Stanza 1
—
ESPOSA:
¿Adónde te escondiste,
Amado, y me dejaste con gemido?
Como el ciervo huiste,
habiéndome herido;
salí tras ti clamando, y eras ido.
—
SPOUSE:
Where have you hidden,
Beloved, and left me groaning?
Like the stag you fled,
having wounded me;
I left calling after you, but you were gone.
Excerpt of Saint John +’s teaching on stanza 1:
The soul at the beginning of this song has grown aware of her obligations and observed that life is short [Jb. 14:5], the path leading to eternal life constricted [Mt. 7:14], the just one scarcely saved [1 Pt. 4:18], the things of the world vain and deceitful [Eccl. 1:2], that all comes to an end and fails like falling water [2 Sm. 14:14], and that the time is uncertain, the accounting strict, perdition very easy, and salvation very difficult. She [the soul] knows on the other hand of her immense indebtedness to God for having created her solely for himself, and that for this she owes him the service of her whole life; and because he redeemed her solely for himself she owes him every response of love.
Personal reflection on stanza 1:
The intensity of God’s calling at the time of our conversion can feel ravishing. Yet it seems that it is not God’s design for this intensity of energetic union to persist indefinitely while we inhabit this lower sphere of created existence. Even so, a wound that “hurts so good” was caused when God ruptured our mundane life with the force of his celestial love. So long as we allow the recollected memory of our initiation into God’s hyperactive love to reverberate in our being, this love wound can motivate us to spontaneously call out to God with spiritual groaning as we deeply long for his full presence to complete us.
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