pine

and which I carry graven in my inmost heart! ⁴⁰

How could virginity, for example, be described as heroic virtue were it not for the fact that through it man offers God, freely and out of love, a sublime good? Here it is not a matter of trading something evil for something good, but of renouncing something wonderfully good for something which is better still. Like the good poet he is, St John of the Cross is a minstrel and a troubadour of things created. In this connection it is interesting to note that the way he piles nouns upon nouns in some of his stanzas —apparently as just a list of things— gives them a beauty which is almost divine; as in this stanza from his Spiritual Canticle:

My Beloved, the mountains,

the solitary wooded valleys,

the strange islands,

the sonorous streams,

the whisper of the amorous breezes. ⁴¹

Or in this other stanza, also from the Canticle, in which the almost total absence of adjectives makes it even more beautiful. As a literary device, it could seem a mere piling up of things, nothing more:

Birds that fly with ease,

lions, stags, leaping does,

mountains, valleys, river–banks,

waters, breezes, heats,

and terrors that keep watch by night… ⁴²

St Francis of Assisi was another great poet, a charming troubadour of creation and the enchanting author of the Canticle to Brother Sun. The background to the book of the Little Flowers, which is a fair song expressing the Saint’s love of created things, is very far from containing the least shadow of Manichaeism. Thus, for St Francis, his body was his brother body, just that… something that not for a moment could be regarded as an enemy; even though very occasionally —as sometimes happens between brothers— a trace of enmity could arise between one brother and another. ⁴³ In Rubén Darío’s immortal poem The Motives of the Wolf, this is how the Saint addresses the wolf of Gubbio:

They saw me humble, I licked their hands

and feet. I followed your sacred laws,

all creatures were my brothers;

brethren men, brethren oxen,

brethren stars and brethren worms…

In the Canticle of the three young men in the fiery furnace, ⁴⁴ the Bible engages in a fervent eulogy of created things, accumulating them into a very detailed multitude that praises the Creator: angels, heavens, waters, sun, moon, dew, winds, fire, heat, cold, and the whole creation, are invited to raise their voices in a song of praise to the Lord Almighty Who has drawn them out of nothingness in order to give them existence. And it was Jesus Christ Himself Who enhanced created things to the point of making them the matter necessary for confecting the sacraments: water, bread, wine or oil thereby became essential vehicles and channels for the grace of God to descend from heaven. How then can there be anything odd or strange about the fact that the bride in the Song should compare the Bridegroom —such is her admiration at the works of his hands, and so uplifted is she by her love for Him— with the most simple things she contemplates in Nature, things in which she rejoices?:

My love is to me a sachet of myrrh

that lies between my breasts.

My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms

among the vineyards of En–Gedi. ⁴⁵

Things would not have this beauty and goodness or have them in such abundance were it not for the fact that they were made in order to be gifts for the bride. And they are given to her so that she, in turn, can offer them to the Bridegroom. The innermost essence of created things consists in their being a gift. ⁴⁶ Hence the point the Apostle made: You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich… ⁴⁷ and so that the Corinthians might become poor in turn. For, how can someone become poor by his own free will unless he is rich to begin with? No one gives what he has not got. He can only give up what he has; and the more abundantly he has and the more precious it is, the poorer he becomes when he gives it up. If created things were bad or valueless, they could never become presents or love–gifts. That is why God made them good and beautiful and delightful —even the forbidden fruit of the tree of Paradise (Gen 3:6). And that is why it is true to say that the beauty of virginity is based on the sublimity of marriage, ⁴⁸ and that the heroic greatness of obedience has its roots in the sublimity of man’s free will and intelligence.

The solitude of the lovers reaches its fullness when both of them have given up everything they possess. Entirely despoiled of things, which they have given up out of love, all that is left to each of them, their sole possession, is the other:

My dove is my only one,

perfect and mine.

She is the darling of her mother,

the favourite of the one who bore her… ⁴⁹

Come, my beloved, let us go to the fields.

We will spend the night in the villages,

and in the early morning we will go to the vineyards.

We will see if the vines are budding,

if their blossoms are opening,

if the pomegranate trees are in flower.

There I shall give you the gift of my love.

