Christ/Bridegroom:
You beget me in the ineffable silence of eternity;
Father, from you I am and in you I subsist,
finding in you all my joy and delight
enraptured in the beauty which I see
in your face—the beauty which you give me.
All I am is from you, all I am is yours.
All you are you bestow on me
to possess as my own,
truly mine but only as your gift.
This loving donation reveals to me
the very depth of your love,
the love which passes between you and I
as a silent breath or a gently dancing flame,
or a kiss of two in love.
This breath, this amorous fire,
as he flows, leaps, dances between us,
uniting us in mutual embrace,
nothing other than our shared love,
is loved by us both and
loves us both in return,
a single flowing of the divine substance
united as a single charity
in threefold act, Father, Son and Spirit.
Begetter, Begotten, two together
breathing-forth the One between us as
reality and very act of unity.
Forth from us Three this love flows
in superabundant plenitude,
forth from the floodgates of Godhead
most pure and sublime, radiating,
reflecting, emitting into the abyss of
what was once the darkness of naught
the luminous and lightsome glory of love.
Numerous glimmering stars, singing of our
mutual beauty in which they share;
planets spinning in reverential harmony,
singing their share of the divine music
which is ours; on earth, made for our
especially beloved one, a copious profusion
of grace and loveliness in plants, animals,
earth and sky, seasons, days and nights.
In the gentle fall of the summer rain,
the sky flashing with the glory of lightning beams,
thunder telling of our majesty and power,
and in the hush of freshly fallen snow,
blessing through its pallor the purity of Truth,
in the hopping, playing, the singing of sparrows
on the branch, none of which falls to the ground
without you, Father, seeing.
In each glory which we have made
is seen the Glory of the Unmade Maker.
In each image is placed the magnetism
which urges the mind to rise to the Imageless,
to return once again to the One from whom
the many flow in ceaseless and glorious array;
as armies set for battle leave and return again
to the home they are sent to defend,
or as the waves flowing up from the deep
to return once again
to the place from whence they came.
All these things we made, my Love,
to ravish the heart of her, the Bride
whom we hold most dear, the Bride
who through her loveliness
ravishes our Heart.
We furnish her with beauty
through the very splendor of our gaze,
and, wounded, captured by this beauty in her,
which is our very gift,
we are thus moved to give,
to pour out further beauty,
indeed, to wed her to ourself.
In calling her to return,
to share in the very mutual self-gift,
the self-emptying donation,
the loving and joyful acceptance,
which I share with you and you with me,
and the Spirit between us equally,
at first we were frustrated by the pride
which, setting itself against humble love,
chooses the abyss of nothing rather than
the Abyss of Life.
And yet, in movement sublime
we willed that I pass into the world
which we have made,
that Creator become creature,
that all power take on the weakness of the weak
to bestow the strength of the Strong.
This one, our beloved, most lovely in our eyes,
yes, most lovely;
she moved me from my throne
to wed her to myself, to raise her in my arms,
to share with her my kiss,
to bring her to yourself
so that she may share with us
the single breath of love,
the Spirit of us both.
To do this I became a child, exchanging glory
for humiliation, riches for poverty, and bliss
for suffering—yet a suffering suffused by joy,
Light penetrating the darkness deep within.
This descending love, Father, reached its
height on the wood of that tree which,
mirroring the tree of sin,
becomes the Tree of Love and Life.
On this, my throne,
our marriage bed, our nuptial mystery,
I give to her myself
and eternity enters time
while time steps into the eternal.
I open to her my Heart, broken by her
sins and lack of love, yet moved by my
love which stirs me to mourn for her.
In this mourning she discovers true joy,
mourning in contrition her own sin and
turning to be healed in the very salve and
water which flow from this opened Heart.
She enters in and my Heart becomes hers.
I press her to my Heart, pulsing, beating,
loving, bleeding, that hers too may love,
and, wounded by the wound of love,
alone, find true health.
Health in the love, which,
wounding, alone leads to life.
Oh, my beloved bride whom I love,
the love of my Heart is yours;
you have ravished me, my love,
my sister, my bride; you have ravished me.
Now I want, as the very purpose of
my love, to ravish you in myself,
in the Embrace which is shared between
my Father and myself. I take you as my
own that you may say “Father” as I say it,
that you may experience his goodness
as I know it to the full,
that inebriated with the drink
which I drink, which he drinks,
and the Flame of our loving Breath,
you will find your joy in loving.
For to love is to drink and to
drink is to love. So, in this life,
my bride, drink of my Blood,
that I may abide in you and you in me,
that as the Father and I are one
so you too may be.
I await only, my dearest one,
I await only your “yes”, your
“I do” which to my ears will
fall so sweet.
Withhold not from
me, will you, that which I most desire?
But in that loving surrender which you
once refused, say now to me,
those sweet utterances for which I yearn.
Bride:
O my Love, my divine Bridegroom,
you have given yourself to me,
in such ardent love, the vehemence
of which enfolds me in such majesty,
that my heart, moved so deeply,
almost bursts with the words you want.
I desire with every fiber which
constitutes this being of mine,
to return to you that love which
from you first radiates.
Yes, to become through my love
a perfect radiance of your light,
a perfect image of your love,
a mirror of your splendor,
transformed through this sweet
contemplation of your face,
from glory unto glory even to
the Glory which is divine.
Lost in you as a drop of water,
falling into the ocean, is lost,
or consumed as a speck of dust,
dropped into flame is turned to flame,
—yet not at all lost or consumed,
but simply awakened thus to fullness of life—
so taken into yourself, I desire,
more than anything, all my shame burned
away in the Furnace of your love,
pure and luminous as your true bride,
fitting to share with you the nuptials
of eternity, to become one through
this union in the unity of the Father,
the Son and the Spirit blessed.
From you I came and to you,
O holy Trinity sublime, I desire
to return.
Humbled thus through love,
exalted in you I shall be,
with the exaltation and glory
which is nothing other than
the radiating immensity of
overwhelming love.
O Love, most desired,
Love which is my Love,
in loving you I desire,
made wholly love, to live
the life of love and with love alone
my joy, in you to find my rest.
Christ/Bridegroom:
Beloved, this rest I burn to give you,
this rest I proffer to your hands.
Stretch them out to receive it,
in the love that stretched me out
upon the Cross.
Arms thus out in that loving gesture,
true love will be your own.
Yours, yes, but only as my gift,
so no longer living alone, I will live in you.
Through this abiding of my life in you,
in turn you will live in me the very
life I live, this eternal donation of
complete Love passing between
my Father and I in the gentle,
yet fervent, ineffable silence of eternity.