Chapter 72
THE SIXTEENTH SHOWING
I have the meaning of three of our Lord's ways of looking.
The first is the expression of suffering, as He showed it while He was with us in this life, dying. And though this sight is mournful and full of sorrow, yet it is glad and merry, because
He is God.
The second way of looking is with pity, sorrow and compassion. This He shows with the certainty of their preservation to all his lovers, who have need of His mercy.
The third is the look full of bliss — as it shall be without end. This was showed most often and continued longest.
Thus, in the time of our pain and our woe, He shows us the look of his suffering and His cross, helping us to bear it by His own blessed virtue. In the time of our sinning He shows us the look of compassion and pity, mightily preserving us and defending us against all our enemies.
These two are the common looks He shows us in this life, mixing with them the third. That is His blessed look. It is partly like what it will be in heaven, and it is shown us by the gracious touching and sweet illumination of our spiritual life. By it we are kept in true faith, hope and charity, with contrition, devotion and contemplation and all kinds of true joys, solace and sweet comforts. Our Lord God's look full of bliss accomplishes it in us by grace.
Chapter 72 Sin in the chosen souls is deadly for a time, but they are not dead in the sight of God; how we have here matter for joy and mourning, and that because of our blindness and the weight of our flesh; of the most comforting look of God; and why these showings were made.
But now I must and ought to tell how I saw sin as deadly in the creatures who will not die on account of sin, but who will live in the joy of God without end. I saw that two opposites cannot be together in one place. The greatest opposites there are, are the highest bliss and the deepest pain. The highest bliss there is, is to have God in the clarity of light and life, seeing Him in truth, feeling Him sweetly, having Him abso-
THE REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE
~ lutely perfectly and absolutely peacefully in the fulness of joy.
Thus was the blissful expression of our Lord God showed, in part, in pity.
In this showing I saw that sin is the thing most opposite it, to the extent that, as long as we are tainted with any part of sin we shall never see clearly the blessed look of God. And the more horrible and grievous our sins are, the further away we are, for that time, from this blessed sight. And therefore, it frequently seems to us that we have been in peril of death and in hell's party, because of the sorrow and pain sin causes us. Thus, for the time, we are dead to the true sight of our blessed life.
But in all this I saw in truth that we are not dead in the sight of God, and that He never leaves us. But He will never have His full bliss in us until we have our full bliss in him, seeing His fair, blissful expression in truth. For we are ordained for this by nature and brought to it by grace.
Thus I saw how sin is deadly for a short time in the blessed creatures of endless life, and I saw ever more clearly that the soul sees God's blissful expression by grace of its loving, the more it longs to see it in fulness, that is to say, in His own likeness.
For notwithstanding the facts that our Lord God dwells within us, that He is here with us, that He calls us, that He encloses us for tender love so that He can never leave us, and that He is nearer to us than tongue can tell or heart can think, yet we may never stop mourning, nor weeping, nor feeling, nor longing, until we see Him clearly in His blissful expression. For in that precious, blissful sight, no woe can abide and no well-being can fail.
And in this I saw matter for mirth and matter for mourning. The matter for mirth is that our Lord, our Maker, is so near to us and that He is in us and we are in Him by the sure keeping of His great goodness. The matter for mourning is that our spiritual eye is so blind and that we are so borne down by the weight of our mortal flesh and the darkness of sin that we cannot see our Lord God clearly in His fair expression of bliss. No, and because of this murkiness and darkness,