The mandrakes yield their fragrance,

the most exquisite fruits are at our door;

the new as well as the old,

I have stored them for you, my love. ⁵⁰

Here the surrender of everything one possesses is complete and total. The lover gives and offers all that he possesses, Himself included; his very life, of course, to put it another way. This means, if we push the logic as far as it will go, that the lover does not even own his own death, ⁵¹ now that he no longer is left with a life of his own. That is why the Apostle could say that None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die we are the Lord’s. ⁵² In divine–human love, the solitude of both lovers, God and the one he has created, reaches its climax at this point; for this marks the moment, so keenly awaited, when the two are at last quite alone, when each is entirely for the other:

Beloved, I would like to enjoy your supper

in the fresh air of the garden,

for it is spring time

and the mountains are now filled

with rosemary, thyme and mint.

Let us join our hands

and go to see the green meadows,

the orchards of apple trees,

the groves of pomegranate trees,

the silver poplars near the river banks.

My Beloved, we will climb

the mountain of the rosemary and rockrose,

and then we will drink,

the two of us, from the abundant spring,

its fresh, clear and murmuring waters. ⁵³

The Bridegroom requested me

to forget about all things

and, near the shady ford,

to contemplate his eyes

and to rest among his wooings of love… ⁵⁴

As one might expect, following the Bridegroom in order to be alone with Him does not end here. Mutual and total self–giving culminates in fusion or identification of the lovers’ lives, as can be seen particularly in the Eucharistic passages in St John. If each of them gives his or her very life to the other, it follows that both of them are living one and the same life: He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, abides in me and in him. As the living Father has sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me, he also shall live because of me… ⁵⁵ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. ⁵⁶

And we need to remember that this identification is very far from being simply a moral one. The passages quoted lead one in fact to think that, in divine–human love, the union that exists between the lovers is similar, or analogous in nature, to the union between the Father and the Son in the bosom of the Trinity, or to that between the branch and the vine.

St John of the Cross’ teaching on this point is both daring and accurate. Regarding the identification between the lovers which love brings about, along with the resulting divinization of man —or of the human soul, according to the terminology used by St John and classical mystical authors—, and keeping in mind also the fundamental doctrine that love is always something involving two people —a thou and an I who love each other and give themselves entirely, each to the other, in perfect reciprocity—, the Saint does not hesitate to attribute to the human lover a degree of active involvement in the spiration of the Holy Spirit: ⁵⁷ In this stanza the soul describes and expounds that which she says the Spouse is to give her in that beatific transformation, expounding it by means of five expressions. First, she says, it is the breathing of the Holy Spirit from God into her, and from her into God… ⁵⁸ And there is no need to consider it impossible that the soul should be capable of aught so high as to breathe in God as God breathes in her after a mode of participation. For, since God grants her the favour of uniting her in the most Holy Trinity, wherein she becomes deiform and God by participation… ⁵⁹ And elsewhere he also says: So, according to what has been said, the understanding of this soul is now the understanding of God; and its will is the will of God; and its memory is the memory of God; and its delight is the delight of God; and the substance of the soul, although it is not the substance of God, for into this it cannot be changed, is nevertheless united with Him and absorbed in Him, and is thus God by participation in God. ⁶⁰

As we can see, St John of the Cross’ teaching is as sublime as it is accurate. However, it is also true that problems do not end there; in fact one could say that that is really where they begin. As is true of any branch of theology —and as happens indeed in all fields of knowledge— mystical theology still contains many questions that need to be studied more deeply. As far as the present case is concerned, as Baruzi says, ⁶¹ and as one can see from the passages quoted, St John of the Cross is very careful to point out that what is involved here is not substantial change of the soul into God. And he could not but do that. However, one still needs to try to go deeper into the mystery, to examine the structure of a union in which the soul, even though she is not substantially changed into God —that is something that could never happen—, becomes God by participation. Of course, one needs to remember that it would be absurd to claim that the Saint managed to penetrate, he did not even come close to it, so sublime and supernatural a mystery. ⁶² So there are a series of questions that might be asked and left there, awaiting an answer —questions so unsettling and profound that they place the Christian on the very threshold of eternal life: What exactly does one mean by saying that the human being becomes God by participation but without becoming God substantially…? What is the meaning and scope of the revealed expression partaking in the divine nature…?

