Michael of St. Augustine (1622–1684)
When the soul is silent, it can more easily listen to the voice of God. For just like at night, when everything is at rest and nothing disturbs, various sounds can be more easily captured, and the echo in the mountains is better heard in the evening, so too is God's calling and the echo of His voice more easily captured in a hushed soul...
Nothing pleases the Holy Spirit as much as when it finds such an echo, such a response to its divine inspirations, which is manifested through actions. The Bridegroom longed for such a response when He said to the bride: "Let me hear your voice. How sweet is your voice!" (Song of Solomon 2:14). The Beloved desires to hear no other voice than the response of actions to His inspirations... The Bridegroom longs for this echo, and from this response, He wishes to take joy...
When an echo is clearly heard from some place in the mountains, even if it is double or triple, many come and rejoice in it. They call out loudly with various changing voices and rejoice in the echo; musicians come with their instruments; trumpeters with their trumpets play charming melodies and take great delight in the echo that seems to respond to their music and their playing. The same happens spiritually in the faithful soul, which has become a mountain of perfection and grace; it receives the voice of the Beloved and responds to it with a beautiful echo, indeed a double response, for it acts immediately and fervently according to what the Holy Spirit teaches it within.
Whoever clings to God will be one spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17). This clinging is achieved through the poverty of spirit, for it frees the soul from all creatures. And since the soul must necessarily rest either in God or in creatures, in this state of detachment from creatures, it is necessarily turned to God. And because in this poverty there is no intermediary between it and God, there is a unification of substances, and the soul becomes one spirit with God... Just as one layer of air directly touches another, they mingle and become one air; so it is with the soul, which is spirit, when it rests directly in God, who is also spirit: the soul becomes one spirit with God.
When a vessel filled with water lies in the sea and breaks, the water from the vessel becomes one with the water of the sea and simultaneously is lost in it. It is the same with the soul: as long as it is still full of self-love and passionate desire for creatures, it sails in the immense sea of divine being, however not directly, but separately; only the poverty of spirit removes the intermediary that exists between God and the soul; in this way, the soul is "absorbed" and becomes one with God... This poverty of spirit was attained by the bride from the Song of Songs when she says: "I have taken off my robes, must I put them on again?" (Song of Solomon 5:3). All created things are like garments that the soul loving God must shed when it wishes to unite in love with the divine Bridegroom.
Excerpt from the book: Dance of Divine Love
Published by: Elisabeth Hense, T.OCarm.
Published by: Herder, 1991
Translated and edited by: Norbert Žuška, OCarm.
