Our next subject is the Contemplative Life. S. Bernard speaks of it thus: “The Bridegroom, the well-beloved, places 4 His left hand ’ under the head of the spouse, that she may rest and sleep. And now, as her guardian, watches her with all possible tenderness, lest her maidens, in their constant and minute necessities, awake her.” 2 And again, “I have exceeding joy in the thought, that His Majesty should deign to abase Himself so as to hold sweet and familiar intercourse with our feebleness, and that the Supreme Deity should not think it beneath Him to be united with the soul which is exiled. If I doubt not that I shall obtain in Heaven, that of which on earth I read in Holy Scripture, my soul responds to the truth of the sacred page, except that it cannot express all that my soul will then become, and even now is able to feel. What, then, shall it receive, think you, this soul which is already gifted with such familiarity with, and is already admitted to the embrace of, God; cherished, as it were, in His bosom, guarded by His care, watched over by His love, lest whilst sleeping, by any one it should be stirred, before it awake of itself?” “This sleep of the spouse is not a bodily sleep. It is a sleep of life, a wakeful sleep, illuminating the inner being, driving away death, and giving an assurance of life eternal. Indeed, this sleep is one which does not dull the senses, but steals them away. It is a sort of death. I hesitate not to say so, since the Apostle commends those who, whilst living in the flesh, 4 are dead/ and their 4 life hid with Christ in God/1 Therefore I, without any absurdity, call this ecstasy of the Spouse death, who indeed not from life itself, but from the snares of life, escapes, and is thus enabled to say, 4 My soul is escaped, as a bird out of the snare of the hunter /2 We walk, indeed, in this life in the midst of snares, which are not to be feared, so long as with some holy and fervent thought the soul is occupied, if it rise up thereby to such a height as to be beyond the reach of ordinary habit, and ways of thinking. 4 In vain is the net spread in the sight of the bird/3 Who, then, would fear temptations to evil desire and appetite, where life itself was not felt? For when the soul is so absorbed, that if not life, yet the consciousness of life, is suspended, how then can it feel temptation ?4 Who will give me wings like a dove, that I may fly away and be at rest/ 4 Please God, may I oftentimes be thus withdrawn from things of sense, that I may escape the snares of death, and not feel the deadly blandishments of a life of ease and pleasure, that I may be insensible to the temptations of the flesh, to the fire of avarice, to the goads of anger and impatience, to the distress of anxiety, to the disappointments of earthly cares ! May my soul die the death of the righteous, so that no injustice may ensnare it, no wickedness allure it It is a good death, which does not take away life, which brings in a better life ; good, that by which the body does not fall, but the soul is raised, but this is the death of men. My soul also dies, if it may be said, with the death of angels ; going forth from the memory of the present, it despoils itself not only of the desire, but also of the images of inferior and corporeal things, and its conversation is confined to those things which bear the impress of perfect purity. Such is the state, I think, which deserves the name of contemplation. It is the part of human virtue, to live in the midst of temptations, and not to be enchained by them ; but to rise above all material forms, is a mark of angelic purity. Both, it is true, are the gift of God. Both are kinds of death, both break through the barriers of self-love, but one rises higher than the other. Blessed is he who is able to say,5 I get me away far off, and remain in the wilderness / 1 He was not content to go forth, unless he went far, that he might find rest. You have freed yourself from the snares of the flesh to such a degree as not to obey its lusts, nor be held by its seductions, in going forth you have separated yourself; but you have not yet gone 4 far off6 unless you are able, in the purity of your mind, to soar above those phantoms of material things which rush into it Do not promise yourself rest, until you reach this point. You are deceived, if you hope to find on this side of it a place of repose, an inner solitude, a calm light, a peaceful resting-place. Show me some one who has tasted all these, and I at once acknowledge that he is capable of saying from his own experience, ‘Turn to thy rest, O my soul, turn to thy rest, because the Lord hath rewarded thee .’ 2 Here is truly a place of solitude, a dwelling-place of light.”
Again, the same writer says, “I think that this is the solitude into which the spouse is drawn, and where, charmed by the beauty of the place, the soul sleeps in the embrace of her Husband, that is to say, is elevated in spirit ; and that, during the time her maidens, her companions, have received orders not to disturb her before she desires. And how is this ? These companions have not received a simple and slight admonition, but one given in a new and unwonted manner, ‘ by the roes and by the hinds of the field /7 These creatures seem to represent holy souls delivered from the burden of the flesh, also the angels who are with God from their keenness of sight, and swiftness of flight ; for these two qualities, we know, appertain to these spirits, for easily do they mount high, and dive down into the depths. That they are said to belong to ‘the field/ evidently indicates their freedom and power of roaming, as it were, in the open spaces of contemplation. But why this adjuration, ‘I charge you’? Certainly, lest the maidens, restless and light, should for some slight cause distract the Spouse in this precious companionship, into which the Spouse is admitted as often as the gift of contemplation is imparted. Fairly, then, are they deterred from awaking the Spouse, who herself is ever in due time solicitous for their welfare. The Bridegroom knows her ardent love for her companions, her maternal affection for them, her desire ever to grant them their requests, and to be with them ; it is on this account that he determines to entrust this arrangement to her discretion.”
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