The Soul in Search of God

Source: Google Books

Saint John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle:

“The soul, seeking to know its obligations, sees that life is short, that the path to eternal life is narrow, that the righteous have great difficulty in saving themselves, that the things of the world are vain and deceptive, that everything has an end and disappears like water flowing away, that time is uncertain, the account to be rendered is strict, loss is very easy, and salvation full of difficulties.

Moreover, it recognizes the immense debt it has contracted toward God, since the Lord created it for Himself alone, and therefore it owes Him the tribute of its entire life. Furthermore, He redeemed it solely through Himself; it is thus indebted to Him for all that it may have, and sees itself obliged to correspond to His love with all the energy of its will.

It understands that even before being born, it was already indebted to God for a multitude of other blessings. Yet it has foolishly lost a great part of its life; and when the Lord examines Jerusalem, lamp in hand, it will have to give an account of all the blessings received, down to the last coin.

Time advances. Perhaps it is the last hour of the day. One must repair a wrong that can have such terrible consequences, especially since God seems angered and hides Himself, because, by deliberate fault, the soul has too often forgotten Him amid creatures.

Broken with sorrow, struck by a fear that penetrates to the depths of its heart, at the sight of the danger of being lost, the soul renounces all worldly things; it abandons every other concern, and, without delay of a day or an hour, distraught, heart full of sighs, already wounded by divine love, it begins to invoke its Beloved.”