One always needs to bear in mind that a union or fusion of lives, which happens in a most wonderful way in divine–human love, in no sense implies loss of personality on the part of either of the lovers. In fact, the very opposite happens, for love is the way to reassert and underpin personality, to use inappropriate yet somewhat valid language. Moreover, any absorption of one personality by the other would make love impossible: love also comes about in the context of opposition between two persons who are two persons absolutely distinct and who can therefore relate to each other as thou and I. ⁶³ If love did not involve distinct persons, and even in opposition to each other, it would not be possible for each to go out of himself in order to give himself to the other. A loving self–surrender would be unthinkable unless there were someone who was capable of receiving that surrender, since giving and receiving can only happen between distinct persons. Here, too, it may be that classical doctrine fails to get the focus right: the gravity of this failure —if in fact this assessment is valid— depends on the degree to which it puts obstacles in the way of penetrating the mystery. What this means here is that, in love–relationships —in this case, in a purely human context— it seems inappropriate to speak simply of the soul, because really it is more correct to speak of persons who love and are loved.

Classical Christian thought, as far as the structure of its anthropology is concerned, may have put too much emphasis on the doctrine of the superiority of the soul over the body. Or maybe it is simply a matter of a somewhat unhappy use of particular terminology. St John of the Cross, for example, seems to think —apropos of the phenomenon of transfixion experienced by St Francis of Assisi— that certain extraordinary graces given to the body are a kind of overflow of something first given to the soul: Let us return, then, to the work that is performed by that seraph, which in truth is to strike and to wound internally in the spirit. And so, if God sometimes permits that some effects of the wound should pass outward to the bodily senses, to an extent corresponding to the interior wound, the sore and the wound will appear outwardly, as came to pass when the seraph wounded St Francis: when the seraph wounded his soul with love by the five wounds, the effect extended in the same fashion to the body; and the seraph impressed these wounds also on the body, hurting it with sores, just as he had impressed them in St Francis’ soul, covering it with sores of love. For God usually bestows no favours upon the body without bestowing them first and principally upon the soul. ⁶⁴ It would be unreasonable to expect the Saint to be more technical than he ever intended and to avail himself of a terminology not in use at the time. Yet, with hindsight, perhaps it would be more correct to say that the wounds produced by the transfixion, rather than given by overabundance to St Francis’ body —or simply to his body—, they were in fact granted to St Francis. ⁶⁵

As regards the fruition of God by the souls of the blessed in heaven, the problem is simpler, because those souls love a personal God. However, as regards God’s love for them, one needs to look for another solution. Luke 20:37 ⁶⁶ may contain a key which would point us to an explanation in some degree: the blessed, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, cannot be regarded as dead in God’s sight, for all live to Him. Although obviously the accent here is on asserting the fact of the resurrection, it is also true that this passage does underline the special consideration —or the way in which God sees them— that God has toward these souls. Yet, once again, as always, God’s love for these souls has a personal reference which cannot be gainsaid: they are the souls of the just, the very heart of his saints. If the things that belong to the loved one are loved also because they belong to that person…, because they speak of her, and because they lead to her…, what is to be said when it is her soul and her heart that are concerned? When God loves this or that soul, he clearly does so because they are the souls of his own, the souls of those whom he truly loves: for all live to Him. And this is a universal law of love. ⁶⁷

Along this line another possibility seems to open up which might help to explain the fact that the Christian can partake of the divine nature, as can be seen from the important text of 2 Peter 1:4, ⁶⁸ without losing his own nature and without any need to have recourse to pantheistic phantasmagorias which try to transpose his nature into the divine nature.

The fusion of lives that takes place between the lovers also provides the key to understanding the true meaning of the new commandment: A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. ⁶⁹ The phrase even as I have loved you should not be interpreted in the sense of similarly or in the sense of because this is the way I have acted towards you, but in the more exact sense of with the same love. For it is the very Spirit of Jesus Christ Who lives in the Christian, acting, loving and praying in him, with him and through him (Rom 8:26). And if it is the very Love of the Master that is embedded in the heart of the disciple, one can therefore truly say that both God and the Christian love with exactly the same love: …That the Love with which thou, Father, hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. ⁷⁰ This would make no sense at all unless both lovers lived the same life. ⁷¹

By looking at things in this way, it makes it easier to understand an apparent paradox which was referred to earlier: the commandment of love of neighbour, that is, the horizontal aspect of supernaturalized human love, and its connection with the proclaimed solitude of the lovers. What about the doctrine that the thou and the I are quite alone, forgetful of everything and everyone else…? Is this or is it not what is happening…? Well, if the Christian and Jesus Christ love with the same heart, or with the same Love, then that means that each of them loves exactly what the other loves. It follows that the Christian, with the very Love and with the very Spirit of Jesus Christ —numerically the same— rooted in his heart (Jn 17:26; Rom 5:5), loves everything that his