The Living Flame of Love

Songs of the soul in the intimate communication of loving union with God.

1. 

Oh living flame of love that tenderly 

    wounds my soul

    in its deepest center!

Since now you are not oppressive,

    now consummate!

It it be your will:

    tear through the veil of this

    sweet encounter!

2.

O sweet cautery,

O delightful wound!

O gentle hand! 

O delicate touch that tastes of eternal life

    and pays every debt!

In killing you changed death to life.

3.

O lamps of fire!

In whose splendors the deep

    caverns of feeling, 

    once obscure and blind,

    now give forth, so rarely,

    so exquisitely,

    both warmth and light to their

    Beloved.

4. 

How gently and lovingly

    you make my heart,

    where in secret you dwell alone;

    and in your sweet breathing,

    filled with good and glory,

    how tenderly you swell my heart with love.

- St. John of the Cross

Source:

St. John of the Cross, Collected Works
Revised Edition
Translated by:
Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD
Otilio Rodriguez, OCD

Image of St. John of the Cross
Wikipedia.com - St. John of the Cross
under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 (Unported). and the GNU Free Documentation License

The Dark Night

Songs of the Soul that rejoices in having reached the high state of perfection, which is union with God, by the path of spiritual negation.

1. One dark night,

fired with love's urgent longings

-ah the sheer grace!-

I went out unseen,

my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,

by the secret ladder, disguised.

-ah, the sheer grace!-

in darkness and concealment,

my house being now stilled.

3. On that glad night

in secret, gor no one saw me,

nor did I look at anything

with no other light or guide

than the one that burned in my heart.

4. This guided me

more surely than the light of noon

to where he was waiting me

-him I know so well-

there in a place where no one appeared.

5. O guiding night!

O night more lovely than the dawn!

O night that has united

the Lover with his beloved,

transforming the beloved in her Lover.

6. Upon my flowering breast,

which I kept wholly for him alone,

there he lay sleeping,

and I caressing him

there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

7. When then breeze blew from the turret,

as I parted his hair,

it wounded my neck

with its gentle hand,

suspending all my senses.

8. I abandoned and forgot myself,

laying my face on my Beloved;

all things ceased; I went out from my self,

leaving me cares

forgotten among the lilies.

- St. John of the Cross

Poetry - 2

Source:

St. John of the Cross, Collected Works
Revised Edition
Translated by:
Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD
Otilio Rodriguez, OCD

Image of St. John of the Cross
Wikipedia.com - St. John of the Cross
under Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 (Unported). and the GNU Free Documentation License